About

Don Pagach is a Professor of Accounting and the Director of Research for the Enterprise Risk Management Initiative at NC State University's Poole College of Management. He earned his Ph.D. in Accounting from Florida State University in 1992. His areas of expertise include financial analyst forecasts, market micro-structure issues, and forecasting groups. He is actively involved in initiatives related to enterprise risk management and has contributed to research and teaching in the field of accounting. His work is recognized within the college, and he has been featured in news articles highlighting research and teaching achievements.

Research topics

• Political Science
• Business
• Finance
• Accounting
• Computer Science
• Economics
• Law
• Marketing
• Mathematics
• Geography
• Psychology
• Environmental resource management
• Public relations
• Statistics
• Econometrics
• Medicine

Selected publications

• Climate change risks and business resilience strategies

  Edward Elgar Publishing eBooks · 2025-01-23

  book-chapter

  Climate risk resilience is increasingly important in modern business strategy due to the growing focus on achieving climate neutrality targets. Firms worldwide face pressure to address climate risks and report their impacts, prompting strategic responses. This chapter explores how businesses perceive and understand climate change impacts, emphasising resilience. It discusses the challenges of climate risks and strategies for enhancing business resilience. By analysing climate-related disclosures, we shed light on businesses’ awareness of climate impacts and their strategies for resilience. This chapter contributes to understanding how businesses navigate climate risks and highlights several proactive measures companies can use.

  PublisherDOI

• Improving Disclosures about Management of Ever-Evolving Risks

  Controlling · 2023-01-01

  articleSenior author

  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

  Senior authorCorresponding
  • 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

  Senior authorCorresponding
  • 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

• Analysts versus time-series forecasts of quarterly earnings: A maintained hypothesis revisited

  Advances in Accounting · 2020 · 15 citations

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Econometrics
  • Economics
  • Statistics
  PublisherDOI

• Firm Ownership and Enterprise Risk Management Implementation: Evidence from the Nordic Region

  Journal of risk and financial management · 2020-09-15 · 7 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior authorCorresponding

  The purpose of this paper is to investigate whether firm ownership characteristics can explain demand for Enterprise Risk Management (ERM) implementation. Specifically, we examine the relationship between the presence of large shareholders, multiple blockholders and a dual-class share structure, and ERM implementation. To our knowledge we provide the first evidence on the effect of multiple blockholders and dual-class share structures on the implementation of ERM. ERM best practices can be considered as governance tools, used to monitor managerial discretion in risk management, ultimately reducing the agency cost of risk management. Accordingly, we analyze the demand for ERM in certain governance (e.g., ownership) settings. We use quantitative methods in our study: survey and regressions (tobit and logit models). Ownership data is hand-collected while ERM data comes from a survey conducted in the Nordic region. We find that ERM is implemented less frequently in firms where there are multiple blockholders, and where large controlling owners hold dual-class shares. These findings indicate that there is less demand for ERM’s monitoring role in firms that are associated with high agency costs. Given the increasing use of dual-class share structures, we believe further examination of ownership characteristics and corporate risk management is warranted.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• The Challenges and Opportunities for ERM Post-COVID-19: Agendas for Future Research

  Journal of risk and financial management · 2020 · 24 citations

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Political Science
  • Political Science
  • Business

  In this paper, we examine the impact that COVID-19 has had on enterprise risk management (ERM). Guided by the origins and philosophy of ERM, we suggest an agenda for future research on ERM in a “post-COVID-19” reality, by addressing its integrated, strategic, and value-enhancing orientation. To guide future research endeavors in ERM, which is still an evolving discipline, we present topics that would benefit from additional research attention within both risk identification and analysis, as well as the strategic dimension of ERM.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Enterprise Risk Management and Corporate Governance

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2019-01-01 · 8 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author
  PublisherDOI

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

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

  articleSenior author
  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Bruce C. Branson

  North Central State College

  14 shared

• Mark S. Beasley

  11 shared

• Richard S. Warr

  North Carolina State University

  7 shared

• Naciye Sekerci

  4 shared

• Kenneth S. Lorek

  4 shared

• Daryl M. Guffey

  2 shared

• Stephen P. Baginski

  University of Georgia

  2 shared

• John M. Hassell

  Indiana University – Purdue University Indianapolis

  2 shared

Education

• Ph.D., Business Administration

  University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

  1989

• Other, Business Administration

  University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

  1985

• B.S., Business Administration

  University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

  1983

Awards & honors

• Poole College Professors Recognized for Research and Teachin…
• Lifelong Learning Motivates Professor Don Pagach (Dec. 10, 2…