About

Bruce Branson is a Professor of Accounting and serves as the Associate Director of the Enterprise Risk Management (ERM) Initiative at NC State University's Poole College of Management. He is also the Interim Director of the Undergraduate Accounting Program. His teaching and research focus on factors that influence enterprise risk management maturity and its integration with organizational strategy. Additionally, his research interests include financial reporting and the application of derivative securities and other hedging strategies for risk reduction and sharing. Bruce is actively involved in executive education through the ERM Initiative’s workshops and serves as the Editor-in-Chief of the 'ERM in the News' newsletter. He has contributed to thought leadership in ERM by developing papers on risk reporting to boards of directors and co-authoring the Initiative’s annual survey report on the current state of ERM in partnership with the AICPA. His academic background includes a Ph.D. in Accounting from Florida State University and a Bachelor of Science in Accounting from the same institution.

Research topics

• Political Science
• Finance
• Business
• Economics
• Marketing
• Accounting
• Psychology
• Law
• Public relations
• Environmental resource management
• Geography

Selected publications

• Improving Disclosures about Management of Ever-Evolving Risks

  Controlling · 2023-01-01

  article

  The speed of change, including the emergence of new technologies, geopolitical disruptions, and escalating environmental and social challenges create uncertainties that can trigger complex risks derailing an organization’s business model and strategic plan. None of these risks behave in isolation, highlighting the need for executives to monitor and manage a rapidly evolving portfolio of interconnected risks.

  PublisherDOI

• An Evolving Risk Landscape: Insights from a Decade of Surveys of Executives and Risk Professionals

  Journal of risk and financial management · 2023 · 3 citations

  • Political Science
  • Business
  • Marketing

  We report on the results obtained from ten annual surveys of global business executives on their perceptions of the most significant risks facing their organizations in the ensuing calendar year. These surveys of C-suite executives, directors and other risk professionals elicit their concerns about risks that may affect their organization’s success over the near-term horizon (i.e., the next calendar year). After a decade, we believe these results provide an opportunity to examine how the global risk landscape has evolved. In addition, two additional survey questions allow us to examine how these executives view the overall risk context and how enterprise risk management (ERM) is deployed and augmented in the face of an escalating risk environment. On average, we find that executives view the risk landscape they face as persistently risky over the ten-year period, even during the relatively robust economic environments for much of that time frame. Two industries report much more volatility in their risk environments, with respondents from the Healthcare sector and in Technology, Media and Telecommunications acknowledging the largest volatility. We also observe an increase in entities’ decisions to devote more time and resources to risk management over the ten-year period, suggesting that ERM has become an essential mechanism for organizational success. Our goal is to highlight the realities of constantly changing risk conditions and how context (e.g., industry and time) is an important distinguishing factor that affects an organization’s given risk profile, which is relevant to both executives and academics. Collectively, our findings emphasize the importance of understanding the ever-changing context of an organization’s environment, that risk identification must be an ongoing process, and that there is no “one-size-fits-all” approach to risk governance. We believe all this signals the importance of future research to help organizations respond with robust risk governance.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Understanding the Ecosystem of Enterprise Risk Governance

  The Accounting Review · 2022 · 23 citations

  • Political Science
  • Business
  • Environmental resource management

  ABSTRACT Approaches to risk governance are not homogeneous across organizations. Some organizations invest heavily in building formal and strategically focused enterprise-wide risk governance processes whereas others exhibit reduced formality and focus, allowing risk governance to be less structured. We argue that risk governance may best be described as a service dependent upon a network (or ecosystem) of participants who include users of risk information and providers who design and implement risk governance processes. Using a survey sample of 2,380 observations from 2011 to 2016, we find that external calls for enhanced risk governance are positively associated with risk governance processes having greater formality and strategic focus. We find this relationship is partially mediated by internal demands for enhanced risk governance. Further, we find that the positive association between internal demands and enhanced risk governance is reduced by resource constraints and that a risk-seeking attitude is negatively associated with enhanced risk governance. Data Availability: Contact the authors. JEL Classifications: G30; M10; M14; M40.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Are required SEC proxy disclosures about the board’s role in risk oversight substantive?

  Journal of Accounting and Public Policy · 2021 · 12 citations

  • Political Science
  • Accounting
  • Business
  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• An analysis of the maturity and strategic impact of investments in ERM

  Journal of Accounting and Public Policy · 2015-02-24 · 109 citations

  article
  PublisherDOI

• An Analysis of the Maturity and Strategic Impact of Investments in ERM

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2013-01-01 · 11 citations

  articleOpen access
  PublisherDOI

• A Note On Earnings Forecast Source Superiority

  Journal of Applied Business Research (JABR) · 2011-01-31

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; margin: 0in 0.5in 0pt; tab-stops: -.5in; mso-hyphenate: none;"><span style="font-family: "Times","serif"; font-size: 10pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;">We examine the forecast accuracy of Value Line analysts relative to the Brown-Rozeff (100)X(011)<sub>4</sub> ARIMA model.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span>We find that for a surprising percentage (35-41%) of our sample of small firms that time series-based earnings per share predictions are more accurate than those obtained from The Value Line Investment Survey.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span>Further, we document exploitable characteristics of each subgroup that are associated with forecast origin.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span>In those instances where the seasonal, univariate earnings forecast model identified by Brown and Rozeff (1979) produces more accurate forecasts than Value Line, we find significant differences in firm size, degree of diversification, magnitudes of the autoregressive and seasonal moving-average parameters, residual standard errors, and magnitude of the Ljung-Box Q-statistic.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span>We use probit regressions to identify ex ante those firms likely to be accurately forecast by each source.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span>We achieve a marginal improvement in forecast accuracy, which suggests there is potential for using ex ante decision rules to improve forecast accuracy.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span></span></p>

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Diversity In Analyst Coverage

  Journal of Applied Business Research (JABR) · 2011-01-17

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  This paper examines the effect of intra-industry "earnings informativeness" and proprietary firm information on variation in security analyst coverage within industries. Earnings informativeness is defined as the extent to which privately developed or obtained information about one firms' earnings provides useful information about the earnings of its industry co-members. Proprietary information provides signals concerning future firm profitability, relative to industry competitors, resulting from such factors as new product developments and innovations in production processes. The results reveal that levels of analyst coverage relative to mean levels of industry-specific analyst interest is significantly positively associated with intra-industry earnings informativeness and size-adjusted annual research and development expenditures (a proxy for proprietary firm information). The findings also show that certain determinants of analyst coverage (e.g., firm size and institutional ownership) identified in the prior literature as explaining variation in aggregate analyst following also hold at the industry level. Finally, the paper examines whether the model variables found to possess explanatory power within industries can also serve to explain observed variation in inter-industry levels of analyst interest and the results suggest that they can.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• ERM: Opportunities for Improvement: Take Your Risk Management System to the Next Level

  Journal of accountancy online/Journal of accountancy · 2009-09-01 · 5 citations

  article

  EXECUTIVE SUMMARY * Expectations for improvements in how boards and senior executives oversee enterprisewide risks are on rise. The authors surveyed more than 700 organizations in September 2008 to better understand current state of enterprise oversight. This article provides a brief overview of key findings from that research and identifies potential opportunities to strengthen oversight. * Organizations have traditionally tackled oversight by managing individual risk buckets or silos. The survey found that 44% of respondents have no enterprisewide management process in place and they have no plans to implement one. An additional 18% of respondents without ERM processes in place indicated that they are currently investigating concept, but they have made no decisions to implement an ERM approach to oversight at this time. * The two most common perceived barriers to ERM implementation were existence of competing priorities within organization and insufficient resources to devote to an ERM implementation. Despite barriers, 75% of organizations indicated board of directors is asking senior executives to increase their involvement in oversight at least moderately. * A majority of organizations who delegated oversight to a committee of full board assigned that responsibility to audit committee (55%). Other committees that were reported with some frequency were executive committee of board (21% of responses) or a separately established committee (18%). * Steps for improvement include: information gathering to identify top five-to-10 exposures organization is likely to face in next three to five years; reconciling top exposures with existing management activities already ongoing within organization; and prioritizing any newly identified unmanaged risks. ********** As result of fallout from ongoing economic crisis, failures associated with existing management processes are already generating calls for reform and increased regulatory scrutiny SEC Chairman Mary Schapiro said in an April 2009 speech to Council of Institutional Investors that the Commission will be considering whether greater disclosure is needed about how a company--and company's board in particular--manages risks, both generally and in context of setting compensation. In July 2009, SEC issued its first response through proposed rules that expand proxy disclosure information about overall impact of compensation policies on registrant's taking and role of board in company's management practices. Proposals in Congress call for establishment of board committees composed of independent directors, among other reforms. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Credit rating agencies such as Standard & Poor's have also focused on an organization's management processes, providing an additional incentive for organizations to consider further enhancement of existing oversight infrastructure. Without a doubt, expectations for improvements in how boards and senior executives oversee enterprisewide risks are significantly on rise. The question is whether organizations are currently in a position to respond with more robust, enterprisewide oversight. To provide answers to this question, in September 2008 authors surveyed more than 700 organizations whose 2008 revenues ranged from $14,950 to $115 billion--with a median for sample of $50 million--to better understand current state of enterprise oversight. This article provides a brief overview of key findings from that research, Report on Current State of Enterprise Risk Oversight, and identifies potential opportunities to strengthen oversight. EXPECTATIONS FOR TOP-DOWN, HOLISTIC VIEW OF RISK While organizations have managed risks for centuries, most have traditionally tackled oversight by managing individual risk buckets or silos. …

  Publisher

• The Role of the Board of Directors and Senior Management in Enterprise Risk Management

  Enterprise Risk Management · 2009-12-21 · 20 citations

  otherOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  This chapter contains sections titled: Introduction Governance Expectations for Board Oversight of Risk Management Delegation of Risk Oversight to Board Committees Formalizing Risk Management Processes Senior Executive Leadership in Risk Management The Role of the Internal Audit Function in ERM External Audit as an Independent Source of Key Risk Identification ERM Implementation Strategies Conclusion Notes

  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Mark S. Beasley

  14 shared

• Donald P. Pagach

  14 shared

• Kenneth S. Lorek

  6 shared

• Stephen P. Baginski

  University of Georgia

  4 shared

• G. Lee Willinger

  4 shared

• Robert D. Allen

  Utah Valley University

  3 shared

• Bonnie V. Hancock

  2 shared

• Daryl M. Guffey

  2 shared

Education

• PhD, Accounting

  Florida State University