Agility in Higher Education: Planning for Business Continuity in the Face of an H1N1 Pandemic

摘要

The H1N1 virus threatened to cause a pandemic; how many organizations would have been able to respond effectively and continue functioning at reasonable levels? Focusing on the role of information technology in providing agility, this paper analyzed business continuity plans of 20 U.S. universities as the 2009-10 academic year commenced. The plans were downloaded from the universities' Web sites. Text was coded and clustered, and the clusters organized by theme: IT service configuration, faculty readiness, and student readiness. Concluding that agility is highly dependent on the capacity to adjust to the speed and direction of change, the authors offer practical guidelines and suggestions for managing structural size and complexity, revisiting the role of IT, and establishing cultural norms.