I was talking from the perspective of making dba day-to-day life easier considering mean time to recover with minimal available resources. If corporate mgmt do not understand and don't give a damn, obviously dba will not give a damn for how long it take to bring database back online.

I don't think effort of recovery from exp/imp is equivalent to the effort from hot backup. Corporate Mgmt doesn't know how to use resources effectively or they will stick to what they beleive and never explore options for better infrastructure. Nobody help 'em anyway.