A critical evaluation of Business Continuity Management (BCM) in UK financial organisations

Wong, WNZ 2007, A critical evaluation of Business Continuity Management (BCM) in UK financial organisations , PhD thesis, University of Salford.

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Abstract

Major events in recent years have provided evidence that the world of business is rife with risks and uncertainties. The vivid events of 9/11 (11 th September 2001) in New York, U.S. and other major incidents, have forever changed the global perspective of managing threats to business operations. The U.K. financial sector, being the largest contributor to the national economy, needs to have robust contingency arrangements to counter any major operational disruption. As such, this doctoral research identified the premise of the need to raise the status of BCM in financial organisations. Two key research contributions were devised based on such a premise: 1. Assessing the business continuity readiness of FSA-regulated organisations by critically reviewing their business continuity arrangements and processes based on the theoretical standards of BCM Good Practice Guidance developed by the Business Continuity Institute (BCI); 2. Further improvement to the current state of BCM in U.K. financial organisations by proposing new measures based on the integration of BCM theories (from literature) and good practices (from case studies), in this case, a newly defined BCM definition and concepts with strategic importance, and the BCM PARAGON, were developed to underpin their operational resilience. The research critically reviewed the current BCM issues, proposals, and work raised and carried out by the U.K. financial authorities: HM Treasury, the Bank of England and the Financial Services Authority (FSA). Weaknesses were identified in the FSA's review of its regulated firms' business continuity arrangements. The research then examined the existing BCM approaches developed by U.K. government/regulatory and professional bodies. In particular, the BCM Good Practice Guidance devised by the Business Continuity Institute (BCI) was comprehensively reviewed. The BCM Good Practice Guidance was adopted and modified to assess the levels of readiness of participating financial organisations in this research. This was in response to the inadequacies of the FSA's research in understanding BCM processes of major financial groups, which had prompted a more structured and progressive approach to understanding the business continuity arrangements of financial organisations. Based on a critical evaluation of existing BCM definitions from various government/regulatory bodies and financial organisations, a strategic BCM definition and concepts (based on risk management, crisis management, disaster recovery, and contingency planning) with strategic importance for the U.K. financial sector were proposed. The research consisted of four detailed case studies of U.K. financial organisations' business continuity arrangements. The results revealed that Case 1 was a crisis and disaster-prepared organisation due to its previous experience in disasters, Cases 2 and 3 were partially prepared while Case 4 was considered as the unprepared case. In all cases, the element of strategic management was overlooked. From a critical evaluation of all available literature and data, a finance-based BCM PARAGON framework was developed. The framework comprised three dimensions: strategy, process, and performance, which were evaluated by the participating organisations. The organisations confirmed that the PARAGON, which was developed from theory and practice, was applicable in their existing BCM programmes and it fostered improvement and innovation. Nevertheless, for the proposed BCM PARAGON to be more "use-friendly" and readily applied into financial organisations, it needed to be simplified and revised to incorporate practical comments of the participating managers. In addition, the business continuity managers recommended that the proposed PARAGON should be integrated into the senior management's high-level policy and strategic management.

Item Type:	Thesis (PhD)
Contributors:	Alexander, K (Supervisor)
Schools:	Schools > Salford Business School
Depositing User:	Institutional Repository
Date Deposited:	19 Aug 2021 10:31
Last Modified:	04 Aug 2022 11:21
URI:	https://usir.salford.ac.uk/id/eprint/61649

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