Risk governance: A way to promote ethical business in organizations
By Ruchi Agarwal, Sanjay Kallapur, J Pawan Tamwada
Citation
Agarwal, Ruchi., Kallapur, Sanjay., Tamwada, J Pawan. (2025). Risk governance: A way to promote ethical business in organizations .
Copyright
2025
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Abstract
Ethics are often implemented through compliance or culture routes in organizations. Both approaches have their pros and cons. While the culture route is more effective, it is hard for regulators to monitor and penalize shortcomings. Therefore regulators default to the compliance route, typically by mandating internal controls and risk governance, to ensure that organizations behave ethically. However extant scholarship questions whether it is effective. We add to this literature by exploring whether there are any examples wherein good risk governance made organizations more ethical. Following a field study based on interviews of over 50 Chief Risk Officers and senior management in 20 financial institutions globally, our findings demonstrate that some organizations are able to become more ethical through risk governance. We identify three good practices in risk governance that contribute to making organizations more ethical, and describe case studies of three organizations that used those practices.

Sanjay Kallapur is a Professor of Accounting at the Indian School of Business (ISB). He joined ISB in 2005 from the Krannert School of Management, Purdue University, where he was a tenured Associate Professor.

Professor Kallapur conducts research on financial and managerial accounting, auditing, corporate governance, and risk management. He has published in each of the top three accounting journals, and his papers have been cited over 4,000 times (Google Scholar) and in regulatory policy documents in India and the UK. The American Accounting Association recently published his monograph on scientific inference in accounting research, beyond the use of p-values.

He is the founding Editor-in-Chief of Accounting Theory and Practice, a research journal focusing on India, published by Elsevier. He has been an editor of The Accounting Review from 2008 to 2011, the first person from outside North America to be appointed to that position.

Professor Kallapur is a member of National Financial Reporting Authority (NFRA), the regulatory body overseeing the accounting and auditing of listed companies in India. He is an independent director on the Board of IDBI Bank, where he serves on the risk management and audit committees. He previously served on the Board of the Life Insurance Corporation of India.

Professor Kallapur has held positions as Associate Dean and Deputy Dean for almost a decade at ISB. He started the PhD-equivalent Fellow Programme in Management at ISB and has placed his students in faculty positions at the London School of Economics, IESEG Paris, Aalto University, University of Queensland, University of Western Australia, and IIM Udaipur.

Professor Kallapur has a PhD in Business Economics from Harvard Business School, and B.Com. and M.M.S. degrees from Mumbai University. He is professionally qualified as a Fellow Member of the Institute of Cost Accountants of India (FCMA).

Sanjay Kallapur
Sanjay Kallapur