Risk management is a relatively new field of management developing itself since seventies of the 20(th) century. sharp changes of economic conditions were an impulse for the rise. The development of risk management was accelerated by sharpening competition in the eighties and nineties of the 20(th) century. The importance of risk management in contemporary conditions of, globalisation is. permanently increasing and it is obvious that firms, willing to advance, have to learn how to adopt risks, not only passively but in such a way that enables them to use opportunities for increasing their prosperity. And that is the main aim of the active enterprise risk management (ERM). The submitted paper summarizes present theoretical and practical knowledge of the ERM sphere focusing on modem trends connected with applying the active risk management and pointing out the need of their applications under the conditions of the entrepreneurial sphere of the. Slovak Republic. In our contemporary economic conditions firms have basically two possibilities how to react to the continuous rising uncertainty in business: either thoroughly to monitor changes of environment and focus on preventing losses, it means to choose traditional reactive environmental management or to look for new possibilities of reaching demanding aims - it means - to apply the active ERM. In developed countries it is characteristic for successful firms to apply the active ERM. The main principles of the active ERM are: extensive view of risk (profit-loss), joint structure of risk management (the analysis of risk factors, risk measurement, creation of decision, evaluation of decision results), the only leader or co-ordinator for the process of risk management, to called chief Risk Officer (CRO), who is responsible for increased value of a firm, the use of modem methods, models and information technologies for assessment of relationships between risk and profit. Currently the measurement of risk (or risk assessment) is considered to be the key and most difficult phase of ERM. It demands usage of complicated mathematic models supported by special software and specific expert knowledge of risk managers in the area of economic models, information technologies, theory of probability and statistics. Having in mind the increasing importance of computer support of ERM it is important for firms to pay special attention to the possibilities of using simulation models for assessment of enterprise financial risk as well as to the concrete possibilities of their programme support. There are mainly software systems concerned e. g. @Risk in the framework of integrated software package Decision Tools and @Risk for Project by the Palisade Corporation, Crystal Ball by Decisioneering, Inc. and Decision Professional developed by the company Vanguard Software Corporation, or Financial CAD for MS Excel by Financial CAD. All of the mentioned models and their computer support enable risk evaluation based on the defined mathematical dependence of evaluation criteria of enterprise strategies on explicitly expressed risk factors. New knowledge points out the reality that an important task while risk modelling is taking into account: new and often not measurable items of enterprise risk. One of the ways of integration of quantitative and qualitative input variables (risk, factors) is the application of programme systems that offer model ability of enterprise risk evaluation together with the possibility of scenario creation that take into account the. quantitative components of enterprise risk. The developing attitude of risk management is complemented by a set of measurable risks and a portfolio of less quantified threats that are above the limits of traditional risk assessment. When we compare the enterprises of developed economics with ours, we can see that in most enterprises there is the absence. of ERM, including analyses and assessment of enterprise risk. The fact that Slovak entrepreneurs do not pay attention to the risk management in managing firms, could have some negative influence on survival of a firm in new circumstances of changeable global economy. This contention can be proven by. results of contemporary status results in the field of risk management in Slovakia, carried out at the Faculty of Business Economics in Kosice under. the VEGA No 1/7208/20 project - Quantitatively oriented methods of managerial decision making in corporate management. The given results of the research show the fact that some entrepreneurs do not deal at all with the risk in business, most of them just estimate the risk. Having in mind the close date of our entrance to the European Union, Slovak managers have to reconsider their attitudes towards the evaluation of enterprise. risk and it will require strong effort inevitable for gaining new knowledge and experience in application of the active principles of ERM.
