
The Geneva Canton Example
The Challenges of Implementing an ERM Framework Within the Public Sector: The Geneva Canton Example
Switzerland is a federal State and, as such, is structured via three layers: Confederation, cantons, and municipalities. The 26 cantons and the over 2000 municipalities, according to the subsidiarity principle, enjoy considerable autonomy from the central federal administration. In particular, each canton has its own government and parliament and can define local laws and regulations, which add to the federal ones.
‘Critical Systems Thinking: A Practitioner’s Guide’ (Wiley, 2024)
Dr Michael C Jackson OBE
Emeritus Professor, University of Hull, UK
The Relevance of Critical Systems Thinking to Strategic Risk Leadership
I recently published a book ‘Critical Systems Thinking: A Practitioner’s Guide’ (Wiley, 2024) offering a short history of systems thinking and an account of the range of systems approaches and how to use them. Having just read Torben Andersen and Peter Young’s ‘Strategic Risk Leadership’ (Routledge, 2020), I have become conscious of how relevant my book is to the field of risk management. It is this relevance that I hope to draw out in what follows.

The Futility of Hindsight: Part 1
As someone (must have) once famously stated, hindsight is equivalent to 20/20 vision. In practical terms, the inference is that any reasonably minded person might state, “Isn’t it obvious (why such and such happened)?!” We have all claimed at some point in our lives that a particular situation was, “Simply an accident waiting to happen”.

Part 2: Opportunities to learn from failures.
In last month’s contribution, the value of hindsight in risk management was questioned by suggesting that organisations generally fail to heed lessons from disasters, exposing themselves to risk. The impressive work done by Toft and Reynolds was introduced upon which the debate over both contributions was constructed. A powerful exemplar was drawn from the catastrophe that occurred in port of Beirut in 2020, discussed as a case-study.