Not least due to the financial crisis of 2008/09, corporate risk management has changed and developed significantly in recent years, e.g. towards holistic and organization-wide risk management ("Enterprise Risk Management"). At the same time, risk management and controlling are growing closer together in many organizations. How this further development or merger can be organized in the best possible way is a focus topic within our research focus on crisis and risk management.
However, some organizations are not successful in their risk management or do not manage it adequately, so that they slide into crisis situations or even insolvency. Within this research focus, we therefore also examine issues of crisis management from a business perspective, particularly examining whether and how judicial and extrajudicial restructuring options can contribute to the long-term survival of companies.

Overall, our primarily empirically oriented research within this research focus shows ways and approaches to further developing risk management, integrating controlling and risk management, crisis prevention and crisis management. For example, in our long-term studies, we have been investigating judicial and extrajudicial restructuring and insolvency cases for over ten years in cooperation with creditor protection associations.

Example publications from this research focus:

• Assessment of formal proceedings and out-of-court reorganisation: results from a survey among turnaround professionals in Austria
• Bankruptcy at family and non-family firms: do they fail differently?
• Corporate Crisis and Sustainable Reorganization: Evidence from Bankrupt Austrian SMEs
• Crisis management in family firms: do religion and secularization of family decision-makers’ matter?
• Enterprise Risk Management as Part of the Organizational Control Package: Review and Implications for Management Accounting Research
• Enterprise Risk Management in Family Firms: Evidence from Austria and Germany
• Firm age dynamics and causes of corporate bankruptcy: age dependent explanations for business failure
• How to Manage a Crisis: Entrepreneurial and Learning Orientation in Out-of-Court Reorganization
• Impact of accounting on reorganization success: empirical evidence from bankrupt SMEs
• Krisenursachen, Sanierungsmaßnahmen und Krisenbewältigung in Familienunternehmen: Empirische Befunde aus einer multiplen Fallstudie und Empfehlungen für die Unternehmenspraxis
• Rising like a Phoenix: From Bankruptcy to Market Leader
• Risk aversion in family firms: What do we really know?
• Risk management in SMEs: a systematic review of available evidence
• The integration of risk into management control systems: towards a deeper understanding across multiple levels of analysis