Risk as opportunity in schools: An economies of worth perspective

IMPACT

For policy-makers, this article highlights the need for governmental risk management (RM) policies to embrace leadership attributes at the individual level. A proactive RM culture and practices can only be triggered when senior leaders move beyond a compliance mindset and have the capacity to foster the RM values that are unique to their individual school profile. Given that their conceptions of risk are intricately connected to the values they believe to be at stake in their school, it is essential that school leaders are recognized and rewarded for their innovative contributions to societal value creation.

ABSTRACT

This article examines the ways in which school leaders shape distinct risk management (RM) control cultures. By drawing on values-based perceptions of risk, the authors found that the values school leaders believe are most at stake influence their individual RM strategies including the use of accounting artefacts, for example control and performance indicators for risk mitigation. Interviews with Australian school leaders reveal the multifaceted perceptions of risks and the different ways they induce innovative RM responses. As such, this article contributes to the emerging economies of worth theory in the accounting literature from the contextual setting of school leaders. In teasing out the detailed ways in which school leaders contemplate the competing world views, insights are provided into the ways they also manage the regulatory requirements with formal RM controls in tandem with their own professional values and judgements.

KEYWORDS:

• Economies of worth
• management control
• risk management (RM)
• school leadership
• values