The Immune System and Corporate Vulnerability

In this chapter, we focus on the corporate immune system’s role in risk management policies and strategies, not by eliminating the probability that a hostile event may occur but by mitigating its effects to protect the principle of business continuity. The immune system is a tool to mitigate corporate crises and/or crises of entire production sectors. Hence, implementing tools within complex systems, namely business, and production, for continuous monitoring of the progress of the immune system to exercise a control function is especially important given the turbulence of current production systems. This chapter also highlights a case study that, over the years, has assumed importance in terms of corporate crises and how the tools identified to monitor the efficiency of the corporate immune system can also be used at a macro level to compare different production sectors to determine those most vulnerable and most exposed to risk. In this chapter, it is crucial to understand how strengthening the immune system is a necessary, albeit not sufficient, condition to mitigate the effects of adverse events on the individual company and entire production sectors.