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This study assesses the current landscape of business continuity management (BCM) research while exploring research trends, structures and delineating potential future directions.

A comprehensive bibliometric analysis was conducted on 360 articles from the Scopus and Web of Science databases using Biblioshiny software. A meta-synthesis was employed to aggregate and synthesize findings from the bibliometric results.

The results demonstrate a notable increase in publication numbers since the onset of the pandemic, reaching a peak in 2022 with a total of 342 articles. A collaborative bond among scholars transcends geographical boundaries and national affiliations. The analytical results propose avenues for future research, addressing crucial areas such as the integration of business continuity management systems (BCMS), the development of BCM frameworks and a comparative analysis of business impact analysis (BIA) frameworks through pertinent theories.

The study contributes theoretical and practical implications, serving as a valuable resource for academics and practitioners seeking to deepen their understanding of BCM’s role in business recovery and preserving organizational continuity in the face of disruptions.

This study pioneers a comprehensive approach by integrating bibliometric analysis and qualitative meta-synthesis, providing a consolidated overview of BCM research. Additionally, it presents future research proposals in this area.

Engineering knowledge continuity is crucial for the life cycle management of long-lived and complex assets, such as nuclear plants, locks and storm surge barriers. At the storm surge barriers in the Netherlands, engineering knowledge continuity is not yet fully assured, despite long-standing efforts. This study aims to explore the relationship between system characteristics, the organizational demarcation of maintenance and operation and the challenges in achieving engineering knowledge continuity and provides suggestions for improvement of theory and policy.

Ten semi-structured interviews were conducted with professionals from various backgrounds in construction, engineering and asset management of the Dutch storm surge barriers, augmented with visits to barriers and barrier teams. A thematic analysis was used to identify and describe the challenges to engineering continuity, their origins and potential solutions. We reviewed knowledge management policy documents and asset management consultancy reports to validate the findings. Additionally, we engaged in frequent interactions with professionals at the barriers. We achieved saturation and validation once no new issues were raised during these discussions.

The thematic analysis developed multiple themes describing the challenges to engineering continuity, their origins and potential solutions. The key findings are that expert engineers are critically important to deal with redesigns induced by obsolescence. Moreover, due to barrier uniqueness, long redesign cycles and reliability requirements, conventional knowledge continuity tools are insufficient to enable new engineers to reach expert level. Finally, the thematic analysis shows that, in some cases, outsourcing should be reduced to facilitate internal learning.

The study introduces the application of the knowledge-based view of the firm and the concept of requisite knowledge redundancy to the long-term management of complex assets. It calls for more attention to long gaps in the use of unique knowledge and the effect on knowledge continuity.

While the COVID-19 pandemic has given many firms the importance of business continuity, restaurants have yet to realize the essential enablers. In this regard, the study explored the potential enablers that can help firms attain business continuity in the post-COVID-19 era for casual dining restaurants.

This study used an extensive literature review and further supported 28 restaurant managers with an average experience of 8.5 years to identify the potential enablers for ensuring business continuity for casual dining restaurants. Subsequently, this study used the interpretive structural modelling coupled with Matrice d'Impacts Croisés Multiplication Appliquée à un Classement (MICMAC) analysis to understand the context-specific inter-relationships as a hierarchical structural model.

Findings suggest that financial capability forms the key driver for other enablers in the hierarchy of business continuity for casual dining restaurants. Furthermore, manpower (local and outstation) are the second-level drivers of restaurant process control, digital presence, online reviews and feedback management, scalability, food quality, food delivery management, employee safety and hygiene. The third-level factors further help restaurants to achieve the dynamic capability required to provide customer value and ensure business continuity.

The study is the foremost to explore a business continuity framework in the new normal for casual dining restaurants in the country. Furthermore, several contextual inter-relationships exhibiting the hierarchy are also established for the business continuity of restaurants in the new normal.

The adverse interactions between disruptions can increase the supply chain's vulnerability. Accordingly, establishing supply chain resilience to deal with disruptions and employing business continuity planning to preserve risk management achievements is of considerable importance. The aforementioned idea is discussed in this study.

This study proposes a multi-objective optimization model for employing business continuity management and organizational resilience in a supply chain for responding to multiple interrelated disruptions. The improved augmented e-constraint and the scenario-based robust optimization methods are adopted for multi-objective programming and dealing with uncertainty, respectively. A case study of the automotive battery manufacturing industry is also considered to ensure real-world conformity of the model.

The results indicate that interactions between disruptions remarkably increase the supply chain's vulnerability. Choosing a higher fortification level for the supply chain and foreign suppliers reduces disruption impacts on resources and improves the supply chain's resilience and business continuity. Facilities dispersion, fortification of facilities, lateral transshipment, order deferral policy, dynamic capacity planning and direct transportation of products to markets are the most efficient resilience strategies in the under-study industry.

Applying resource allocation planning and portfolio selection to adopt preventive and reactive resilience strategies simultaneously to manage multiple interrelated disruptions in a real-world automotive battery manufacturing industry, maintaining the long-term achievements of supply chain resilience using business continuity management and dynamic capacity planning are the main contributions of the presented paper.

Partners are responsible for allocating audit tasks and facilitating knowledge sharing among team members. This study considers changes in the composition of partners to proxy for the continuity of the audit team. This study examines the effect of audit team continuity on audit outcomes (audit quality and report lags), pricing and its determinant (lead partner experience), which have not been thoroughly examined in previous studies.

This study employs string similarity metrics to measure audit team continuity. The study employs multivariate panel data regression empirical models to estimate a sample of 26,007 firm-years of listed Japanese companies from 2008 to 2019.

The study reveals that audit team continuity is negatively associated with audit fees, regardless of the auditor’s size. This finding contributes to the existing literature by showing that audit team continuity represents one of the determinant factors of audit fee. For clients of large audit firms, companies with higher (lower) audit team continuity issue audit reports in less (more) time. The experience of lead partners is a strong predictor of audit team continuity, irrespective of audit firm size. Audit quality is not associated with audit team continuity for either large or small audit firms.

This study proposes and examines audit team continuity measures that employ string similarity metrics to quantify changes in the composition of partners in consecutive audit engagements. Audit team continuity expands upon the tenure of individual audit partners, which is commonly used in prior literature as a measure of client–partner relationships.

A recent article in Strategy + Business magazine set out that the three primary goals of the CEO for creating ‘business resilience’ include (1) securing the people of the enterprise; (2) securing the core business of the enterprise (systems, facilities, infrastructure and processes); and (3) securing the business networks (such as the supply chain). Given these three goals, who is better suited to take on a leadership role in coordinating business continuity than the senior managers of corporate real estate (CRE) and workplace resource (WR) organisations? For several years, as the concept of Corporate Infrastructure Resource Management (CIRM) has evolved, senior CRE managers have sought out ways to create additional value for the enterprise’s core businesses. The authors believe that CRE organisations possess many of the competencies required to play significant roles in their business continuity programmes, and seizing this opportunity to fill the gaps can elevate the profile of workplace to the executive level. This paper presents a simple framework, based on five leverage points, that will enable CRE to take a more active leadership role in managing business continuity and to move to a ‘strategy and continuity’ model for managing corporate real estate.

The purpose of this paper is to present a multi‐usable business continuity planning methodology. It comprises business continuity planning on the organizational and departmental levels.

The methodology has been developed, tested and confirmed in three comprehensive cases. Senior management, IT managers and employees in the three case organizations have participated in this action research effort during the development, implementation or training on business continuity plans and planning.

The methodology has been tested and confirmed, and is suitable for explaining business continuity planning to senior managements and employees in both public and private sector organizations.

The methodology description can be used for explaining the issues to senior managements and forms the foundation for a business continuity plan, which is part of an organization's IT‐ and information security program. It may also be used to explain business continuity planning to other staff in an organization. The methodology can also be used to model business continuity planning, as a basis for training planning, and as support in different training contexts to achieve individual and organizational learning on business continuity plans and activities.

The methodology of using a staircase or capability maturity model is a commonly used concept and can be adapted to any organization.

To focus on grid generation which is an essential part of any analytical tool for effective discretization.

This paper explores the application of the possibility of unstructured triangular grid generation that deals with derivationally continuous, smooth, and fair triangular elements using piecewise polynomial parametric surfaces which interpolate prescribed R³ scattered data using spaces of parametric splines defined on R² triangulations in the case of surfaces in engineering sciences. The method is based upon minimizing a physics‐based certain natural energy expression over the parametric surface. The geometry is defined as a set of stitched triangles prior to the grid generation. As for derivational continuities between the two triangular patches C⁰ and C¹ continuity or both, as per the requirements, has been imposed. With the addition of a penalty term, C² (approximate) continuity can also be achieved. Since, in this work physics‐based approach has been used, the grid is analyzed using intersection curves with three‐dimensional planes, and intrinsic geometric properties (i.e. directional derivatives), for derivational continuity and smoothness.

The triangular grid generation that deals with derivationally continuous, smooth, and fair triangular elements has been implemented in this paper for surfaces in engineering sciences.

This paper deals with the important problem of grid generation which is an essential part of any analytical tool for effective discretization. And, the examples to demonstrate the theoretical model of this paper have been chosen from different branches of engineering sciences. Hence, the results of this paper are of practical importance for grid generation in engineering sciences.

The paper is theoretical with worked examples chosen from engineering sciences.

Managing e‐government is invariably managing change. Despite plethora of literature on change management, the rate of success of e‐government projects is dismal, especially in developing countries. Deriving from strategy and change management literature, this paper seeks to present a new approach to strategize for better change outcomes in e‐government domain. A new construct of “continuity” is introduced and proposed to be managed concurrently with change forces to attain better delivery of strategic deliverables in e‐government projects.

Continuity and change forces affecting e‐government domain identified from the literature are statistically validated by conducting an “idea engineering” exercise. For this response from e‐government experts to a structured questionnaire is elicited to validate the forces, which are further modeled in the strategic framework proposed.

Drawing from strategy and change management literature, it is hypothesized that “managing change in e‐government can be better leveraged by consciously and concurrently managing continuity”. Based on expert survey, out of the initial six continuity and eight change forces proposed, only one continuity force has been dropped and the rest are further modeled in the framework. Propositions for future research and implications for policy makers and implementers are highlighted.

Given the low rate of success of e‐government initiatives, especially in developing countries, this framework may serve as an important approach to strategizing in e‐government domain and may be of value to not just the policy makers but also to other stakeholders like project planners, implementers and also the beneficiaries.

The value of this paper lies in the application of the concept of strategic management of continuity and change in e‐government domain; identification of continuity and change forces in e‐government; and proposing a model linking the “constructs of continuity and change” forces with strategic deliverables of e‐government.

Business continuity and disaster recovery are directly associated frameworks which guarantee the continued operations of organisations after a disaster has occurred. Thus, researchers have continued to investigate best practices in this area. It is in this vein that the authors of this study seek to draw attention to what pertains in Ghana and what role the government can play to improve the situation. The purpose of this study is to explore some of the disasters which have been suffered by businesses in Ghana as well as the causes, effects and lessons learnt. The study will also look at business continuity and disaster recovery measures that could have been implemented in the examples provided.

The study follows a literature review approach by reviewing secondary data on both man-made and natural disasters that have affected Ghana in the past decade through the review of literature.

The comprehensive study of the selected disasters indicated the presence of business continuity and disaster recovery measures in some formal institutions; however, the informal sector appeared to have minimal provision for handling disasters.

The authors were limited to the use of the account from the resources used since this study relied on secondary data.

The study indicates that businesses in Ghana must implement business continuity and disaster recovery plans to protect business operations in the event of a disaster.

The study has not been previously published in any other journal. Secondary data for carrying out the study were obtained from other publications including online media platforms in Ghana.