Business Continuity Plan facing COVID-19: From necessity to Alterities

Résumé

Exactly two months after the first case in Wuhan, China, towards the end of 2019, the gap between the carriers of the virus and the epidemiological situation is growing just like a sword of Damocles over the heads of systems and nations around the world. Due to its spread, this pandemic has also challenged enterprises’ operational capacity and market presence. In such a context, a question arises: did companies manage the pandemic effectively? Through this question, this article aims to explore the problematic relationship between the Covidian context and businesses and, along the way, understand why while facing Covid-19 and its multiple effects some businesses win and others lose. For this purpose, it seems opportune, first of all, to identify the multiple effects inherent in Covid-19, in order to better interpret the sensitivity of companies to the weight of the crisis, and thirdly, to specify how certain companies have managed to organize their activity and adapt to health contingencies thanks to the business continuity plan, while others have experienced great difficulties (namely making negative financial results, or cutting jobs to reduce costs, temporally or totally stopping their operations, or even declaring their bankruptcy).

The impact of this pandemic has allowed us to determine a new way of comparison between companies: differentiation based on the use or the disuse of the business continuity plan as the ideal solution to manage and overcome this crisis by guaranteeing the preparation, the proactivity and the rapid recovery of activities. Therefore, this plan helped the companies to maintain in the market without cutting jobs or shutting down their doors.