The Business Organization and Huge Natural and Manmade Risks - Research Proposal Example

Running Head: Research Proposal Research Proposal [Institute’s Research Proposal Introduction It is an observation that nowadays, every business organization is confronting huge natural and manmade risks, and it has now become almost usual to hear about any incident that has caused huge losses for some organizations. In specific, every business organization puts efforts to ensure continuity in the normal operations of the company; however, as the world is advancing, one can observe increment in the complexity of organizations that poses serious threats to the organizational structures worldwide. Besides ensuring effective management, business executives have a huge responsibility of avoiding mentioned risks in the company, and for this reason, contingence planning plays the crucial role in facilitating companies to recover from different incidents in an efficient and effective manner. However, this is not a one-day job but requires enormous efforts involving business planning, analysis, risk assessment, and preparedness to implement the contingence plan in time of need. Aims and Objectives In today’s era, besides technological incidents, climate changes on global level (NASA, 2010) are causing massive alterations that cause fire, flood, volcanic eruptions, tornados, etc, and thus, it is very imperative that companies should remain prepared and planned to prevent organizational resources from confronting huge losses. For this reason, the proposed research will include analysis of different aspects of contingence planning that will enable the organizations to understand its importance, and its role in avoiding monetary, as well as non-monetary losses. It is anticipation of the researcher that the proposed research will provide a comprehensive understanding of the term ‘contingence planning’, and will further facilitate the organizations to understand applicability of different contingence plans that can be feasible in different scenarios and incidents. Research Statement In this regard, the proposed research will focus on the following purpose statement: “To identify and analyze the role of contingence planning in avoiding losses during natural disasters or incidents, such as the Iceland’s eruption” Literature Review Brief review of literature (Childs, pp. 23-25, 2002) has indicated that in today’s era, contingence planning is enjoying significant importance in midst of global climatic changes and technological advancements that have resulted in huge amount of losses and increment in complexity of the organizational structures respectively (Myers, pp. 35-47, 1996). In this regard, organizations are putting enormous amount of financial resources to ensure continuity of their organizational activities (Myers, pp. 59-67, 1999); however, still various incidents have caused losses of millions of dollars until today, and Iceland’s volcanic eruption is one of the examples of such incidents that nearly malfunctioned the airline industry, especially the European airline industry. After such an event, huge amount of organizations are now endeavoring to analyze what went wrong and steps that could have minimize the losses that ruptured and affected the industry so adversely (Bloomberg, 2010). Although few experts (Rothstein, pp. 69-81, 2007) believe that, no contingence plan can prevent companies from natural disasters, however, various experts deem that in today’s era of terrorism and natural disasters, contingence planning is the best way to ensure continuity of the organizational activities. On the other hand, some experts (Rapajic, pp. 55-63, 2009) argue that although contingence planning is an efficient way of arranging backup plans, however, contingence plans are not feasible for complex organizational structures, such as that of airline companies. News related to Iceland’s volcanic eruption has indicated that airlines confronted losses of approximately 250 million dollars each day during the postponements of flights (Mesure, 2010). In response of such huge losses, experts now believe that although airline industry does not allow applicability of contingence plans, however, business experts can identify few value components of the industry that play the determining role in functioning of the industry. In such an attempt, programmes such as ‘Business Continuity Management’ and ‘Business Impact Analysis’ are playing a crucial role in facilitating airline industry to prevent itself from similar losses in the future (Ricondo & Associates, pp. 30-51, 2009). In addition, various strategic consultants (Elias, pp. 29-32, 2009) are nowadays endeavoring to help airline companies in identifying value-generating operations that will enable the companies to recognize their level of criticality, and thus, steps can be taken in this regard. Research Questions What are the major components of contingence planning What is the possibility of implementing contingence planning for complex organizations, such as airline companies What could have been the best way of avoiding huge losses during Iceland’s eruption Is contingence planning the only way to avoid losses? or can losses be ever avoided? Methodology Besides identifying research statement and defining aims and objectives of the research, it is very essential that researcher should give considerable time to plan methodology of the research that determines efficacy of the research. From this aspect, the researcher will carry out the research in a planned manner to ensure productive results. In specific, ‘secondary research methodology’ will be the fundamental basis of the proposed research that will enable the researcher to acquire and analyze previously carried out studies related to contingence planning. In particular, secondary methodology will involve enormous efforts to examine books, journals, articles, websites, etc that will provide an opportunity to the research to identify different factors that play a crucial role in the contingence planning. It is an understanding the various experts have endeavored to analyze the role and effectiveness of contingence planning, especially in the complex organizations. From this aspect, it is expectation of the researcher that efforts at the library will yield fruitful results that will be worthy of an analysis and discussion. Moreover, in midst of technological advancements, besides library, internet is the most resourceful tool that will facilitate the researcher in identifying quality resources in the form of journal articles, websites, newspapers, and magazines that will offer a critical perspective to the proposed research. In this regard, the researcher will put huge amount of efforts to scrutinize secondary resources related to contingence planning. However, in order to acquire a personalized perspective, the researcher will utilize the tool of primary research methodology that will include specific focus on one of the airline companies or organizations related to the airline industry. In particular, the researcher will select one of such organizations, and will attempt to acquire data based on the abovementioned research questions through questionnaires/surveys. In this way, the researcher will be able to give a practical and critical perspective to the research by relating it with current scenarios and incident, such as that of Iceland’s eruption that caused huge amount of financial losses globally. Timetable It is very imperative to plan the research project, in order to avoid unproductive outcomes. For this reason, the proposed research will include the following phases: Research Planning/Proposal 01 Month Acquisition of Secondary Resources 02 Months Questionnaire Distribution/Collection 01 Month Analysis of Secondary Resources 02 Months Analysis of Primary Resources 01 Month Compilation of Final Research Project 02 Month Limitations It is an understanding that lack of financial resources will be the fundamental limitation of this research project that is one of the reasons that researcher is focusing primarily on the secondary research methodology. Still, the researcher will put efforts to acquire constructive results by balancing between primary and secondary research methodologies. References Bloomberg. (2010). “Iceland woes go skyward as volcano erupts on island’s recovery.” Bloomberg.com. Issue of April 15, 2010. Retrieved on April 28, 2010: http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601085&sid=aZVmb6Ztz5lg Childs, Donna R. (2002). Contingency Planning and Disaster Recovery. John Wiley & Sons. Elias, Bartholomew. (2009). Airport and Aviation Security. CRC Press. Mesure, Susie. (2010). “Air chaos to last weeks as even more volcanic ash belches out.” The Independent. Issue of April 18, 2010. Retrieved on April 28, 2010: http://www.independent.co.uk/travel/news-and-advice/air-chaos-to-last-weeks-as-even-more-volcanic-ash-belches-out-1947854.html Myers, Kenneth N. (1996). Total Contingency Planning for Disasters. John Wiley & Sons. Myers, Kenneth N. (1999). Manager’s Guide to Contingency Planning for Disasters. Wiley. NASA. (2010). “NASA observes ash plume of Icelandic volcano.” NASA. Issue of April 23, 2010. Retrieved on April 28, 2010: http://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/iceland-volcano-plume.html Rapajic, Jasenka. (2009). Beyond Airline Disruptions. Ashgate Publishing. Ricondo & Associates. (2009). Strategic Planning in the Airport Industry. Transportation Research Board. Rothstein, Philip Jan. (2007). Disaster Recovery Testing. Rothstein Associates. Read More