Business continuity planning and management: A lifejacket in the COVID-19 storm?

Tail events, due to their nature, occur very rarely and are therefore often regarded as an element of surprise. However, business continuity management (BCM) as a part of enterprise risk management (ERM) should protect businesses from disruption in case of such events. In this chapter, we investigate whether businesses of different sizes were ready to withstand the consequences of the outbreak of the global SARS-CoV-2 pandemic in 2020. To this aim, we analyse the results of a global survey conducted during a major lockdown period (April-May 2020) by applying multiple correspondence analysis (MCA) and clustering. Our findings indicate that the financial sector was the best prepared for tail events, which may be attributed to regulations enforced for most financial institutions. Although around a half of businesses did not have a business continuity plan (BCP), having one helped adjust to the new conditions efficiently.