Crisis and Business Continuity Management - Research Proposal Example

Effective Implementation of Crisis & Business Continuity Management System for Successful Organizational Management. By  Abdulla Al Abbar A Research Proposal for a Ph D. program  Rationale and hypothesis: The subject of crisis management is becoming a topical discipline of the 21st century as it is gaining much recognition world wide, given the global financial changes, climatic changes, global warming and the projected industrial risks. Thus, most of the asset and property management professionals, independent organizations as well as Governments are focusing on the area of crisis, emergency, preparedness and business continuity management. COMMENT:2 I have added my answer to this comments which highlighted in yellow, maybe you will expand or change in order to meet the university’s comment. This awareness and several incidents that have occurred in Dubai some of which were poorly managed and some effectively managed in terms of initial response and control with regards to establishing the command structure and decision making process, to minimize the damage and continuity of the business function encouraged the author to undertake the study. The researcher seeks to explore the latest trends in the literature to discover and evaluate the relationship between the implementation of the crisis management system, business continuity plans, staff awareness program, training and drills as well as the success of the organization in terms of protecting assets and bringing business back to normal as soon as possible during periods of emergencies. COMMENT:1 I need you help to expand on the following paragraph and respond to the university’s comment. Dubai is like other cities that has multinational people. For this reason I thought it will good to have some discussion in the literature review chapter “not in depth analysis!” on cross cultural management in terms of change management and it’s relation to the implementation of crisis & business continuity management system in any organization. As you now there are lots of studies conducted in this area, maybe having some reference will be good idea? Another encouraging factor is the unique nature of the cultural blend present in UAE organizations and the effect of such a unique blend in the role played by culture. Basically culture plays a very significant role when it comes to implementation of newly developed crisis management systems in any business environment as it defines the different values and way of behavior any given group of people. These values need to be taken into consideration for positive implementation of the crisis management systems. The area that will be investigated in crisis and business continuity management is the implementation and its relation to the success of an organisation during emergencies. It is generally known that without an implementation programme any system will not survive. However, not every programme will lead to successful implementation hence the main objective of this research is to focus on specific areas of crisis and business continuity management in order to identify the best suitable theories of Eeffective Implementation of crisis & business continuity management system for a successful organizational Management. This study will test the program of three standard levels namely: strategic, tactical and operational and will recommend the most effective implementation system. The scheme places the crisis management in the corporate strategy map and aligning all levels towards this important item in the vision of the executive management. Literature Review It is argued that we live in a postmodern society, yet we could not control our environment to completely control hazards (Beck, 1992).Thus, it is very important to improve our security measures and broaden our vision for the definition of security, since we are facing a variety of complex and of course unpredictable hazards. A crisis is a major, unpredictable event that threatens to harm an organization and its stakeholders. ‘Although crises are unpredictable, they are not unexpected,’ (Combs, 1999). They can affect all segments of society regardless of the victims’ status. All crises when defined, share three elementary facts that include their threat to the organization, they are unpredictable and that the decision time is very short (Sellnow & Ulmer, 1998). Traditionally, risk or crisis management was thought of as mostly a matter of getting the right insurance and limit the losses. However, this has changed dramatically with the recent increase in rules and regulations and reliance on key resources. It is becoming a management practice that is as important as financial or facilities management. Crisis management can be defined as the systematic attempt to avoid organizational crises or to manage those crises when they happen (Pearson & Clair, 1998). Generally, this involves reviewing operations of the organization, identifying potential threats to the organization and the likelihood of their occurrence, and then taking appropriate precautions and actions to address the most likely threats. Thus, it is very essential in both commercial and governmental organizations to have a continuity plan which involves establishing measures to define what scenarios constitute a crisis and appropriate steps readily in place to effect necessary responses. It should consist of the communication that occurs within the response phase of emergency management scenarios. The related terms, “emergency management” and “business continuity management” focus respectively on the prompt but short lived type of response and the longer term recovery and restoration phases. Crisis is more or less another face of risk management, although it is probably untrue and not fair to say that a crisis is a result of the failure of a risk management system since it will never be possible to totally mitigate the chances of catastrophes occurring.   Methodology: Location: The research will be confined to the emirate of Dubai within the U.A.E country. The choice of Dubai is ideal in that it is currently well known for its fast pace in terms of development and advancement in all aspects of life with special emphasis on business, ports, industry and construction areas. The city is rated number one within the region in terms of economical growth. Thus, it is thought that conducting this type of research in such an environment that is seeking uniqueness will be very informative. Methods of data collection: a. Interviews b. Case studies, main method of collecting the data supported by the data collected from secondary sources. Structured interviews selected for this study will be conducted with the staff responsible for managing the crisis and business continuity management system within each organisation. The objective of these interviews is to address the above listed inquiries as first phase of data collection prior to the case study and the analysis stage. In this regard, qualitative methods of data collection in the form of interviews and case studies would be used in the study for the purpose of analysis of the findings. For a case study, a single incident will be selected at each organization for a thorough investigation in terms of crisis and business continuity management and to validate the extent and implementation of the ongoing system if it is a success. Targeted Companies: It is believed that weak risk management plans will eventually lead to a disaster. Thus, and for a better understanding of the efficiency of the applied risk management systems, the research will focus on three different types of specialization, namely: a) Natural gas company ( Dubai Natural Gas Company – DUGAS), b) An oil company (Dubai Petroleum Company – DPC) and c) A Port operations (Dubai Port World – DP World) COMMENT:3 I have added my answer to this comments which highlighted in yellow, maybe you will expand or change in order to meet the university’s comment. These companies were selected on the basis that they are some of the leading government owned and controlled companies in the state of Dubai and they always strive for excellence. In these fields, excellence is achieved by following the best systems of evaluation to ensure successful continuity. All of the selected companies will be investigated in terms of adaptation of risk and crisis management programs and the adequacy of maintaining relevant data. COMMENT:4 Regarding this comment, the following paragraph was included during the submission. Maybe you need to expand and make it clear for the reader or have additional part on the confidentiality. Approvals for accessing the data pertinent to this research are already granted by the administrations of the selected organizations since they concur with our opinion about the importance of such a study and the valuable benefits that will eventually be gained from the findings of the study. Data to be collected: It is important to get as much data as possible with emphasis on its accuracy and consistency in order to come out with a genuine evaluation. Thus, the following inquiries will be addressed to get the optimum amount of information needed for such an evaluation: 2. Was it a local or a global prospective that was put into consideration when designing their crisis and business continuity management systems? 3. Management support availability. 4. Is crisis management system part of the organization strategy? 5. Do the organizations have active crisis management committees? 6. Is the committee involved in all levels (strategic, tactical and operational)? 7. Is the implementation programme suitable for the organization? 8. Is the Crisis Management System suitable for the organisation’s structure? 9. Does it have overall crisis management structure? 10. A designated chain of command. 11. A command post and backup. 12. Preset activation protocols. 13. Communications. 14. Business continuity planning methodology. 15. Risk Management and Business Impact Analysis (BIA). 16. Business Continuity Plans (BCPs). 17. BCP testing, auditing and maintenance. 18. Awareness and training. 19. Regular simulation exercises. 20. Is the implementation programme suitable for the organisation? 21. Case study on one of the recorded incident: Was the system/procedure followed during the incident? 22. How effective is the implementation programme in relation with the incident findings? 23. Benefits and lessons learned from such experience and the mechanism to implement findings. Methods of data analysis: As mentioned earlier, in order to visualize the efficiency of the crisis management systems at the selected companies the research will focus on strategic, tactical and operational levels. It is very important to identify the weak as well as the strong links that affect the success or failure of implementing any program. Therefore, it is crucial to have valid parameters in order to evaluate the effectiveness of any given crisis and business continuity management plan which will, consequently, indicate the success of the organisational management of implementation such plans. The British Standard “BS 25999-2:2006 Business continuity management” will be used for evaluation in this study. Regardless of whether the selected organizations are BS 25999-2 certified or not, it will be used as an evaluation tool to analyze the effectiveness of crisis and business continuity system’s implementation and management as mentioned above. Finally, all the data collected will be evaluated, analyzed and compared with the parameters of best implementation practice that will be defined for this study. As mentioned above, data collection will be done mainly through interviews and case studies, thus qualitative research method will be more appropriate to be used for this study. Proposed chapters: Chapter 1: Introduction Chapter 2: Literature review Chapter 3: Methodology Chapter 4: Analysis and case studies Chapter 5: Findings and discussions Chapter 6: Conclusion    Research timetable: Literature review: 6 months Data collection from target organization: one year Analysis and evaluation: one year Writing and correction: six months Finalization and defence: six months Total required period: three and half years References: Beck, U. (1992) Risk Society: Towards a New Modernity, London: Sage Borodzicz Edward P. (2005), Risk, Crisis and Security Management. West Sussex, England: John Wiley and Sons Ltd. Borodzicz, P. M. Lecture in Risk, Crisis & Disaster Management, Scarman Centre for the study of Public Oder. 154 Upper New Walk. Leiceser LE1 7 QA. Coombs, W. T. (1999). Ongoing crisis communication: Planning, managing and responding. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, Inc. Giddens, A. (1991) Modernity and Self identity, Cambridge: Polity. Horlick-Jones, T. (1990) Acts of God? An Investigation into Disasters. London: Association of London Authorities. Pearson, C. M. & Clair, J. A. (1998). “Reframing Crisis Management.” Academy of Management Review, 23, 59-76. Starr, C. (1969) Social Benefit versus Technological Risk. Wash, Science Slovic. P., Fischoff, B. and Lichtenstein, S. (1980) Facts and Fears: Understanding Perceived Risks, in Schwing, R. C. and Albers, W. A. (eds) Societal Risk Assessment: How Safe is Safe Enough. New York. Plenum Press. Otway, H.J. and von Winterfeldt, D. (1982) Beyond Acceptable Risk: on the Social Acceptability of Technologies. Policy Sciences, 14pp247-256. Turner, B. (1978) Man Made Disasters, London: Wykenham. Toft, B. and Reynolds, S. (1994) Learning from Disasters: A management Approach. Oxford: Butterworth-Heinemann. Wynne, B. (1992) Misunderstood Misunderstanding: Social Identities and Public Uptake of Science Public Understand Sci. 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