Measuring Organizational Downside Risk

Despite widespread incorporation of risk measures in strategy research, there is little consensus regarding the meaning and measurement of risk. In contrast to the variability measures widely used in strategy studies, this paper draws from behavioral decision theory, finance, and management theory to present an alternative perspective on organizational risk—downside risk. The paper explains three categories of organizational downside risk measures based on the concept of lower partial moments. The latter sections of the paper present considerations involved in specifying operational measures of downside risk and an empirical comparison of alternative downside risk measures.