Crisis management as a critical perspective

Purpose: This paper draws on the authors experience of teaching a crisis management module within a range of MBA programmes in the UK, EU and USA. A key characteristic of the module was its development as a means of critiquing conventional approaches to management education. The paper details that experience. Design/methodology/approach: It reviews the literature on management education that has been critical of prescriptive and ‘toolkit-based’ approaches to MBA education. Findings: An approach to a crisis management course is shown to provide a means of challenging dominant theoretical and practical approaches to management. Practical implications: The paper identifies challenges and personal and academic benefits for educators and students when engaging with critical perspectives and critical pedagogies. Originality/value: Through introducing the notion of crisis management, the paper discusses the importance of challenging theory and practice and creating within students, an appetite to challenge the dominant paradigms of conventional teaching and business practice

The enemy has passed through the gate: insider threats, the dark triad, and the challenges around security

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to highlight the potential role that the so-called “toxic triangle” (Padilla et al., 2007) can play in undermining the processes around effectiveness. It is the interaction between leaders, organisational members, and the environmental context in which those interactions occur that has the potential to generate dysfunctional behaviours and processes. The paper seeks to set out a set of issues that would seem to be worthy of further consideration within the Journal and which deal with the relationships between organisational effectiveness and the threats from insiders.<p></p> Design/methodology/approach – The paper adopts a systems approach to the threats from insiders and the manner in which it impacts on organisation effectiveness. The ultimate goal of the paper is to stimulate further debate and discussion around the issues.<p></p> Findings – The paper adds to the discussions around effectiveness by highlighting how senior managers can create the conditions in which failure can occur through the erosion of controls, poor decision making, and the creation of a culture that has the potential to generate failure. Within this setting, insiders can serve to trigger a series of failures by their actions and for which the controls in place are either ineffective or have been by-passed as a result of insider knowledge.<p></p> Research limitations/implications – The issues raised in this paper need to be tested empirically as a means of providing a clear evidence base in support of their relationships with the generation of organisational ineffectiveness.<p></p> Practical implications – The paper aims to raise awareness and stimulate thinking by practising managers around the role that the “toxic triangle” of issues can play in creating the conditions by which organisations can incubate the potential for crisis.<p></p> Originality/value – The paper seeks to bring together a disparate body of published work within the context of “organisational effectiveness” and sets out a series of dark characteristics that organisations need to consider if they are to avoid failure. The paper argues the case that effectiveness can be a fragile construct and that the mechanisms that generate failure also need to be actively considered when discussing what effectiveness means in practice.<p></p&gt

Organisational ineffectiveness: environmental shifts and the transition to crisis

Purpose: – The purpose of this paper is to explore the notion of effectiveness in the context of organisational crisis. It considers the “darker” side of organisational effectiveness by exploring the processes by which effectiveness can be eroded as an organisation moves from an ordered state, through a complex one, and into a state of chaos, or crisis. It brings together complementary literatures on risk, crisis management, and complexity, and uses those lenses to frame some of the key processes that allow organisations to transition to a state that shapes their inabilities to remain effective.<p></p> Design/methodology/approach: – The paper sets out a theoretical framework for the analysis of a crisis event and does so in a way that emphasises the role of the human element in the various stages of a crisis: the incubation phase, the operational crisis, and the post-event legitimation phase. The paper uses the emerging crisis around the disappearance of Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 to illustrate some of the task demands associated with a crisis and the manner in which crisis events challenge the efficiencies and capabilities of organisations to deal with complex, multi-layered issues in which uncertainty is high. Given the emergent nature of that particular crisis, the use of the case is purely illustrative rather than analytically grounded in a normal case study approach.<p></p> Findings: – The paper highlights a number of underlying elements that contribute to the generation of crises and offers recommendations for managers on how to deal with those demands. The paper shows how an organisation can move from an ordered state into a complex or chaotic one and highlights some of the problems that arise when an organisation does not have the capabilities to respond to the task demands generated by such a shift in the environment.<p></p> Practical implications: – The paper challenges some of the normal practices of management in a “steady state” environment and highlights the need to consider the organisational capabilities that are necessary to deal with the transition from a stable to an unstable system state and ensure organisational effectiveness in the process. A core message within the paper is that the “normal” processes of management can contribute to the generation of crises as organisations prioritise short-term efficiencies over the strategies for longer-term effectiveness. The implications for crisis management practices are discussed. Social implications – The paper considers an issue that has wider applicability within society namely the relationships between organisational effectiveness and risk. The issues raised in the paper have applicability in a range of other societal settings.<p></p> Originality/value: – The key output from the paper is the development of a theoretical framework that allows for an analysis of the relationships between crises and organisational effectiveness. The paper argues that effectiveness and crisis management are intrinsically linked and that crises occur when organisational effectiveness is impaired. The paper highlights the role that template-based approaches to dealing with complex problems can have in terms of the generation of crisis events

When organisational effectiveness fails: business continuity management and the paradox of performance

Purpose: The aim of the paper is to consider the nature of the business continuity management (BCM) process and to frame it within wider literature on the performance of socio-technical systems. Despite the growth in BCM activities in organisations, some questions remain as to whether academic research has helped to drive this process. The paper seeks to stimulate discussion within this journal of the interplay between organisational performance and BCM and to frame it within the context of the potential tensions between effectiveness and efficiency. Design/methodology/approach: The paper considers how BCM is defined within the professional and academic communities that work in the area. It deconstructs these definitions in order to and set out the key elements of BCM that emerge from the definitions and considers how the various elements of BCM can interact with each other in the context of organisational performance. Findings: The relationships between academic research in the area of crisis management and the practice-based approaches to business continuity remain somewhat disjointed. In addition, recent work in the safety management literature on the relationships between success and failure can be seen to offer some interesting challenges for the practice of business continuity. Practical implications: The paper draws on some of the practice-based definitions of BCM and highlights the limitations and challenges associated with the construct. The paper sets out challenges for BCM based upon theoretical challenges arising in cognate areas of research. The aim is to ensure that BCM is integrated with emerging concepts in other aspects of the management of uncertainty and to do so in a strategic context. Originality/value: Academic research on performance reflects both the variety and the multi-disciplinary nature of the issues around measuring and managing performance. Failures in organisational performance have also invariably attracted considerable attention due to the nature of a range of disruptive events. The paper reveals some of the inherent paradoxes that sit at the core of the BCM process and its relationships with organisational performance

Framing the UK’s counter-terrorism policy within the context of a wicked problem

Terrorist attacks can be seen as the ultimate wicked problem. After 9/11, terrorists moved from so-called ‘spectacular’ events to relatively low-intensity attacks against individuals and groups. The emergence of what has become known as the ‘home-grown’ terrorist has added a further dimension to the ‘wicked’ nature of the problem. This paper considers the UK’s CONTEST and PREVENT strategies as a policy response to the threats from terrorism and the impact that the policies themselves can have on the radicalization of individuals. The author highlights some of the limitations of the PREVENT strand of the overall strategy and the constraints that are imposed on government policies by failing to take a holistic perspective on the nature of the problem

Light me up: power and expertise in risk communication and policy-making in the e-cigarette health debates

This paper presents a detailed account of policy-making in a contemporary risk communication arena, where strong power dynamics are at play that have hitherto lacked theoretical analysis and empirical validation. Specifically, it expands on the understanding of how public health policy decisions are made when there is a weak evidential base and where multiple interpretations, power dynamics and values are brought to bear on issues of risk and uncertainty. The aim of the paper is to understand the role that power and expertise play in shaping public health risk communication within policy-related debates. By drawing on insight from a range of literatures, the paper argues that there several interacting factors that shape how a particular narrative gains prominence within a wider set of perspectives and how the arguments and findings associated with that perspective become amplified within the context of policy choices. These findings are conceptualised into a new model – a policy evaluation risk communication (PERC) framework – and are then tested using the Electronic cigarette debate as a case study

Inherent complexities of a multi-stakeholder approach to building community resilience

Enhancing community resilience has increasingly involved national and regional governments adopting a multi-stakeholder approach because of the potential interagency benefits. This has led to questions about how best to involve stakeholder groups in translating community resilience policies into practice. This exploratory study contributes to this discussion by addressing two key areas that are fundamental in the concerted effort to build community resilience to natural hazards: (1) stakeholder understanding of community resilience as a concept; and (2) the difficulties associated with the processes of risk assessment and preparedness that stakeholders face locally in building community resilience. Data were collected through semistructured interviews with 25 practitioners and experts within Scotland’s resilience community, and were analyzed through an inductive approach to thematic analysis. These data show how the interpretation of community resilience differs across stakeholder groups. Analysis of the data reveals challenges around the nature of the risk assessment and its role in shaping risk perception and communication. Significant complications occur in communicating about low probability-high consequence events, perceived territoriality, competing risk prioritizations, and the challenges of managing hazards within a context of limited resources. The implications of these issues for policy and practice are also discussed

Building community resilience to natural hazards: Lessons from Katrina

No abstract available

Leadership and crisis: incubation, emergence, and transitions

No abstract available

Breaking bad? In search of a (softer) systems view of security ergonomics

A series of terrorist attacks in late 2014 and early 2015 prompted the head of the UK’s Security Service to comment on the need to improve the information flows available to the service in order to deal with the emerging task demands that it faces. The comments highlighted the tensions that have been created in the post-Snowden revelations around domestic surveillance and intelligence gathering and these concerns span both public and private sector organisations. The intervention by the head of MI5 raises a series of questions about the design of security organisations and their function, and does so within a wider systems context, where changes in the environment require corresponding changes in the core processes and functions of the organisation. This is a central domain of security ergonomics and the manner in which an organisation can frame its response to an ever more complex threat matrix is the main purpose of this article. The question becomes one of how one might ‘design’ such a high performing organisation and especially one that can satisfy the zero-failure mandate that is often required of the security function. The argument presented here is that those organisations that see security as a ‘bolt-on’ function to existing organisational activities will invariably fail to capture the wider strategic dynamics of threat-response interactions and, more significantly, the role that other organisational activities can play in shaping that process. This article approaches the question from the perspective of two related bodies of research – Soft Systems Methodology and Ergonomics/Human Factors