Posts
I recently read a short article in Disasters by David T. Flynn entitled The Impact of Disasters on Small Business Disaster Planning.
Interestingly, Flynn's research suggests that businesses that have experienced disasters may be less likely to create a plan than those who only watch others misfortunes. In a survey of businesses that had experienced the 1997 severe flooding of Grand Forks, ND, and those that started operation after the flood, he found just the opposite. For the group that experienced the flood, having a disaster recovery plan went from about 5% before the flood to about 11% after the flood. But, businesses that started after the flood had double this rate, 24%, a significant difference.
Flynn offers no suggestions for why this may be.
Did the businesses that experienced this extreme flooding event decide that they had survived and could do so again? Did they reap the benefits of federal disaster aid and see no need for such plans? Is there something in the way the surviving businesses operate that is inherently resilient and already incorporating disaster recovery planning concepts? Was the flooding so catastrophic that those who experienced now believe that no plan would have made any difference? And what of the businesses who came along afterward. Are painful lessons easier to incorporate when you see them happen to someone else?
It is generally assumed that disaster recovery plans help business deal with disruptions and more quickly recover from disasters and help reduce their financial losses. Flynn's research and the prospect of looking into small business damage and recovery to flooding here in Washington State has got me pondering all this. Perhaps disaster recovery plans are not useful in the way disaster professionals promote .... and these Grand Forks businesses have figured it out. This definitely calls for some qualitative research.
Wednesday, December 19, 2007
Make a recovery plan....or not
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
1 comment:
First, what is a Small Business Disaster Plan? And if this mostly has to do with insurance, could it be that those businesses that experienced the flood, and did not have a plan or insurance in place before the floods occurrence, were even further financially stressed due to recovery costs, so as to hinder their ability to afford a plan or insurance after the flood?
Also, those businesses that started after the flood occurrence might have developed in locations that had retail tenants that could not afford to rebuild due to much damage due to their location within the floodplain. So, it could be that those new business might have started up in retail areas that are located in the 100 year flood plain as opposed to the business that recovered and chose not buy insurance are located in the 500 year floodplain. Therefore, those new tenants or businesses have a stronger reason to develop a plan and purchase insurance. Also, if this hypothesis is true, than it is possible that a greater percentage of the new businesses might have been able to take part in the Nation Flood Insurance Program.
Questions could and maybe should be formulated from these thoughts when you do the quick response research.
Post a Comment