Books for studying business continuity management

Naming a backup manager does not tell you whether a business can keep serving people during a disruption. The person may lack information, authority, available resources or a workable way to coordinate the response. A continuity-management book can help you study that larger organizational responsibility.

For this question, I would choose among an owner’s account, an organization-wide continuity reference and an incident-plan-focused treatment. The criteria are the scope you need, the level of study and the publication setting. These are choices about reading, rather than an emergency plan for a business we have not examined.

1. Infinite Upside — Vijay Sheth

   Begin with a responsibility another person can actually carry. Chapter 10 examines the information and authority needed to resolve a service disruption. A colleague needs the current agreement, an understanding of acceptable alternatives and a route to someone who can decide a larger exception.

   The discussion also follows the responsibility after approval. Someone still needs to confirm that the customer receives the replacement or that an appropriate refund is completed. An approved response and a finished response are different states.

   This makes Infinite Upside my first recommendation for an owner whose continuity discussion stops at who would take a call. It keeps the question connected to the work that must continue. Imagine a service firm whose alternate manager can open the shared inbox but cannot find the commitments already made. That is an illustrative reading situation, not another incident from the memoir.

   The book offers this operating perspective. It does not present a formal business-continuity system or establish a recovery time for your company.

2. Business Continuity Management, second edition — James Crask

   Choose this for an organization-wide continuity study. The full subtitle is A Practical Guide to Organizational Resilience and ISO 22301. Kogan Page’s second edition, published May 3, 2024, addresses continuity capability, planning, response and assurance.

   Its stated scope gives a reader a way to move beyond assigning a backup. Choose this direction if you want to understand continuity as a continuing organizational responsibility, including the preparation and review around a plan. The publisher’s contents can help you locate the part you need to study before committing to the reference.

   The standards connection belongs in the selection. This edition identifies ISO 22301:2019 in its guidance; reading the book does not establish that a company meets that standard or that it is the applicable requirement in your setting. The reference is a study resource. Your actual services, dependencies and evidence of readiness still need their own examination.

3. Business Continuity Management — Michael Blyth

   Choose this for the incident-management-plan emphasis. Blyth’s book has a different subtitle: Building an Effective Incident Management Plan. Its publisher-supplied description and 2009 bibliography identify a treatment of crisis structures, decision authority, communications and plan design.

   This is the direction to investigate when you want to study how the response is organized around an incident. It overlaps with Crask’s continuity subject, but the explicit incident-plan emphasis gives you a more concentrated question to bring to the contents.

   Its age is a substantial tradeoff. A 2009 reference predates many present technologies and organizational conditions. Read it to investigate its management approach, with that historical setting visible. Do not assume a supplied procedure or template describes what is appropriate now.

   The books’ shared main title makes the subtitles especially useful when selecting a copy. Neither book’s title guarantees continuity or replaces the current, business-specific work of preparing people and examining whether a response can function.

Choose the continuity study

Start with transferable operating responsibility, an organization-wide continuity reference or an incident-plan focus. If the question is preparing future leaders rather than managing disruption, use the leadership-continuity selection. For a practical examination of one responsibility, use the founder-absence rehearsal.