Stefan Hunziker

Stefan
Hunziker

Professor of Risk Management at Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts. I study how organizations deal with uncertainty, and how risk management can strengthen both financial resilience and decision quality.

Research and publications LinkedIn
A range of possible outcomes and a decision tolerance threshold The graphic shows a range of possible outcomes and an illustrative limit of what a decision can tolerate. What the decision can tolerate
Risk management creates value when it strengthens resilience and improves decisions, not when it merely completes a process. A range of outcomes is one way of representing uncertainty. What matters is how uncertainty affects the management problem at hand.

What I work on

Enterprise risk management

How ERM can move beyond stand-alone risk registers to support two distinct management tasks: strengthening financial resilience and improving consequential decisions under uncertainty.

Decision quality under uncertainty

How objectives, alternatives, assumptions and uncertainty can be made explicit in strategic planning, budgeting and investment decisions.

Risk communication

Why technically sound risk information often has little influence, and how the way uncertainty is framed and communicated affects what decision-makers understand, discuss and use.

Risk quantification

When ranges, probabilities and simulation can make uncertainty more explicit and decision-relevant, what they can and cannot tell us, and where quantification reaches its limits.

How I approach risk management

I do not start with a risk management framework. I start with the management problem: which decision or resilience question needs to be addressed, and what uncertainty matters. I then ask which risk management components can make a useful contribution. The management problem should drive the method, not the other way around.

Decision-oriented

Risk management should contribute to consequential management and board decisions and, where relevant, to understanding whether the organization is financially resilient enough to absorb adverse developments. Processes, reports and governance structures are means to those ends, not ends in themselves.

Component-based

I do not treat ERM as one indivisible system. I break it into specific components and ask what each one is supposed to accomplish and through which mechanism it should work.

Evidence-informed

Methods are assessed by the strength and type of support behind them, their limitations and their fit with the management problem. Established practice or inclusion in a framework is not, by itself, evidence of effectiveness.

Different methods require different tests. A quantitative method can have a strong formal basis without proving better organizational outcomes; a heuristic can be useful even when outcome evidence is limited. I therefore make the basis and limits of each component explicit.

Purpose
What concrete problem is this component meant to solve?
Mechanism
Why should it improve the analysis, resilience assessment, conversation or decision?
Evidence
What supports that mechanism — formal theory, empirical evidence or both — and where are its limits?
Management impact
What should improve if this component works, and how can we tell in the organization whether it actually helps?

About

I am Professor of Risk Management at the Lucerne School of Business of Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts (HSLU), where I lead the Competence Center Risk & Compliance Management at the Institute of Financial Services Zug (IFZ). I also serve as Head of Research at the IFZ and co-direct the MSc in International Financial Management.

I earned my Ph.D. at the University of St. Gallen and completed my habilitation (Dr. habil.) in Management and Organization Sciences at the University of Sopron in 2024. Within this broader field, my research specialization is Enterprise and Strategic Risk Management, Decision Quality and decision-making under uncertainty. In 2017, I was a visiting scholar at Georgia State University.

My work connects research, teaching and practice around a central question: how can risk management help organizations remain financially resilient and make better consequential decisions under uncertainty?

Portrait of Stefan Hunziker

Work with organizations

Since 2006, I have coached and advised organizations at executive level in risk management and internal control.

My work includes the design and review of enterprise risk management, risk reporting for management and boards, and facilitated discussions on strategic decisions under uncertainty. I work with companies, hospitals, public-sector organizations and non-profits, drawing on current research and established frameworks selectively, depending on the management problem rather than treating any single framework as a complete solution.

The aim is not to make risk management more elaborate, but more useful: for financial resilience, consequential decisions and the way uncertainty is discussed by management and boards.

Selected publications

HSLU · IFZ Corporate Crises in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland ERM Report 2025

Complete publication record at HSLU  ·  Google Scholar

Selected research projects

More research projects at HSLU

Selected ideas

Short pieces and discussions that capture how I think about risk management in practice.

More ideas and discussions on LinkedIn

Speaking

I speak regularly at professional and academic events on enterprise risk management, decision-making under uncertainty, risk quantification and risk communication. Selected talks include:

Selected recordings & online sessions

Selected recordings, webinars and online sessions on Enterprise Risk Management, decision-making under uncertainty, risk communication and risk quantification.

Professional roles & affiliations

External engagements are undertaken in accordance with my responsibilities at HSLU.