Fitzsimmons and Atkins argue that there's need for companies to reassess how they perceive and measure different types of risk and how they eventually build or dent an organisation's reputation and its future as a going concern. Their major concern is on behavioural-related risks which they discuss at great length and different levels of an organisation. I am glad that they brought up the issue of dominant and charismatic CEOs who tend influence stakeholders into believing that all is well...I don't think I need to give the list... One of the things that particularly amused me was the fact that they recommended that risk officers should be drawn from the fields of psychology, sociology, anthropology, HR and organisational behaviour. I think that this is a definite deviation from the more traditional emphasis on the more technical fields of IT, Finance and Actuarial Science. It is clear that more and more people are accepting qualitative risk elements too. They also emphasised the importance of communication which is imperative in any form of relationship whether professional or social.

On the flip side, the cases were mostly Western-centric which I think is valid since that may have been the book's main target audience. However, it would have been interesting to read about high-level reputation crises from other leading economies such as Japan, China, Russia, Germany which have different corporate governance structures.

The book features the current and fresh case studies from diverse industries (such as Volkswagen) which they methodologically broke down and analysed. This was a definite plus and I will definitely look for more of their work online. Though Rethinking Reputational Risk can be read by anyone interested in Corporate Governance and Risk Management, I think that it would be perfect for someone in middle and upper level management since it has questions to mull over at the end of each chapter and would require practical experience. Might I further suggest that it would be an eye-opener for colleagues in the 'tech' and 'numbers' departments who are always skeptical about the Public Relations budget.