Risks and Crises Management Scenarios: Using Foresight to Maintain Sustainability and Business Continuity

The on-going pandemic, along with other recent crises and disasters, have affected most if not all industries all over the world. Individuals have lost jobs and organizations have closed or reduced operations and staff. The loss to the international economy exceeded 40 trillion dollars (United Nations: Department of Economic and Social Affairs). What actions could have been taken to address these challenges more proactively? This paper addresses these concerns, providing insight into managing such risks through proper planning and foresight. Potential risks and crises should be considered at the earliest stages of planning, and risk management activities as well as crisis prevention plans should be an integral part of any organization’s preventive processes. The Value Management Technique or Value Analysis, normally used to improve products, projects, and processes can help a team develop a variety of approaches to managing risks and crises, and the Weighted Matrix Approach will help them select the optimum approach from among the alternatives developed by the team. This article presents several approaches to managing risks and crises to enable business continuity and growth in a world of rapid and continuous change. These approaches will become more useful as improved technology, artificial intelligence, and digitalization enhances information availability and exchange.