ABSTRACT
Where the focus of Chapter 5 was with analysis and planning for BC, this one is concerned with embedding related processes and change management. The old adage, “plans are nothing, planning is everything” has been attributed to many great leaders, including Churchill and Eisenhower, and reflects the view that the investment of time and capital in plan creation is of little value without using “learning” from the process as a platform from which to adapt, flexibly and aptly, to changing environments. This is as true of BC as it is of planning in general. This chapter is primarily concerned with the issues of change management and, in particular, with considering how BC processes may be embedded throughout an organisation, the third stage of our model of effective BCM, shown in Figure 6.1. In Chapter 1 the evolution of BCM was charted from its disaster recovery roots to the current day. It was suggested that the auditing mindset was a response to a series of financial scandals occurring during the early 1990s. This mindset has developed into the modern focus upon benchmarking and standard setting. It is not enough to do BC, it is vital to be seen to be doing it in an accepted way. Increasingly, the practices of BC have become institutionalised and associated knowledge codified. Organisations are “porous” (Chesbrough, 2003) and interlinked and do not practice BCM as islands. Information sharing is a constant and practitioners understand the importance of proactively seeking out information that can be shared. The validity of such information may be subject to the forces of institutionalisation and, as Meyer and Rowan (1977) argued, the rational drivers of innovation may come to be replaced by emotional ones as the importance of being seen to do what is considered right comes to replace acting in a considered way. The typical manager, short of time, is all too willing in many cases to accept the advice of experts or adopt “industry standards” with limited questioning.
