Crisis Management & Information Technology

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Information technology has become an important part of the business world. IT is involved in communication and business processes across departments making the uses dependant on the technology to perform their work. In this thesis the authors are focusing on how companies prepare themselves for crisis that can affect information technology within the businesses, and what types of crisis they are worrying about. To answer these questions a theoretical framework is formulated by reviewing a collection of crisis management literature. The theory is later compared with empirical findings to reveal differences and similarities. The empirical work is based on interviews with four managers that work with IT and is involved in the crisis management process. Three international enterprises with head offices in the Ã?resund region participate. The findings in this research show that the differences between theoretical and empirical work is limited, and the similarities are many. Both explains that gathering experts and decision-makers in a crisis management team that can point out possible critical scenarios and construct action-plans, is a key part of crisis preparation. Alternative ways of communication must be prepared, and user training help the people involved feel safe and know what to do when a critical situation occurs. All plans and responsibilities must be reviewed frequently so that they always are up-todate, old plans are of little help. Crisis preparation has to be motivated. It takes time and is costly. The second part of the thesis looks at what kind of IT related crisis companies?? worries about. This includes loss of communication such as email and intranet, failure of advanced information systems like ERP, and threats from malware and hackers. But the all agree that the biggest threat comes from inside the companies ?? the employees. Big resources are therefore spent on making the IT users more concerned about safer usage of company technology. This res...