Incident Management versus Crisis Response

While a subjective definition, it is useful for companies to develop a concept of what they consider incident management versus crisis management. Typically, the crisis management teams have primary responsibility for strategic and complex risk issues, such as political, business, and wide ranging security risks, which can include actual or threats of kidnapping, extortion, bombing or other sabotage, illegal detention, and any conflict with the host government or authorities. The corporate team will also be primarily responsible for implementing complex or significant crisis response plans, such as major evacuations, disaster response measures, or repatriations of fatalities. Corporate management will be focused on considering events, risk levels, and operating constraints that might affect the overall company's ability to engage in or continue with operations in a country, or impact the company's reputation and brand image. Crisis management is therefore more strategic, holistic, and far‐reaching, supporting the response to the actual event, but also dealing with resulting and peripheral risks and requirements outside of the crisis event.

Incident management teams generally have primary responsibility for responding to security risks involving normal operational activities dealing with industrial accidents, organized and opportunistic crime, insurgency and terrorism, as well as natural disasters and other hazards. Incident management teams may take primacy of control for immediate crisis response (typically directed through such tools as the IMP) or urgent crisis response requirements, such as short‐notice evacuations. Incident management is therefore more tactical and granular, dealing with the immediate crisis event in order to bring about control and resolution—as well as supporting the broader crisis response requirements.

Often aspects of the two areas overlap or converge, and components of different incident and crisis teams may find themselves duplicating functions or transitioning responsibilities between the two levels as the event matures. It is useful for companies to organize their crisis response measures so that one group is focused on dealing with the actual event, and a second group is focused on supporting the first while also dealing with issues that would otherwise distract, or occupy the time of, those dealing with the actual emergency situation.