Interdisciplinary Review of Business Continuity from an Information Systems Perspective: Toward an Integrative Framework

Abstract

Hackers, malicious users, system malfunctions, and other incidents can disrupt organizational IS and cause severe organizational losses or even impact societies as a whole. In this paper, I review interdisciplinary literature on business continuity from an information systems (IS) perspective to increase understanding on how organizations can prepare for and respond to incidents. I use a narrative review approach with descriptive elements to review 83 peerreviewed papers published between 2000-2012 across a wide array of journals and disciplines. I identify themes across the past contributions, join the currently isolated streams of literature under a concept of IS continuity, and identify research gaps in the current knowledge. The results suggest that one can understand past contributions in terms of four themes that emerged from the literature: (1) social aspects as IS continuity enabler, (2) technology as IS continuity enabler, (3) salience of IS continuity, and (4) models that improve IS continuity. To move toward an integration of the past research, and to pinpoint research gaps, I present an integrative framework. Further, the research contributes to forming an IS continuity community to facilitate cooperation and communications among scholars sharing a common interest.