When organisational effectiveness fails: business continuity management and the paradox of performance

Purpose: The aim of the paper is to consider the nature of the business continuity management (BCM) process and to frame it within wider literature on the performance of socio-technical systems. Despite the growth in BCM activities in organisations, some questions remain as to whether academic research has helped to drive this process. The paper seeks to stimulate discussion within this journal of the interplay between organisational performance and BCM and to frame it within the context of the potential tensions between effectiveness and efficiency. Design/methodology/approach: The paper considers how BCM is defined within the professional and academic communities that work in the area. It deconstructs these definitions in order to and set out the key elements of BCM that emerge from the definitions and considers how the various elements of BCM can interact with each other in the context of organisational performance. Findings: The relationships between academic research in the area of crisis management and the practice-based approaches to business continuity remain somewhat disjointed. In addition, recent work in the safety management literature on the relationships between success and failure can be seen to offer some interesting challenges for the practice of business continuity. Practical implications: The paper draws on some of the practice-based definitions of BCM and highlights the limitations and challenges associated with the construct. The paper sets out challenges for BCM based upon theoretical challenges arising in cognate areas of research. The aim is to ensure that BCM is integrated with emerging concepts in other aspects of the management of uncertainty and to do so in a strategic context. Originality/value: Academic research on performance reflects both the variety and the multi-disciplinary nature of the issues around measuring and managing performance. Failures in organisational performance have also invariably attracted considerable attention due to the nature of a range of disruptive events. The paper reveals some of the inherent paradoxes that sit at the core of the BCM process and its relationships with organisational performance

“This is the way ‘I’ create my passwords ...":does the endowment effect deter people from changing the way they create their passwords?

The endowment effect is the term used to describe a phenomenon that manifests as a reluctance to relinquish owned artifacts, even when a viable or better substitute is offered. It has been confirmed by multiple studies when it comes to ownership of physical artifacts. If computer users also "own", and are attached to, their personal security routines, such feelings could conceivably activate the same endowment effect. This would, in turn, lead to their over-estimating the \value" of their existing routines, in terms of the protection they afford, and the risks they mitigate. They might well, as a consequence, not countenance any efforts to persuade them to adopt a more secure routine, because their comparison of pre-existing and proposed new routine is skewed by the activation of the endowment effect.In this paper, we report on an investigation into the possibility that the endowment effect activates when people adopt personal password creation routines. We did indeed find evidence that the endowment effect is likely to be triggered in this context. This constitutes one explanation for the failure of many security awareness drives to improve password strength. We conclude by suggesting directions for future research to confirm our findings, and to investigate the activation of the effect for other security routines

Psychological contract and knowledge management mediated by cultural dynamics

Contact centres are the vital link in the value chain between the organisation and its customers because they offer essential front line sales and services of products. Evaluation of their success can be assessed in terms of customer retention, up selling and the promotion of the brand. This is brought into sharp focus if the centre is outsourced because of the impact of the strategic behaviour of the principal and its relation with its agents. The association of employees with the brand in outsourced operation is not as effective as in captive operations partly because communications from principal to agent are attenuated. Emotional connectivity, diagnostic skill set, requirement gathering, and knowledge are some of the most sensitive qualities required in agents working in the contact centres. These characteristics are found to differ according to whether this is in-house or outsourced operation and affect the psychological contract between the service provider and its employees. In addition, the employees are unlikely to achieve any rewards and are unable to offer any commitments to the customer in an outsourced operation; hence the “psychological contract” is breached. One of the consequences of this breach is on knowledge management. The knowledge of an employee regarding the products and services is lost with that employee’s attrition. Also employees’ then have little interest towards customer service and organizational welfare, which impacts on the customer centric goals of the principal. We argue that the psychological contract between employer and an employee and has positive influence on Knowledge Diffusion, mediated by cultural dynamics, which further contributes to the overall organizational effectiveness. This paper aims to investigate, as a pilot study, the elements of organisational culture and secondly its role in the diffusion of knowledge in contact centres, in-house and outsourced. We demonstrate how by deploying a blend of qualitative methods, it is possible to perceive the effect of each element of the cultural web on diffusion. Finally we propose a hypothesis of the role that Power Distance (Hofstede, 1980) can play, as a proxy for the Psychological Contract to leverage knowledge diffusion

The development and deployment of a maintenance operations safety survey

Objective: Based on the line operations safety audit (LOSA), two studies were conducted to develop and deploy an equivalent tool for aircraft maintenance: the maintenance operations safety survey (MOSS). Background: Safety in aircraft maintenance is currently measured reactively, based on the number of audit findings, reportable events, incidents, or accidents. Proactive safety tools designed for monitoring routine operations, such as flight data monitoring and LOSA, have been developed predominantly for flight operations. Method: In Study 1, development of MOSS, 12 test peer-to-peer observations were collected to investigate the practicalities of this approach. In Study 2, deployment of MOSS, seven expert observers collected 56 peer-to-peer observations of line maintenance checks at four stations. Narrative data were coded and analyzed according to the threat and error management (TEM) framework. Results: In Study 1, a line check was identified as a suitable unit of observation. Communication and third-party data management were the key factors in gaining maintainer trust. Study 2 identified that on average, maintainers experienced 7.8 threats (operational complexities) and committed 2.5 errors per observation. The majority of threats and errors were inconsequential. Links between specific threats and errors leading to 36 undesired states were established. Conclusion: This research demonstrates that observations of routine maintenance operations are feasible. TEM-based results highlight successful management strategies that maintainers employ on a day-to-day basis. Application: MOSS is a novel approach for safety data collection and analysis. It helps practitioners understand the nature of maintenance errors, promote an informed culture, and support safety management systems in the maintenance domain

What matters in practice? Understanding 'quality' in the routine supervision of offenders in Scotland

Little is known about the nature, character and construction of quality in the routine supervision of offenders in Scotland. Quality is an important yet contested concept with multiple facets and features, but its meanings for practitioners are under-researched. This article will present findings from a study using Appreciative Inquiry to reveal how Scottish criminal justice social workers attempt to conceptualise and construct meanings of quality in their daily practice with people who have offended. Our findings conclude that, despite significant fluctuation in criminal justice policy and practice, practitioners' ideas of quality seem to suggest resilience to both managerialism and punitiveness. Practitioners ultimately located quality within relational processes underpinned by social work values, but also saw it as being underscored by (or undermined by the lack of) adequate resourcing, professional supervision, flexibility and training

From Iconic Design to Lost Luggage: Innovation at Heathrow Terminal 5

This paper aims to contribute to understanding of how organizations respond to risk and uncertainty by combining and balancing routines and innovation. It shows how approaches to risk and uncertainty are shaped by the contractual framework in large multi-party projects. The paper addresses a gap in the literature on how risk and uncertainty is managed to deliver innovation in large-scale ‘megaprojects’. These megaprojects are notorious for high rates of failure that conventionally evoke organizational strategies avoiding risks and uncertainties. Yet strategies for managing risk and uncertainty are essential to the routines and innovation that overcome the challenges of successfully delivering large-scale, complex projects.

Strategies for Implementing Successful IT Security Systems in Small Businesses

Owners of small businesses who do not adequately protect business data are at high risk for a cyber attack. As data breaches against small businesses have increased, it has become a growing source of concern for consumers who rely on owners of small businesses to protect their data from data breaches. Grounded in general systems theory and routine activity approach, the focus of this qualitative multiple case study was to explore strategies used by owners of small businesses to protect confidential company data from cyber attacks. The process used for collecting data involved semistructured face-to-face interviews with 5 owners of small businesses in Florida, as well as a review of company documents that were relevant to strategies used by owners of small businesses to protect confidential company data from cyber attacks. The thematic analysis of the interview transcripts revealed 4 themes for protecting business data against cyber attacks, which are security information management strategy, organizational strategy, consistent security policy, and cybersecurity risk management strategy. A key finding is that owners of small businesses could develop an organizational strategy by incorporating procedures used to protect from and respond to cyber attacks. The implications for positive social change include the potential to increase customers’ confidence and businesses’ economic growth, as well as stimulate the socioeconomic lifecycle, resulting in potential employment gains for residents within the communities

Integrating Employment Contracts and Comparisons: What One Can Teach Us about the Other

This study examines the events that trigger individuals to consider the social exchanges involved in their employment relationships. Integrating social comparison and psychological contract literature streams, a parallel is drawn between system-referent comparisons and psychological contract evaluations. We hypothesize that self- and other-referent comparisons may be human triggers for engaging in this type of comparison. A variety of structural triggers are also proposed to influence psychological contract evaluations. This field study examines these primary and secondary contract makers as social comparison triggers. Results support the hypotheses that the triggers identified predict psychological contract evaluation and that psychological contract breach is correlated with these evaluations. Implications for future research and managerial practice are discussed