Introduction to contegency Planning
by: sourceecommerce
Business Contingency Planning continually confronts the unlikelihood of a disaster. An interruption could be something related to a winter storm, the loss of electricity to the general area, or the complete and inaccessibility of a facility for an extended period of time.
Depending on the length or severity of the interruption, significant consequences or the very survivability of the corporation may depend on management's ability to re-establish critical business functions. Usually these business functions have required years to create and establish, but management must re-establish these functions sometimes within hours or days. This is a difficult problem and re-establishing the complex business environment in a timely manner requires a well thought out plan in place ready to be executed.
Normally we need only to cite the 1992 Chicago Flood or the 1993 World Trade Center Bombing to stress that while we tend to think of a disaster in catastrophic terms such as a building fire, natural flood, earthquake, or hurricane. Other totally unexpected causes can also cause significant business interruption which could be disastrous to the corporations. Some of these may be: Civil Unrest, Sabotage, Terrorist Activities, Power Grid Failure, Telephone Failure, Other Utilities (i.e. gas), Inclement Weather, Asbestos, Carcinogens, Computer Viruses, Corrupted Data, or Equipment Failure.
Business Contingency Planning is an answer to the unexpected business interruption. It is a proactive executive commanded crisis management program driven by business requirements
The if-then Contegency Approach
The contingent relationship can be simply thought of as an “if-then” functional relationship. The if is the independent variable and the ‘then’ is the dependent variable. In contingency management the environment serves as an independent variable.
For example if prevailing social values are oriented towards non materialism, free expressions and the organization employs professional personnel in a high technology operation. The participative and open leadership style would be most effective for the goal attainment.
A contingency approach seems to hold a great deal of promise for the future development of management theory and practice. The other approaches to management can the incorporated into the contingency framework.
Business Contingency Planning implementation and ongoing maintenance mythology will provide answers to the questions of:
1. How do I reestablish my business function(s)?
2. What is a disaster?
3. When do the impacts begin?
4. How much loss can be tolerated?
5. What are the options?
6. What will a recovery plan cost?
7. How much is enough?
