Personality

*/By Rick Nason, PhD, CFA
Partner, RSD Solutions Inc/*

There are a whole lot of talks, seminars, training courses, articles and
great thoughts about risk culture.  Culture can generally be described as
the social norms of the group.  In other words it is the usual behavior of a
group given the context.  Similar to, but subtly different from culture is
personality.  Personality, like culture, is a set of usual traits or
responses to a given context, but personality implies a more pliable and
flexible response.  A personality may change from day to day, while culture
changes slowly.  Personality is sometimes unpredictable, while culture is
almost completely predictable.  Personality has swings – culture does not
swing (except maybe in the 30's).

So in the final analysis should your organization worry about developing its
risk culture or should it worry about developing its risk personality?