The Importance of emergency preparedness and business continuity planning for business resilience: a literature review

Abstract

All business activities are subjected to risks such as technology failure, natural disasters, utility disruption and terrorism, etc. These risks may be potential to generate a crisis, which if left uncontrolled can become a disaster. Even a small business interruption will result in the reduction of revenues, loss in customers or reduction in market share and ultimately, the survival of a business. Therefore, Emergency Preparedness (EP) and Business Continuity Planning (BCP) play an important role in business resilience providing the capability to adequately react to operational disruptions, while protecting safety and welfare of people. Though EP and BCP form important elements of good business management and service provision, as per the literature, EP and BCP have often been overlooked and sometimes even been ignored. Therefore, this paper presents the findings of a comprehensive literature review carried out on EP and BCP concepts to fill the above research gap. The finding will help the researchers working in EP and BCP practices to understand how these concepts have been developed, how they are practiced in the industry and their importance in business survival.