International Journal of Business and Social Science Vol. 2 No. 18; October 2011 183
Business Disaster Preparedness: An Empirical Study for measuring the Factors of Business Continuity to face Business Disaster
Akram Jalal Karim
Management Information System Department
College of Business and Finance, Ahlia University
P.O. Box 10878
1st Floor Gosi Complex Exhibitions Road, Manama
Kingdom of Bahrain
Abstract
At present, the expansion in using data management technologies, globalization, and rapid communication offer organizations an unprecedented set of possibilities for evolution. On the other hand there are several vulnerabilities to threats and disasters. In this context, a realistic business goal is to guarantee the continuity of the processes in the case of disasters or crises. Business preparedness, through implementing Business Continuity Planning (BCP), decreases or eliminates the disruption to employees and profitability and allows businesses to perform balanced tasks in community. This research presents a conceptual design for measuring the factors of BCP on business disaster preparedness through the use of statistical indicators. Such research is required to develop systematic knowledge on how importance it is for businesses to persist with BCP to recover from disasters. The paper concludes that there is a significant effect of Strategic Management, Business Risk Analysis, Training and Awareness, and Information Life Cycle Managements when making BCP a cornerstone for the successful preparedness to any disaster.
Keywords: Business continuity, disaster recovery, disaster preparedness, risk management.
1. Introduction
During the last twenty years, organizations of all sizes have been sustained by their information systems and their expenditures were heavily based on their intensifying Information Technology infrastructures. This assisted them to computerize, manipulate, and analyze their business operations and long/short term strategies in a highly professional way. It is difficult to envision contemporary businesses devoid of advanced information systems covering their daily operations such as online trading, airline reservations, financial databases, etc. Business managers identify that a disaster can occur as a result of various causes, depending on a range of challenges such as environmental, economical and political, such as power outages, virus eruptions, disruptions, data fraud, terrorist attacks and the like. All of these may put off organizations from exercising their right to use the data and systems they need for managing their businesses. A business impact analysis (BIA) can expose the accurate detriments of disaster and the consequence disruptions in a specific business. However, these kinds of analysis are costly, and many senior managers are disinclined to financially support based on a BIA analysis without an accurate evaluation to the exact value or to the return on investment (ROI).
Disaster Recovery Planning (DRP) is a description of how a business reacts to any internal or external event to assure that critical business operations should carry on without any barriers. The aim of DRP is to reduce the consequences of a disaster and perform the proper actions to defend valuable resources. On the other hand, Business Continuity Planning (BCP) illustrates the methods and procedures that have been used by business to guarantee that important functions should carry on in and after a disaster. It is the facility of sustaining the continuous availability of significant systems, applications, and information of the business. BCP corresponds to the reaction of the required business understanding to the undesirable events. This process should be accomplished for the enterprise wide functions to reduce financial loss, enhance customer‘s service and alleviate the destructive events that may affect on name, processes, liquidity and market reputation.
As a result, disaster recovery, which focuses on IT activities, is possibly more common, however it is in fact a subset of the wider theme of business continuity. Although disaster recovery is a reaction to unusual events which removes all the mess subsequently so the business can continue as formal, business continuity is highly proactive plan, it carry on actions to guarantee that regardless of what occurs, business operations continue as stable as possible.
The majority of business professionals suggest undertaking business continuity planning initially; subsequently disaster recovery will carry the most critical elements of the business.Although a BCP concentrating on bring back the organization‘s power to do business, despite of the type of the disaster, various kinds of distraction may need a different kind of reaction for recommencing business. Different kinds of disasters may even affect the community environment surrounding the organizations; thus, human element (e.g. employees) may deeply influenced by a disaster events. It is indispensable to organize businesses to be able to react and improve from any types of disaster that may cause deficit in business operations and may inhibit business continuation. It is insufficient to believe that business is just typical day-to-day operations arguing that there are no threats that might stop our business to continue or we are sharp enough to a level that we will not be influenced same as others. Furthermore, with the ideas of globalization, business managers turn out to be more responsible for deficiency if they did not adopt right actions on right time to avoid this type of losses. Consequently, this research may end up directing the following questions to any business: Are you ready to protect your business from future threats? Do you prepared, have an efficient and applicable business continuity plans?
The aim of this research is to introduce a conceptual research model to assist businesses to answer such questions. From a pragmatic viewpoint, a disaster is anything that can cause a disruption in the normal operation of a business (Wallace & Webber, 2004). Business preparedness, often intended as business continuity, which covers a variety of factors such Strategic management, Business risk analysis, BCP resources, BCP documentation and Information Life Cycle Management. This research explores and evaluates the need for any business to be ready for any future threats by attracting the attention to business continuity planning to rescue lives and assets and to present a clear strategy for effective business continuity plans. This research measures the quantitative indicators of Business Continuity Planning (BCP) to gain a high knowledge base, test hypotheses, and confirm the introduced conceptual research model. It will develop realistic expectations for Continuity Planning and recovery and measures the organizational readiness in a present or future disaster. The remainder of this paper is organized as follows. Section 2 present literature review and 3 discusses the research model and hypothesis. In Section 4 we discuss the research methodology which will be used for this research. In section 5 result analysis and discussion will be presented. Finally, the conclusion will be presented in sections 6.
Lihat jurnal lebih lengkap di:
0 komentar:
Posting Komentar