The Relationship between IT Director Values and Extent of IT Disaster Recovery Planning in the Banking Industry

Information technology plays a pivotal role in defining the success of organizations. Given its importance, one might assume that modern organizations take steps to ensure the recovery of IT services following disasters. Unfortunately, this is rarely the case. To understand the variation in degree of IT disaster recovery planning, this research focused on those responsible for managing IT resources and IT directors. For the study, a survey was mailed to 337 financial service institutions in the southeastern United States. Over 150 IT directors completed self-assessments for measuring the extent to which their organization engages in IT disaster recovery planning. In addition, they responded to a number of questions regarding their work-related values, and over 63% of the variance in degree of IT disaster recovery planning was explained by two predictors: uncertainty avoidance and long-term orientation. Results show that firms with IT professionals who prefer to avoid uncertainty and who have long-term outlooks have more developed IT disaster recovery plans.