Crisis Management and Business Continuity Management: Why Is It Often Confused?

The Crisis management (CM) plan is often embedded into the business continuity management (BCM) plan or vice versa.

This is not a problem unless the execution and responsibilities are delineated in both plans.

Business Continuity Management (BCM)

Business Continuity (BC) Management, or BCM, is a holistic management process for identifying potential impacts from threats and developing response plans.

The objective is to increase an organisation’s resilience to business disruptions and minimise the impact of such disruptions.

Consider BCM as the strategic process (Refer to the detailed explanation of the BCM "Umbrella") and BC as the execution when a disaster occurs.

A disaster is the consequence of activating a business continuity plan. In its simplest form, it occurs when your organisation is denied access to its people, processes, or infrastructure.

Crisis Management (CM)

Crisis Management, or CM, is the overall coordination of an organisation's response to a crisis in a practical, timely manner.

It aims to avoid or minimise damage to the organisation's profitability, reputation, or ability to operate.

The key is to protect your reputation. In most crises (except for disasters, which are a sub-category of crises), ensure that the primary location is not denied access.

If your crisis management plan is not directed and executed by senior management, there is a concern that the CM and BC plans and responsibilities will overlap heavily.

What is Crisis Management vs Business Continuity Management?

Your organisation is expected to execute crisis management and business continuity plans during a crisis. The senior management team handles the decision-making process for handling crises or disasters.

Execution of the necessary crisis response and, should access to the "people, process and infrastructure " be denied, the recovery activities following recovery strategies and business continuity plans will be executed.

What is confusing is the overlapping of activities for crisis response and continuity of operations. It is beneficial to begin any discussion by defining the terms 'crisis' and 'disaster'. When an incident occurs, the question is, "Is this a crisis or a disaster?" Here are some explanatory notes to help clarify the confusion.

Definitions and Purpose

Discipline	Definition (from BCMpedia)	Purpose at Organisation
Crisis Management (CM)	The overall coordination of an organisation's response to a crisis, in an effective, timely manner, to avoid or minimise damage to the organisation's profitability, reputation, or ability to operate.	To manage high-impact events that threaten strategic objectives, leadership stability, brand reputation, or regulatory standing.
Business Continuity Management (BCM)	A holistic management process that identifies potential threats to an organisation and the impacts to business operations that those threats, if realised, might cause. It provides a framework for building resilience and the capability for an effective response.	To ensure the continued delivery of key products and services in the face of operational disruptions, particularly at the process and system level.

Crisis Scenario vs. Disaster

Term	Definition (from BCMpedia)	Handled by	Context for Organisation
Crisis Scenario	An event or situation that poses a critical threat to an organisation's operations, reputation, stakeholders, or viability, and which requires immediate, strategic-level attention.	Crisis Management	Examples Include Regulatory breaches, erosion of public trust, cyberattacks on core banking systems, social media backlash, or executive misconduct.
Disaster	A sudden, unplanned catastrophic event that causes significant damage or loss to an organisation's operations or physical infrastructure.	Business Continuity Management	Examples: Data centre fire, flood affecting the physical office, or widespread system outage due to hardware failure.

Comparison: CM vs BCM

Aspect	Crisis Management (CM)	Business Continuity Management (BCM)
Focus	Strategic, organisational-level response to crises	Operational-level response to disruptions
Activation Criteria	Unpredictable, complex, and ambiguous situations with reputational, legal, or strategic implications	Planned response to known disruptions and process failures
Leadership	Led by the Crisis Management Team (CMT) under the Board’s direction	Led by the Business Continuity Management Team (BCMT), coordinated by functional heads
Typical Outputs	Crisis communications, stakeholder engagement, and strategic decisions	BCM plans, recovery procedures, and alternate site activation
Examples at the Organisation	Sudden regulatory enforcement action; CEO resignation due to scandal; systemic fraud exposure	Core IT platform failure, network connectivity loss, and temporary unavailability of customer service

Integration and Collaboration

While CM and BCM differ in scope and function, integration is essential. The organisation ensures:

BCM provides operational resilience, forming the foundation for service continuity.
CM manages uncertainty by dealing with situations that have no predefined playbook.
Both systems intersect during high-impact events, such as a cybersecurity breach, where BCM activates the incident response for containment, and CM handles public communication and regulatory engagement.

This marks the beginning of a more extensive discussion for the readers, as the entire concept of the differences cannot be fully explored here.

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