Crisis planning in small businesses: Importance, impetus and indifference

This study examines crisis planning in a survey of small businesses. It specifically focuses on the perceived importance of crisis planning by small business managers. In particular, we investigate whether the experience of an actual crisis event by a business generates concern for future crises, if concern is generated more from the occurrence of a crisis event or from the presence of a crisis management team. Results of the study indicate that crisis planning receives little attention in the small businesses surveyed, and for most small business managers, an actual crisis event must occur before crisis planning becomes a concern. Concern for crises is generated by experiencing crisis events, rather than by the presence of crisis management teams. It was found that even those businesses that had previously experienced crises did not have crisis management teams.