Empowerment vs risk management

It has become popular to call for employee and project team empowerment. However, this paper shows how this competes with another popular concept, project risk management, particularly in modern complex projects. Implementing both philosophies leaves the risk manager with an irreconcilable dissonance. The paper suggests a number of steps this implies, including developing project risk management frameworks that inform teams about likely cross-impacts, limiting team empowerment, and allowing teams to influence decisions. It suggests that a good style for the risk manager to adopt is that known as ‘accommodation’.