Business Continuity Management - Paper Example

Business continuity management refers to the guidelines that direct organizations on how to identify potential attacks that can harm its operations and provide an effective resource framework that can be used to address this issue either by minimizing its impacts or by ensuring the business is restored to normalcy in the shortest time possible (AT&T. 2004).  This holistic approach has become part of the day to day business management issues and every business cannot do without. Good news is that with the level of innovations that are being witnessed every day, business continuity is the primary beneficiary. Business management continuity still has to be accepted in all areas of the business but the discipline is rapidly gaining recognition in almost all facets of the business community. The earlier approaches that business world used to focus on revolved around centering everything in the information technology departments. This meant that in case of a data breach, a software collapse or failure of hardware, the IT department was solely responsible for recovering the company's data and ensure normal operations were resumed (Thomas, 2005). Problems continued to experience since not all businesses have structured IT departments that are capable of handling all cases of system failure, attacks or occurrence of a natural disaster.

As a result, organizations especially those in the corporate world devised other recovery strategies that would ensure that the business was well covered in case of a disaster by employing different recovery strategies and policies to guide the process (Toigo, Jon & William. 2003). It was later realized that these recovery strategies were not comprehensive enough to cover all areas of business operations and only focused on some aspects while leaving out a lot more that still would affect how the business recovered (Kahan, 2005). Subsequently, that led to extending the business recovery strategies into the business continuity management, an all-inclusive plan that focusses on proactive measures that can be undertaken if a business is facing a disaster (Ramsey, 2004). Business continuity management borrows a lot from the technological innovations that play an important role in the identification, analyses, and valuation of the possible procedures that can be used to deal with a potential harm to the business (Barnes, 2001). Innovations such as the use of IoT can be of great importance to BCM through unified communications that will streamline the business mission in line with the expected outcomes when dealing with a potential threat to the business. With the right innovation, reporting of intrusion can also prevent attacks to other parts of the system and avoid compromising all functionalities of the business.

Overview of the Study

This work provides a systematic methodology for gathering and analyzing data for the proposed hypotheses; the effect of innovation in marketing research on corporate citizenship and business continuity. The research instrument will include interview questions that will be conducted on a selected sample. Interview design and the sampling strategies are explained. Potential ethical issues and their consideration are made towards the end of this work. The limitations of the study design are also highlighted. Research Design

Qualitative approaches are used to gather data and information related to the impact of innovation in marketing research on corporate citizenship and business continuity management. This data gathered from a sample of employees at a selected business organization concerning the perception of the employees on the effect of marketing research innovation on the aspect of corporate citizenship and business continuity. The empirical data will seek to analyze whether the performance of a business organization is linked to the innovation made in marketing research (Shields et al., 2015).

The motivations behind choosing a qualitative approach in this study are the ability to provide in-depth background on the research topic, unlike quantitative study designs that are subjective. The However, interview relies on a small sample size since they require time to execute, unlike quantitative approaches study designs. The interviews will dwell on the dimensions relating to innovation in marketing research and their effect on corporate citizenship and business sustainability (Mitchell et al., 2010). The qualitative data will assess employee perceptions of the positive or negative perception of innovation in marketing research and seek their opinion on areas of improvement (West, Joel, & Marcel Bogers, 2014). Interview data scripts will be recorded and stored for further content analysis. Sampling Method and Sample Size

A stratified random sampling was conducted for the selected organization. A sample of 20 employees will be used in the study. As observed in Creswell (2014), sample stratification ensures the study is unbiased by providing a representative sample, thereby increasing the validity of the research findings. The target population is heterogeneous regarding socio-demographic characteristics, leading to stratification to obtain a representative sample.Research Strategy

The participants will be contacted by email and phone. The researcher will conduct the interviews with each participant, after agreeing on the time and location. The email also included a letter of introduction to the study seeking informed consent of the participants. The data collected will form the basis for assessing the effectiveness of innovation in marketing research and their overall impact on corporate citizenship and business continuity management. Data Collection

Data will be collected in face-to-face interviews to assess the impact of innovation in marketing research on corporate citizenship and business continuity management.

Pilot Study

At first, the research will conduct a pilot study to check the suitability of the interview questions and correct inconsistencies arising in the understanding of the questions. The pilot study assists in validating questionnaire's items to enhance its reliability as a vital research tool in this study. Data from the pilot study will not be included in final study data. Usually, the pilot study constitutes at least 1% of the sample size (Cooper & Schilder, 2006).

Data Analysis

Analysis of the interview responses will be based on content analysis methods. Demographic data of the participants will be analyzed in SPSS a presented in the form of graphs and tables.

Reliability, Validity and Correlation Analysis

The precision of the data in elucidating an occurrence can often be substantiated with the help of different research instruments such as validity, reliability, as well as correlation. Internal validity is usually linked to the accuracy of the results acquired while external validity refers to whether the result acquired can be applied indiscriminately to the target population (Ghari & Gronhaug, 2005). The descriptive validity is correlated to the actual description of the results being valid in relation to the results obtained. Theoretical validity is the extent by which the obtained data is theoretically supported. This has been established in the development of hypothesis where dimensions and constructs related to employee training, and development related to organizational performance. Generalizable validity refers to the extent the study's findings can be generalized to other public organizations.

The questionnaire contains relevant items that form core module in employee training and development, and it is from these items are responses collected. The questionnaire items are relevant to the topic and therefore have a generalizable soundness. The items were mined from works of literature related to employee training and development, and therefore they are relevant for this research. The constructs and dimensions in the questionnaire are well identified and supported in the literature. The stability of the measures implemented in a study refers to reliability (Ghauri & Gronhaug 2005; 81). The questions were all interlinked to the objectives and the research problems outlined in the current study. This makes the responses and the findings from this study reliable. The factors items were assessed for reliability using Cronbach's alpha in SPSS v.23 (Cronbach, 1951.).

Ethical Issues and Considerations

Participants were briefed on the objectives and purpose of the study before seeking informed consent from them. Confidential data such as their names and social numbers that could reveal the identity were excluded from data collection.

Limitation of the Study Design

There is the risk of introducing bias based on the participants understanding of innovation in marketing research in the organization. The study based its data from interview subjects who have a background in marketing. The researcher replicated some of the interview questions to ensure the responses were consistency Interview guideline

The study addresses the effect of innovation in marketing research on corporate citizenship and business continuity through using qualitative approach study design. The study will rely on a sample of 20 employees in a selected business organization and assess their perception of the effect of market innovation in their organization corporate citizenship and business continuity management. The study findings will be based on the assessment of participants' responses to the phenomenon of innovation in the selected organization. The advantage of innovation in marketing research affecting the two dimension of business performance, business continuity management, and corporate citizenship will be compared with the limitation. Possible suggestion drawn from the focus interviews will be incorporated into the study findings as recommendations for practice (Cohen & Crabtree, 2006).

Post-questionnaire Focus group Discussion

Given the daunting task of establishing the effect of innovation in marketing research on Corporate Citizenship and Business Continuity Management, this study incorporated post questionnaire focus group discussion to provide a qualitative method that will be essential in helping researchers to gather relevant akin to the study. The questionnaires will be used to; establish a clear understanding on the part of respondents and their perception towards the effects of innovation to the corporate and business continuity management especially for small business managers (Fassin et al., 2011). The questionnaires will also aid in providing the level of respondent awareness on the subject matter and how their thought process relates to the current issues within the realm of the business. Post-questionnaire qualitative method will be critical in determining the adequacy of the method employed and also determine the level of acceptability of the valuation process by the public. The outcome of the research is discussed in the following section with examples representing different concepts within the scope of the study.

Questions Respondent % Comments

What is the level of awareness of the impact of innovations to the BCM? 60 Low

Does business continuity depend on innovation?

72 Highly

How does innovation influence corporate citizenship? 81 High

What is the relationship between BCM and innovation? 74 Medium

Table 1.

Understanding the perception of the respondent on their level of awareness regarding their level of awareness regarding the effect of the innovation to the corporate citizenship and business continuity can help determine how the companies can formulate effective policies to oversee successful preparedness that will sustain business continuity (Aras,...