Dr Brahim Herbane

Job: Deputy Head of School and Associate Professor

Faculty: Business and Law

School/department: School of Leadership, Management and Marketing

Address: De Montfort University, Leicester, UK, LE1 9BH

T: +44 (0)116 2551551

E: bhcor@dmu.ac.uk

W: https://www.dmu.ac.uk/bal

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Personal profile

Dr Brahim Herbane is Deputy Head of School and Associate Professor (Research) in Strategic Management and Business Continuity Management in the School of Leadership, Management and Marketing. He has over 29 years of experience teaching in higher education. A graduate of the University of Leeds, Dr Herbane’s subsequent doctoral research focused upon strategic management in the UK automotive components industry. He has written a number of books, monographs and peer reviewed articles included the second edition of the best-selling Business Continuity Management – A Crisis Management Approach (Routledge New York) and has worked with a variety of British and international organisations in areas such as business continuity management, supply chain management, and information technology adoption. Dr Herbane has been an external examiner for the Universities of Bradford, Liverpool and Sheffield. Prior to joining De Montfort University, Brahim worked at the Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (Spanish National Research Council) in Madrid, Bradford and Bingley Society’s Corporate Planning Department, and has taught at the Universities of Birmingham and Sheffield.

Publications and outputs

Locational Contiguity and Business Continuity: Perceived Organizational Resilience of Small- and Medium-Sized Enterprises in U.K. Business Parks
dc.title: Locational Contiguity and Business Continuity: Perceived Organizational Resilience of Small- and Medium-Sized Enterprises in U.K. Business Parks dc.contributor.author: Herbane, B. dc.description.abstract: As the ability to respond and adapt to crises, we conceptualize and examine organizational resilience through four components (active, temporal, posture, and performance). This multidimensional view of resilience combines the perceptions of senior managers and other indicators including the presence and nature of formal business continuity management. This study examines whether relationships with neighboring firms in a business park substitute wider network relationships. Relationships between locational attributes (locational contiguity within a business park), entrepreneurs’ social networks, and the perceived resilience of small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in the United Kingdom are examined using data collected from 268 SMEs. Locational attributes are positively associated with organizational resilience (in both aggregated and constituent forms) while revealing an inverse relationship between social networks and perceived resilience. Importantly, the study contributes to a place-based view of resilience to explain why the impact of social networks differs from the positive associations that are found in prior theoretical and empirical work. dc.description: open access article
Rethinking Organizational Resilience and Strategic Renewal in SMEs
dc.title: Rethinking Organizational Resilience and Strategic Renewal in SMEs dc.contributor.author: Herbane, B. dc.description.abstract: Building on work that associates organizational resilience with crisis recovery and strategic renewal, I examine how small and medium- sized enterprises (SMEs) vary in the formalisation of activities intended to achieve strategic growth and activities to enhance resilience against acute operational interruptions. Drawing on data from 265 SMEs in the United Kingdom, the main argument of this paper is that variations in formalisation activities reflect differences in firm location, personal networks, the influence of external crisis events, and entrepreneurs’ attitudes towards the prevention of crises. The resulting typology identifies four clusters: Attentive Interventionists, Light Planners, Rooted Strategists and Reliant Neighbours. These findings contrast with prior theorizations of firms as either resilient or vulnerable and further illuminate our understanding of SME resilience and how this is shaped by historical, developmental and strategic factors. The study further develops associations between resilience and social capital, examines how locational choices generate a proximity premium, and develops a growth-survival-maturity perspective on SME resilience. Data reveals an interplay between an ensemble of entrepreneurial activities and decisions about planning, networks, learning, and location. Thus, the study offers a rethinking of prior theorizations about organizational resilience and strategic renewal dc.description: The file attached to this record is the author's final peer reviewed version.
The Structuring Activities of Boundary Objects
dc.title: The Structuring Activities of Boundary Objects dc.contributor.author: Thompson, Ed; Herbane, B.; Macpherson, Allan dc.description.abstract: Boundary objects (Star and Griesemer, 1989) are non-human actors or artefacts that can coordinate collaborative activity across social worlds. Unlike human actors, who have intentionality, this coordinating role occurs as the object is embedded in the network of actors and they influence or shape interactions and meanings between human actors. While existing research has investigated, and demonstrated, the success of objects facilitating collaboration within (epistemic objects, Knorr Cetina, 1999) and across (boundary objects, Star and Griesemer, 1989) groups, it has hitherto been unable to explain how such objects come into being (Nicolini et al, 2012); the focus has been on the role of objects in assembling networks of actors, rather than the roles of networks of actors in assembling specific objects (Knights and McCabe, 2016). Moreover, primarily research on such boundary objects has been in stable environments, where day-today activity is predictable and ordered. This article makes use of Actor-Network Theory (ANT) as a means of understanding boundary object formation, ontology and transience. Specifically, this paper addresses how boundary objects come into being, how they hold together the actor network, and how they are affected by changes in context.
Resources, autonomy and strategy : perceptions of competitive advantage in the UK automotive components industry.
dc.title: Resources, autonomy and strategy : perceptions of competitive advantage in the UK automotive components industry. dc.contributor.author: Herbane, B. dc.description.abstract: Theory building in strategic management has traditionally suffered from strong demarcation lines. The case of the resource-based view of firm (RBV) which has emerged as an alternative approach to industry-based explanations of how organisations develop and sustain competitive advantage, particularly demonstrates this divide. Since then, these alternative views of competitive advantage have often been portrayed as mutually exclusive antagonists. This study sets out to examine the perceptions of strategic managers in the UK automotive components industry in relation to these two competing schools of thought which advocate advantage through resources (RBV) or advantage through residence (industry approaches). This industry has been chosen due to the clear potential for industry structure and internal competencies to influence competitive advantage. Using quantitative techniques, data from senior managers is analysed in order to establish the extent to which the views of industry practitioners converge or diverge with the theoretical or anecdotal offerings of the strategy literature. The findings of this thesis suggest that a complex hybrid of perceptions tends to prevail among respondents from the industry. This can be attributed to historical, operational and supply chain factors. Furthermore, the study finds that the lexicon of competitive advantage and the priorities of resources advocated in the literature are not shared by strategists in the industry. Accordingly, the study finds, strategic management theory in relation to the resource-based view requires further research using the methodology developed in this thesis as a foundation.
Developing dynamic capabilities through resource accretion: expanding the entrepreneurial solution space
dc.title: Developing dynamic capabilities through resource accretion: expanding the entrepreneurial solution space dc.contributor.author: Herbane, B.; Jones, Oswald; Macpherson, Allan
Threat orientation in small and medium-sized enterprises: Understanding differences toward acute interruptions
dc.title: Threat orientation in small and medium-sized enterprises: Understanding differences toward acute interruptions dc.contributor.author: Herbane, B. dc.description.abstract: Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine whether the experience, impact and likelihood of an acute business interruption, along with the perceived ability to intervene, influences the “threat orientation” of owner-managers in small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in the UK. The concept of “threat orientation” is introduced in this study as a way to eschew the binary view of whether an organisation does or does not have processes and capabilities to respond to acute interruptions. Design/methodology/approach – “Threat orientation” is operationalised and survey data are collected from 215 SMEs in the UK. Data from owner-managers are analysed using multiple regression techniques. Findings – The results of this study provide empirical evidence to highlight the importance of firm age rather than size as a determinant of the propensity to formalise activities to deal with acute interruptions. Recent experience and the ability to intervene were statistically significant predictors of threat orientation but the likelihood and concern about specific types of threat was not found to positively influence threat orientation. Research limitations/implications – Although the data are self-report in nature, the respondents in the study are the chief decision and policy makers in their organisations and thus it is essential to understand the influences on their threat orientation. Results are generalisable only to UK SMEs. Originality/value – The findings of the paper contribute to a nascent understanding of planning for acute interruptions in SMEs and (despite the cross-sectional nature of the study), the findings clearly reinforce the need for continuing longitudinal research into how resilience develops in smaller organisations.
Information value distance and crisis management planning
dc.title: Information value distance and crisis management planning dc.contributor.author: Herbane, B.
Exploring Crisis Management in UK Small and Medium-sized Enterprises
dc.title: Exploring Crisis Management in UK Small and Medium-sized Enterprises dc.contributor.author: Herbane, B. dc.description.abstract: Despite a long-established crisis management literature that focuses on large enterprises, crisis management planning in the context of small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) is less extensively researched. Using data collected from 215 SMEs in the United Kingdom, this paper explores the perceptions and experiences of SMEs' managing directors in relation to crisis management planning. Furthermore, the paper examines differences in perceptions between planning and non-planning SMEs. Analysis reveals six factors that correspond to resilience through planning, financial impact, operational crisis management, the perfect storm, the aftermath of survival and atrophy. Results indicate how the experience of crisis and the type of crisis of type encountered affect managers' assessment of whether planning can be used to address crisis prevention and lower impact.
Learning to cope with resource constraints and uncertainty: entrepreneurs practising purposefully.
dc.title: Learning to cope with resource constraints and uncertainty: entrepreneurs practising purposefully. dc.contributor.author: Herbane, B.; Macpherson, Allan; Jones, Oswald dc.description.abstract: In this paper, we argue that by dealing with resource constraints when facing situations of uncertainty, entrepreneurs engage in a number of activities to manage the ambiguity they face. In other words, we explore how entrepreneurs respond when learning in crisis mode and how they manage to recover or deal with constrained contexts they face. We report our findings from the analysis of significant learning episodes in 23 SMEs. Our contribution is to identify purposeful practices through which the entrepreneurs enlarge their potential solution space. They do this by gradual accretion of capability, thereby expanding the repertoire of potential action. By accretion in this context, we refer to the grafting and borrowing of capabilities into the firm’s action frame dependent on proximities, salience and relationships.
Communications about resilience enhancing activities by English local authorities.
dc.title: Communications about resilience enhancing activities by English local authorities. dc.contributor.author: Herbane, B.

View a full listing of Dr Brahim Herbane's publications and outputs.

Research interests/expertise

Crisis Management
Business Continuity Management
Organisational Learning from Crisis
Strategic Management

The capabilities and responses of organizations to deal with acute disruptions that could threaten their survival is the central theme that runs through the body of Dr Herbane’s research and scholarship. The development of his work can be characterised in three phases – establishing the field of study, developing the field of study, and extending the field of study. The first phase established and fulfilled the need for scholars to study Business Continuity Management (BCM) processes is a rigorous manner (1995 to 2000). In the second, attention turned to develop our understanding of BCM across sectors and firm-level practices (2000 to 2010). In the third phase (2010 to 2020), his work has extended the field of study to explore how the capabilities and responses of organizations vary by size and type, resulting in a focus on small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), local authorities and charities. At present, his work focusses on wider systems resilience such as healthcare systems. These three phases demonstrate his contribution to research and scholarship of international calibre and an established and growing national and international reputation as a business continuity and organizational resilience scholar. Evidence that his work shapes the field includes papers regarded as seminal in their field (Business History and International Small Business Journal), and journal special issues that cite his work as central to the special issues theme (‘Small Business and Entrepreneurship in Times of Crisis: Latest Developments and Trends’ in ISBJ and ‘Entrepreneurship and Crises: Business as Usual?’ in Entrepreneurship & Regional Development).

Areas of teaching

Strategic Management
Crisis Management
Business Continuity Management
PhD supervision

Qualifications

BA (First Class Honours)
PhD

Courses taught

CORP5058 Business Continuity and Crisis Management (Module Leader 2011 - 2022)

CORP 3364 Crisis and Business Continuity Management (Module Leader 2005 -2020)

CORP 5055 Strategic Management (Module Leader 2010 - 2016)

Membership of professional associations and societies

The Institute of Risk Management – Technical Specialist Member awarded 10/7/2014 (Business Continuity Specialist - SIRM Designation)

Higher Education Academy 26/4/2017

Chartered Association of Business Schools - Certified Management & Business Educator (CMBE)

British Academy of Management

Projects

National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) Improving business continuity for health services following extreme weather events. Grant number: NIHR204820