| dc.description.abstract | ABSTRACT
The rise of data processing technologies, globalization of trade, and high-speed communication and travel provided businesses having an unprecedented set of opportunities for growth. With this new paradigm of business operations, however, also came a different and expanded set of vulnerabilities to risks and disasters. The increasing interconnectedness of commercial enterprise with all facets of town made business continuity planning a cornerstone of community resilience. Business preparedness reduced the disruption to employees, productivity, profitability and enabled an organization to play a stabilizing role in industry. Business Continuity Planning was associated with identifying, acquiring, developing and documenting along with conducting and testing for resources and procedures to ensure the key or critical operations of an organization were secured in case of a disaster or any such event. But despite availability of such tools, supermarkets in Kenya continually faced survival challenges when faced with various disasters with some of them already having significant reductions in operations and productivity. Supermarkets in Kisumu County had continually faced productivity and operational challenges during political upheavals. No study had attempted to investigate how business continuity planning tool could be used to help address these challenges. Based on the contingency and resource-based theories, this study seeks to determine the effect of business continuity planning on the performance of supermarkets in Kisumu County. The specific objectives included determining the effect of BCP awareness, to establish the effect of BCP preparedness and to evaluate the effect of barriers to BCP implementation on performance of supermarkets. Data would be collected using a structured questionnaire. The study would adopt a correlation research design on a population of 847 supermarket employees and a sample of 174 selected using Yamane‟s formula. Data would be analyzed using linear regression methods and presented using descriptive statistics. The results would be useful to supermarket managers and investors in formulating business continuity strategies, scholars and future researchers in the area of business continuity planning practices. A pilot study on 16 employees was carried out and the instrument of reliability was ascertained using Cronbach‟s alpha where a threshold of 0.7508 which is more the Alpha of 0.7 was obtained indicating reliability. Mean and standard deviation were used to analyze objectives, whereas regression analysis was used to analyze the effect of business continuity planning practices on performance of supermarkets in Kisumu County. Using multiple regression, the study established that complexity in BCP awareness has an insignificant effect on supermarket performance (β=-0.267, p<0.05). This implies that an increase in BCP awareness will insignificantly affect the supermarket performance. BCP preparedness has a significant effect on the operational performance of the large-scale manufacturing firms (β=0.383) and leads to an increase in supermarket performance. Barriers to BCP implementation also has a significant effect on supermarket performance(β=0.555p<0.05). The study recommends that the supermarkets should have a continual focus on BCP awareness to improve on their performance. The study thus concludes that order structuring has an effect on the operational performance. Therefore, the study recommends that supermarkets should be advised to embrace the concept so that they can be able to reap the benefits of adopting these practices. It was expected that the study would be significant to the government, other organizations as well as other researchers. | en_US |
