Risk Management Using PESTLE: External Factors Trigger COVID-19 Transmission

Abstract

Risk management is significant in determining the resiliency of the action taken in any operations in organizations. Different tools can be used to measure risk management. Furthermore, it is essential to identify and evaluate external opportunities, risks, and threats related to daily operations, especially in the healthcare sector. Hence, this paper presents a case study on how political, economic, social, technological, legal, and environmental (especially weather) can affect the COVID-19 transmission by using a risk matrix based on PESTLE analysis and Spearman Rank Correlation Coefficient. The experiment was conducted by using the dataset from COVID-19 Malaysia GitHub and the Timeanddate website. The dataset was evaluated and analyzed using PESTLE and Spearman Rank Correlation, and the findings were kept in a central dashboard repository. Our results showed that weather, gloves, face mask, PPE, retrenchment, work from home, fake news, scamming, and malware are the external factors related to COVID-19. The details of the related issues, risks, and impacts of these external factors are presented in this paper. The weather negatively correlates to the COVID-19 transmission based on the weak positive correlation and a weak negative correlation for this case study. Different risk management techniques and risk assessment tools can be used for future reference in risk management analyses to ensure the organization's operation sustainability.