Risk behaviour and risk management in business life influence a wide range of fields in which only a very limited amount of research has been undertaken. These topics have often been treated as if they were theoretically and practically isolated from other fields, the so called risk archipelago problem. What is actually needed is another focus, in which the problem of risk is treated as a central theme. The demand for interdisciplinary research means that there is a need for crossing scientific boundaries. In approaching risk problems from a holistic perspective there is also a parallel need for linking the scientific and the business worlds. Researchers must work closely together in concrete multidisciplinary research projects and in co-operation with the industrial world in seeking out and solving research problems of importance.

This book contains selected and re-written papers, and key-note speeches presented in a risk-seminar that Stockholm University organised in June 1997. The seminar, in which 200 researchers and practitioners from 26 countries participated, was divided into four main topic areas: Risk Assessment and Credit Management, Psychology in Business Life, Risk Management in Small Firms and Law and Business Risk.

In writing this book, the editor invited eight professors from four continents to assist him in introducing the reader to the different and scientific disciplines and in explaining the need for interdisciplinary, multidisciplinary and cross-disciplinary risk research projects. The book consists of eight chapters and the target groups are researchers, doctoral and master students at universities and business people working in the risk management area.