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A package of business related risk measures : development and empirical study

University of British Columbia

Risk taking propensity is defined as the willingness of an individual to take risks. Although previous research has suggested that this construct is multidimensional, the primary purpose of this thesis is to develop a package of measures relevant to one dimension of risk: business risk. The package includes measures adopted and revised from ones used previously and measures constructed for this study. Thirty-five Masters Students in Business Administration were administered the following package of measures: Choice Dilemma, Extremity Confidence in Judgment, In-Basket, Utility Items, Stock Price Wagers, a Personal Record Questionnaire, and a personality questionnaire concerning Internal External Control and Sensation Seeking. The results of the study show that some of the intercorrelations among measures are insignificant. Several factor analytical methods were tried but the extracted factors were neither identifiable nor expected. The study examined the relationship between risk taking and some selected variables like Salary, amount of asset, amount of liability, years of working experience, and number of dependents. Choice Dilemma was found to be a function of a greater number of variables, namely average age of the dependents, working years, salary, face value of insurance and liabilities. Extremity confidence in judgment is related to number of working years and salary. The In-Basket Memo score is related to IE Control, average age of dependents, working years and salary. The thesis has been able to pinpoint areas of weakness in the items themselves and indicate which measures should be subject to revision or elimination. It has also been able to narrow down the definition of business risk taking. In this regard, it has provided insights into what a final package of Business-related risk measures should contain. The study suggests more interesting areas to look at and serves as a pivot for future research of this kind.

Text

2011-03-14

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http://hdl.handle.net/2429/32439

Business Administration

University of British Columbia

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