What do businesses in Scandinavia fear the most? That is what Nordic insurance giant If Insurance decided to find out. So they asked 400 managers in major companies in Denmark, Sweden, Norway and Finland the question “What kind of risk or threat do you think that publicly listed companies in your country fear the most today?” The answer may surprise you…or maybe not, and interestingly, what is most on managers’ minds is very different from country to country. Supply chain risks do not rank very high. Actually, unless you count them in implicitly, they do not rank at all…almost. But what do business leaders in Denmark, Norway, Sweden and Finland fear the most?
Future worries
The results of the 400-respondent survey, undertaken as phone interviews between April and June this year, were published yesterday, in “Dagens Næringsliv”, the Norwegian equivalent to the “Wall Street Journal”, and that is where they caught my attention. Being this recent, the survey also shows what the most pressing future worries are for business in the Scandinavian countries.
Don’t worry – Be happy
Many of you may remember “Don’t Worry Be Happy“, Bobby McFerrin’s famous song from 1988, and in some areas this is perhaps the case when considering how vastly different the answers are, depending on which country you look at. That is perhaps more frightening than the answer itself.
You would think that businesses, albeit they may be different in scope and geographical location, would have more or less the same fears when averaged out across the board, but that is definitively not the case here.
What keeps managers awake at night?
In Norway, it is loss of key personnel, perhaps like it is described in a cartoon I used in a post on how the wrong people can ruin the best supply chain. The loss of key personnel does not seem to matter at all to leaders the other countries. The explanation may be simple: With the unemployment rate at 3% and generally falling it is harder to find qualified employees in Norway compared to many other European countries, thus making losing them a frightening scenario.
In Denmark, disasters, terror attacks and political upheaval are concerns that keep managers awake at night. Obviously the drama that ensued in Denmark after the publication of the Mohammad cartoons plays a role here. Not to mention the more recent unrest in the Middle East, adding political risk to the list of factors any business must consider.
In Sweden, they too fear the same. After all, Sweden has had its share of assassinations and car bombs, while Norway and Finland have peacefully escaped such calamities…so far.
In Finland, very noteworthy, nobody seems to fear anything at all. If anything matters to the Finns, it would be loss of IT, electricity or or telecommunications. Maybe it’s their “sisu” making its mark here? Or a little bit of “Don’t Worry Be Happy”? Or maybe, their real fears aren’t even on this list?
Social media worries
Norway also ranks bad media coverage as one of their major fears. Interestingly, bad media coverage is only a concern to Norwegians. Perhaps because Norwegian managers have realized the potential impact that social media can have on reputation risk?
Supply chain risks?
Problems with partners or suppliers (implicitly: supply chain risks) are on some managers minds especially in Sweden and Denmark, but not in the other countries. This is the only fear that directly links supply chains to manager’s concerns. Perhaps they should be pushed further up? I think so.
Incoherent but perhaps true?
Well, the picture of what the biggest fears in business are is very distinct, but not coherent. Different countries have different worries, at least as far as Scandinavia is concerned. And maybe that is the case throughout Europe and the rest of the world as well?
What about you?
What would be your biggest fear on the list above? Or are there other items on your agenda?
Related link
- husdal.com: Dette frykter sjefene mest
(A pdf-version of the newspaper article, in Norwegian only)
Related posts
- husdal.com: Book Review – Political Risk
- husdal.com: Book Review – Reputation Risk
- husdal.com: 7 out of 10 businesses in Norway without a continuity plan
- husdal.com: The decade of living dangerously
