Business Continuity and Disaster Risk Management in Business Education: Case of York University

Ali Asgary,York University

doi:10.17230/ad-minister.28.3

Abstract

Increasing levels of business disruptions and disaster events on one hand while local, national and international campaigns on the other have increased businesses’ awareness, attention and demand for the need for business continuity management. As more and more businesses are looking to integrate disaster risk and business continuity management into their business operations and decision making processes, the need for such expertise has also increased. Despite these needs, many business schools around the world have not fully identified, realized or addressed them. While there are several models for integrating disaster risk and business continuity management in business education, York University has established undergraduate and graduate level disaster and emergency management programs in a business school setting to address these growing needs. Through this integration, considerable numbers of business students enroll in disaster risk management, and business continuity courses. Knowledge and skills that students acquire through these courses make them informed and knowledgeable players in business continuity management teams in their varied work places.

Highlights

Businesses like other facets of the society are at risk for a large number of dynamic, natural, technological, and human made hazards
Considering that significant amount of critical infrastructure, wealth, investment, employment, and income sources rest with private sector companies, it is important to make sure that the educational support for disaster risk management and business continuity is available to businesses for risk reduction and business continuity
If we look at the proposed competencies for business continuity professionals proposed by Shaw and Harrald (2004), we can see that most of these competencies are covered in the existing business curriculums

Summary

INTRODUCTION

Businesses like other facets of the society are at risk for a large number of dynamic, natural, technological, and human made hazards. Housed in the School of Administrative Studies of the Faculty of Liberal Arts and Professional Studies, York University’s Disaster & Emergency Management (DEM) Programs have been offering disaster and emergency management degrees, certificates, courses, and professional trainings to a large number of students and practitioners over the past ten years. A number of disaster and emergency management faculty and faculty members from the Faculty of Science, School of Information Technology, Faculty of Engineering, and Faculty of Environmental Studies are involved in a Natural Sciences, Engineering Research Council (NSERC) CREATE funded program ($1.65 million) on Advanced Disaster, Emergency, and Rapid Response Simulation The aim of this program is to train the generation of highly qualified personnel in disaster risk, response, continuity, and recovery simulations for both public and private organizations. These three courses are: ADMS 2700 Fundamental of Emergency Management, ADMS 3701 Disaster Risk Management, and ADMS 3703 Business Continuity Management (Figure 4)

DEM Courses taken by Business students

Findings

CONCLUSIONS