Exploring the Conceptual Foundation of Continuity Management in the Context of Societal Safety

Abstract

Public and private actors with critical roles for ensuring societal safety need to work proactively to reduce risks and vulnerabilities. Traditionally, risk management activities have often been performed in order to ensure continuous functioning of key societal services. Recently, however, business continuity management (BCM), and its analytical subcomponent business impact assessment (BIA), has been introduced and used more extensively by both the private and public sector in order to increase the robustness and resilience of critical infrastructures and societal functions and services. BCM was originally developed in the business sector but has received a broader use during the last decade. Yet, BCM/BIA has gained limited attention in the scientific literature-especially when it comes to clarifying and developing its conceptual basis. First, this article examines and discusses the conceptual foundation of BCM concepts, including practical challenges of applying the concepts. Based on recent conceptual developments from the field of risk management, a developed conceptualization is suggested. Second, the article discusses challenges that arise when applying BCM in the societal safety area and provides some recommendations aiming to improve the clarity and quality of applications. Third, the article provides suggestions of how to integrate the overlapping approaches of BIA and risk assessment in order to improve efficiency and effectiveness of proactive, analytic processes. We hope that the article can stimulate a critical discussion about the key concepts of BCM, their wider use in societal safety, and their connection to other concepts and activities such as risk assessment.

Establishing a frame of reference for measuring disaster resilience

“…Before we consider the theoretical basis for how one might adjust the value of the T* parameter in our generalized resilience equation (equation ( 2)), it is important to recognize that there may be situations in which the decision maker cannot adjust the parameter's value because it is assigned a fixed value, either at the organizational level or at the industry level. For example, as a result of performing a Business Impact Analysis an organization will typically define a threshold parameter, called the maximum tolerable period of disruption (MTPD), for key products and their critical activities [46][47][48].…”

Understanding the Stakeholder Roles in Business Continuity Management Practices – A Study in Public Sector

“…Business continuity has been recognized valuable for organizations also in other disciplines; resilience, robustness and disruption management have been studied e.g. in supply chain management [27] societal safety [13], economic resilience of areas [4]. The survival of private and public organizations after natural and man-made crises has been discussed also in the crisis and emergency management field [2,7].…”

Infrastructure resilience curves: Performance measures and summary metrics

“…Performance and time thresholds capture transitions in stakeholders' valuation of system performance. Two types of thresholds were found in the literature: critical performance thresholds, below which performance is unacceptable [57], [72], [80], [81], [83], [88], [90], [107], [177], [193], [195], [196], [212], [224]- [228], [232]- [235], and recovery time thresholds, within which the system should achieve specific recovery objectives [57], [67], [72], [80], [83], [88], [100], [107], [131], [196], [215], [226], [235].…”