Civil–Military Crisis Management: Enablers and Barriers to Modularized Scaling of Domestic Crisis Response Capacity

ABSTRACT Prolonged crises strain conventional crisis management approaches, as pre‐prepared plans often lose relevance when conditions evolve unexpectedly. This study explores how collaboration between civilian and military organizations enables modularized scaling —the process of adapting crisis responses by combining, recombining, or shedding response modules, thereby scaling their scope to respond to unpredictable dynamics. Using Denmark's COVID‐19 pandemic response as an illustrative case, the analysis examines how civil–military processes of improvisation, sensemaking, and learning facilitated or constrained modularized scaling. It finds that improvisation supported rapid upscaling but lacked strategic foresight, complicating later adjustments. Sensemaking promoted ongoing adaptation through resource reallocation, yet downscaling was often slowed by organizational hesitancy. Learning fostered more durable changes and new module designs, although limited structural support and weak cross‐sectoral lesson transfer curtailed its impact. Together, these findings demonstrate how adaptive processes unfold across different temporal horizons of crisis management and underscore the importance of collaborative capacity for scaling responses in turbulent contexts. By elucidating the mechanisms driving or hindering modularized scaling, the study advances our understanding of adaptive crisis governance and contributes to research on civil–military collaboration in domestic crises.