Using the information presented in "Common Influences on Risk Perception," determine the conscious factors, subconscious factors, and effective factors for the Global Green Books project (this will require you to read Mini Case 1 and Mini Case 2). Examine how awareness of such factors influences the decision to hire outside vendors versus part-time employees. In addition, analyze how the stated factors help improve the overall facilitation and effectiveness of risk management.

Common Influences on Risk Perception:

Conscious Factors (Situational and Rational): Familiarity, Manageability, Proximity, Propinquity, Severity of Impact, Group dynamics, Organizational culture.

Subconcious Factors:

1. Heuristics:Intuition, Representativeness, Availability, Reality traps, Confirmation trap, Lure of choice, Affect heuristic, Anchoring, Group effects (e.g groupthink).
2. Cognitive Bias:Prospect theory, Repetition bias, Illusion of knowledge, Intelligence trap, Optimism bias, Fatalism bias, Precautionary principle, Hindsight bias.

Affective Factors (Emotions and feelings): Fear (dread, worry, concern...), Desire (excitement, wonder...), Love (lust, adoration, attraction...) Hate (dislike, disgust...), Joy (happiness...), Sadness (depression...).

Mini-Case Study #1: Project Management at Global Green Books Publishing

Global Green Books Publishing was started two years ago by two friends, Jim King and Brad Mount, who met in college while studying in Philadelphia, USA. In the new business Jim focused on editing, sales and marketing while Brad Mount did the electronic assembly and publishing of books for Global Green Books. Their business was successful and profitable in the first two years, largely due to contracts from two big businesses.

In their third year they got very busy thanks to their third major customer, a local college that needed customized eBooks. They hired several part time employees to help them with their publishing business.

But by the end of third year of operation, Global Green Books started experiencing critical problems. They were: unable to leverage all the new employees effectively unable to deliver eBooks to their customers on schedule unable to provide quality textstime and money was being spent fixing defects in their products unable to control coststheir business was not profitable in the third year.

Global Green Books saw a significant rise in issues, a lot of unpleasant "surprises" were cropping up; business was down as new resources were hired, also some of the projects were poorly estimated. The local university was unhappy as their eBook products reached campus late for use by professors and student. In some cases, the books were a week or two late. Since the courses must start on schedule and students need their books at the beginning of their courses, the new lucrative college customer was unhappy.

One of the new part-time employees hired by Jim and Brad, Samantha, had taken a project management course at college.Samantha was excited about the discipline of project management and had intentionally selected a job with Global Green Books Publishing as she saw an opportunity to polish her project management skills.

One fine day, Jim invited Samantha, for a lunch meeting. He was aware that Samantha was familiar with project management, and wanted to hear what she had to say about the problems he and Brad were facing. Over lunch he questioned why their small business which had operated and implemented projects so successfully over the first two years was being challenged significantly now.He specifically listed the problems they were facing and asked for input to solve them.

Samantha asked for more time to research all the issues but noted that Global Green Books, while being innovative, completed projects without a roadmap or a project plan and lacked a disciplined approach to project management. She noted that Jim and Brad did not use any project software for scheduling and they did not use tools or techniques to estimate, budget or to communicate with stakeholders. Finally, they had no processes in place to manage project risks and quality.

Impressed with this and other conversations, Jim King asked Samantha if she would consider joining them as a project associate or project manager on a full-time basis to help them introduce project management practices and help them tide over their current crisis.

Samantha accepted the offer! She has several key skillsshe is an excellent communicator with very good interpersonal skills and detail-oriented.Within the first three months in her new role as PM, she introduced formal project management processes, created a PM manual and trained the employees to get the work done well.Within nine months Samantha had fully turned things around. Due to proactive risk analysis and risk response planning, surprises and issues reduced. Communication with stakeholders was enhanced. Brad and Jim noted that the company was delivering projects on schedule, the quality processes workedand customers were happy with the products!

Mini-Case Study #2: The Back to School Crunch at Global Green Books Publishing

Global Green Books Publishing is a successful printing and publishing company. Just two years old, it has taken on a great new customer, a local college that needs customized eBooks.

To deal with this new customer, they have hired several new part time employees to help them with their publishing business, some of them students at the college with flexible hours.

As the new school year drew closer, the orders started coming in.They had been told how many different printing jobs the college would need, but they weren't all arriving at once, and orders were quite unpredictable in arriving from the professors at the college. Some professors needed rush orders for their classes.When Global Green Books finally got the orders, some of these jobs were much larger than they had thought they would be.

Printing these orders turned out to be very challenging.Not all of the new student hires were trained for all of the printing and binding equipment used to print and assemble to books. Some of them often made mistakes, some workers called off from work due to other demands, and there were often not enough people available to get all the work done before deadlines.

Quality was a serious issue, as they had to provide quality textsif there were quality problems with the printed product, they would have to spend time and money to fixing defects in their products.

Deliveries started slipping past their requested dates and times. Global Green Books was unable to deliver eBooks to their customers on schedule.

The local university was unhappy as their eBook products reached campus late for use by professors and student. In some cases, the books were a week or two late.

Samantha had been hired as a project management assistant.In her new role as a project manager, one of the processes she was trying to institute was risk management.She started looking at what was happening in the business, talking about it with the owners and employees, and heard about the college's unhappiness. As she did this, she started identifying risks and potential risks. As she went along, she started doing more proactive risk analysis and risk response planning, and as she did surprises and issues were reduced. By talking with stakeholders and addressing their concerns, communication with stakeholders was also enhanced.