The Routledge Companion to Risk, Crisis and Security in Business

15SMEs defending their businesses from flood risk

Contributing to the theoretical discourse on resilience

Bingunath Ingirige and Gayan Wedawatta

Introduction

Evidence suggest that flooding has become a significant threat affecting small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in the UK. Previous research has identified vulnerability of SMEs to various disruptions and challenges. Their vulnerability to disruptions arises virtually by definition because of the small scale of their human and financial resources (Bannock, 2005). For instance, research has found that SMEs suffer the most in times of crisis and are the least prepared of all organisations (Ingirige et al., 2008) hence an important proponent in crisis and security of business. Flooding in ...