Preparing for a Pandemic

This month, all of Harvard Business Review's Forethought contributions address avian influenza, its potential to become a pandemic, and the red flags this possibility raises for businesses. Jeffrey Staples warns that the H5N1 strain of the avian flu represents a new class of global threat and urges companies to plan accordingly. Scott F. Dowell and Joseph S. Bresee show how mutations of the virus could boost its ability to spread from person to person. If a human pandemic does strike, Nitin Nohria explains, the most adaptive organizations have the best chance of surviving. Warren G. Bennis says that such times call for a leader who can articulate the common threat and inspire people to overcome it together. Baruch Fischhoff, too, emphasizes the importance of risk communication, warning that managers who dismiss it may endanger the people they're responsible for and force stakeholders to look elsewhere for information. Fischhoff also demonstrates, in another article, how managers can map out their companies' vulnerabilities. Larry Brilliant tells us what people worldwide can expect from their governments. Peter Susser views the threat of a pandemic from a legal perspective, examining several HR-related issues businesses could face. Sherry Cooper points out the social and economic lessons we should have learned from Toronto's 2003 outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome. William MacGowan explains how Sun Microsystems is building a continuity plan to keep its global workforce healthy in the event of a pandemic. Wendy Dobson and Brian R. Golden caution that if a pandemic begins in China, as many scientists expect, the global impact will be immediate because China is so integral to the world economy. HBR also provides pandemic planning guidelines adapted from a checklist compiled by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention as well as a list of recommended avian flu resources.

• Strategy
• International business
• Decision making
• Contingency planning
• Strategy formulation
• Economics
• Corporate communications
• Personal accountability
• Teams
• Disaster response and recovery
• Hiring and recruitment
• Health and behavioral science
• Organizational culture
• Business and government relations
• Suppliers
• Power and influence
• Privacy and confidentiality
• Managing uncertainty
• Change management
• Manufacturing processes