The risk of risk registers - managing risk is managing discourse not tools

D rummond (2011) eloquently illustrates the Janus-head of MIS using a vivisection of risk registers, noting how, although risk registers are commonly used, they often fail. Drummond finds two root causes for their failure (1) the fog of risk and (2) the surplus reality of risk registers. Drummond first notes that risk registers compile information about the future of the world and the possible impacts the future may have on the company. As such, risk registers are predisposed to fail, because of managerial myopia and the indeterminism of the future. Second, Drummond argues, risk registers fail because they constrain managerial thinking. Risk registers are limited to measurable and explicable information, thus discarding the value of intuition, gut feelings and emotions. Because language frames managerial thinking, Drummond suggests novel metaphors to reinvent risk management, that is, reclassifying risks as ghost and shadows, mutating viruses, imps, irony, or choices. The challenge put forth to Drummond (2011) argues that (1) risk registers should not be viewed as a metonymy; (2) the root causes of the failure of risk registers are not only because of individual fallacies but are also rooted in organizational nature, for example, organizational selfservice and distrust in experts; and (3) a way out of the predicament needs to go beyond semantics.