Desarrollo de un modelo comprensivo de madurez de prácticas de gestión de riesgos para municipios neerlandeses

Abstract

As in the private sector, risk management has gained also increasing popularity by public entities. Nonetheless, the correct implementation of risk management might be a difficult task to accomplish. The Dutch case is an interesting example, since municipalities in the Netherlands have a special bylaw for risk management. However, as innovative as it might seems for the public context, there would be some evidence of the limitations that municipalities in the Netherlands have faced in the implementation of risk management practices (Boorsma and Haisma, 2005). We consider that maturity models could contribute on the task of assessing the implementation of risk management practices. Taking to account also the fundamental and practical difficulties found in current maturity of risk management models, we have made significant efforts to explain and also adapt this method to the characteristics of these entities. When applying the improved maturity of risk management practices model to a sample of municipalities, we found empirical support for the construct validity of our proposed model, as well as relevant findings for the field. We discovered in our sample a pattern indicating that larger municipalities have a higher maturity of risk management practices score, thus implemented more sophisticated risk management practices. In addition, we found that the entities that participated in the empirical part of our study, had higher scores in the first stages while obtaining lower scores in the last dimensions (“risk decision and control” and “risk implementation and reviewing”). Through the analysis of two cases of our sample, we also evaluated possible associations between “organizational arrangements” and the maturity of risk management practices scores. Even though we still considered this proposed maturity of risk management practices model a developing method that need additional enhancements, we also believe that our proposed model could be a pertinent method for the diagnosis of risk management practices of Dutch municipalities, as well as to influence the correct implementation of the discipline by these local entities.