Giuseppina Gandini, Alex Almici

(University of Brescia, Brescia BS 25122, Italy)

 

 

Abstract: Market globalisation and worldwide economic crisis have increased uncertainty, discontinuity and emerging risks implicating, for companies, the need to adopt a risk proactive approach; this implies that it is not enough to select and to analyse the risks, but it is also necessary to decide how to manage them. Hence, market globalisation emphasises the risk management’s role in respect to company’s long-period growth according to sustainable development principles. Hence, this research is aimed at verifying, throughout an empirical survey, the main risks, the risk attitude and the risk management’s quality of companies operating in specific sectors such as the food and the pharmaceutical ones. The selection of the above stated sectors is based on their risk relevance for human health and wealth. In fact, both selected sectors contribute to the satisfaction of human beings’ primary needs: “sustenance” with regard to food products sector and “survival” according to qualitative improvement conditions, with reference to pharmaceutical sector. The current analysis has been carried out referring to a selected number of companies listed on global markets, leading to the following main findings: first, in both analyzed sectors a great relevance is given to product safety risk; second, the bodies’ engagement in risk management activity is still low.

 

 

Key words: risk management practices; globalisation; health and wealth

 

JEL code: M16