Development and validation of a crisis self‐efficacy index

This study develops a crisis self‐efficacy index to provide a tool for crisis communication researchers and practitioners to understand behavioural aspects of crisis response better. Evaluations of public's crisis self‐efficacy using this index inform strategic message development to protect the public and minimize crisis damages by identifying the public/s most in need of self‐efficacy enhancing interventions. The index also provides practitioners a useful longitudinal index to evaluate progress in crisis preparedness programs and track changes in efficacy. A four‐stage survey index development process using structural equation modelling identifies four underlying constructs of crisis self‐efficacy: action, preventive, achievement and uncertainty management.     

An Exploratory Model for Evaluating Crisis Events and Managers' Concerns in Non‐Profit Organisations

Few organisations avoid the experience of crisis management. Some time during their life they are confronted with some type of crisis that may strain their resources and distract them from their central mission of serving its clients. Crisis management seeks to minimise the impact of these events. Although the crisis management literature is plentiful regarding larger organisations, little has been written on this subject as it relates to non‐profit organisations. This study examines the perceptions and experiences of crisis events among non‐profit organisation managers located in the north‐eastern part of the U.S. The results reveal that only a little more than a quarter of the respondents indicated that a formal crisis management team or any plans to implement it were operating in their non‐profit organisation.     

A proposed testing and analysis research initiative

The steps being taken to develop a US software research agenda and to bridge the gap between testing and analysis researchers and practitioners are discussed. The current software reliability crisis and the obstacles to developing more effective testing and analysis technology and transferring it to industry are reviewed. Nine research areas most likely to yield important results are outlined. A major initiative in testing and analysis to provide the needed resources, an organizing framework, and an impetus to broaden and intensify critical testing and analysis research is discussed     

Transboundary crisis management under the volcano: The case of the Icelandic ash cloud

This paper discusses the intricacies of external transboundary crises, namely those cross‐border threats whose management requires coordination among EU and non‐EU countries. Specifically, it explores the extent to which European integration theories shed light on the coordination of external transboundary crisis responses by assessing the weight and role of the actor constellations involved in the civil aviation response to the 2010 Icelandic ash cloud crisis. The use of social network analysis as a methodological tool generates novel empirical evidence on the configuration of crisis management structures. The analysis shows that many EU Member States led decision‐making, whereas supranational organizations were instrumental in the coordination of the ash cloud crisis response. The centrality of these bodies contrasts with the peripheral position of most interest groups. This paper also suggests that external transboundary crises present complex management dynamics that distinguish them from generic transboundary threats. For example, the response to the ash cloud crisis was not commanded by the European Economic Area/European Free Trade Association countries where its epicentre was located. The empirical analysis was based on information extracted from a survey to experts involved in the management of this episode, as well as from ten semi‐structured elite interviews.     

Crisis Awareness and Organizational Response Capabilities in Present Japanese Local Governments: Crisis Awareness Survey Findings

The crises facing today’s public administration are numerous and varied. It is now, more than ever, a necessity that municipal, prefectural and national governments deal with those crisis management issues. The major premise in being able to advance crisis management is the awareness of potential crises. If a certain situation is not considered or realized to be a potential hazard, no specific crisis management countermeasures will have been prepared, nor will any administrative measures have been taken. With that in mind, the author, created a survey focused on the ‘risk awareness framework’ for prefectures and cabinet ordinance‐designated cities in Japan. The researchers attempted to examine the characteristics of, and problems related to, current crisis management administration by examining several factors, including organizational crisis management responses, training and education of crisis management personnel and problems in the crisis management determination system.     

Exploring Crisis Management in UK Small‐ and Medium‐Sized Enterprises

Despite a long‐established crisis management literature that focuses on large enterprises, crisis management planning in the context of small‐ and medium‐sized enterprises (SMEs) is less extensively researched. Using data collected from 215 SMEs in the United Kingdom, this paper explores the perceptions and experiences of SMEs' managing directors in relation to crisis management planning. Furthermore, the paper examines differences in perceptions between planning and non‐planning SMEs. Analysis reveals six factors that correspond to resilience through planning, financial impact, operational crisis management, the perfect storm, the aftermath of survival and atrophy. Results indicate how the experience of crisis and the type of crisis of type encountered affect managers' assessment of whether planning can be used to address crisis prevention and lower impact.     

Volunteer community service providers during the COVID-19 crisis response in China: What are their personal needs and how to respond?

The needs of volunteer community service providers (VCSPs), who are the main responders to community crises, have received significantly less attention for the contributions they have been making during the COVID-19 crisis. A mixed-method research framework was used in this study, which involved semi-structured interviews with 13 NGOs and questionnaire responses from 430 VCSPs in Hubei, China to assess the VCSPs' personal needs based on Maslow's hierarchy of needs. It was found that the VCSPs had safety, love, belonging, self-esteem, and self-actualization personal needs, all of which were closely related to family, partners, organizations, society and the government. The discussions revealed that the more experienced VCSPs needed special attention and family support was extremely significant for VCSPs in crisis. Several recommendations to meet VCSPs' personal needs are proposed that could have valuable reference value for emergency managers when organizing and supporting VCSPs in contingencies.     

Bordering on Reality: Findings on the Bonfire Crisis Management Simulation

On 6 April 2005 a national crisis management simulation, code named Bonfire, was held at various locations in the Netherlands. The Bonfire scenario was built around a terrorist threat followed by an actual attack in the Amsterdam ArenA and a hostage‐taking. Bonfire's scale and realism made it unique for the Netherlands. Its complexity led to unplanned incidents that actually made it even more realistic, because this is something that occurs in every crisis situation. This evaluation shows that the co‐ordination, internal provision of information and crisis communication – the three core elements of crisis management discussed in this report –were mainly in the hands of the decision‐makers themselves. This put so much pressure on them that they were rarely able to make strategic decisions for the medium or long term. Support staff had been expected to ease pressure on the leadership by preparing their meetings and working out the results. This did not go as planned, however. Since they did not always have access to the latest information, they could not provide optimum support. As a result, they were by‐passed, so that they had even less access to information. The vicious circle was thus complete. It was observed that new counter‐terrorism structures installed in the Netherlands after ‘9–11’ functioned as foreseen, but that decision‐making required the input of far more parties than had been envisaged. In the course of the operations, therefore, the various levels established a more or less spontaneous link with the standard crisis management structures.     

Organizational knowledge resources

Decision-making episodes are knowledge intensive processes, operating on and adding to organizational knowledge resources. Decision support systems (DSS) perform some of the knowledge management (KM) that is integral to these episodes. Interest in the field of KM, among both practitioners and researchers has mushroomed in the late 1990s. Initiatives that aim to deliberately, explicitly manage organizations' knowledge resources have become commonplace. A basic prerequisite for fully understanding how an organization can, could, or should conduct KM is an appreciation of the kinds of knowledge resources it has. In this paper, a framework of knowledge resources is introduced, focusing on identifying and organizing basic classes of knowledge resources, and supplemented by the identification of attribute dimensions for characterizing knowledge across these classes. Developed via a Delphi methodology involving an international panel of practitioners and researchers, this framework is assessed as being relatively successful in terms of completeness, accuracy, clarity, and conciseness criteria. The result is a basis for investigating effects of alternative knowledge resource portfolios, and for studying how an organization does, could, or should conduct its KM — including its decision-making episodes.     

What do human factors and ergonomics professionals value in research publications? Re-examining the research–practice gap

The research–practice gap is of concern in human factors/ergonomics (HF/E) as there is a belief that HF/E research may not be making an impact on practice in the ‘real world’. A potential issue is what researchers and practitioners perceive as important in HF/E journal articles as a primary means of conveying research findings to practitioners. This study examined the characteristics that make scientific journal articles appeal to HF/E researchers and practitioners using a web-based survey. HF/E researchers and practitioners were more similar than expected in judgements of important attributes and the selection of articles. Both practitioners and researchers considered practical significance to be more important than theoretical significance, in direct contrast to professionals from a related discipline – psychology. Well-written articles were appreciated across disciplines. The results signal a strong interest in practical applications in HF/E, but a relative lack of focus on development of theories that should be the basis for practical applications.     

The Potential Contribution of the Field of Organizational Development to Crisis Management

This paper explores the possibilities of cross‐disciplinarity between organization development and crisis management. The departure point of our reflection is that crisis management as a field currently faces two limitations. First, two major trends have characterized this field to date: the sociological analysis of organizational contingencies which focus on disasters as social events and the crisis management planning which emphasizes the development of techniques to master hazards. Despite what we have learned from these approaches, neither seems to lead to a crisis management learning model that fosters organizational resilience in coping with crises. Second, researchers have studied a number of events as single case studies but have not synthesized these case studies. Consequently, each crisis seems idiosyncratic and administrators tend to repeat the same inefficient patterns when a crisis occurs. The research proposal presented in this paper aims to remove these limitations by bringing together two apparently opposing fields of study, that of crisis management, characterized by what are perceived as specific events, and that of organizational development, characterized by the strengthening of organizations' capacities to cope with lasting changes. This paper proposes to explore their potential to work together theoretically and empirically through a research design. We conclude on how this proposal meets the challenges of a new research agenda in the 21st century.     

Crisis Management in Finland: Contemporary Challenges

Finnish crisis management has become more challenging after the Cold War. The country is now considered increasingly vulnerable as it faces a diversified set of threats. These changing perceptions are reflected in substantial doctrinal changes: a broader security agenda and a new foreign policy line with crisis management as one of the central foci, guided by national defence priorities and constrained by economic imperatives. The ever‐present resource scarcity has not hindered organizational changes and improvements in the Finnish capacity for crisis prevention and response. Future enhancement of Finnish crisis management requires the development of international structures and the creation of a knowledge community of academics and practitioners.     

Putting software terminology to the test

Project management relies on testing personnel's expertise to ensure software quality. However, contractual and management issues also determine a project's quality. Such issues might even control testing itself. Consider the situation in which a client hires a vendor to build a piece of software. The client could specify the type, schedule, and extent of testing in its contract. Such terms might include compressing the time allotted to quality assurance or substituting certain tests for others. To successfully meet software quality goals, all parties involved must fully understand what testing the contract requires. However, testing literature, practitioners, and project management often have different understandings of common testing concepts. I describe two specific inconsistencies in testing vocabulary that can put a software project at risk     

Factors Influencing the Selection of Decision Support Systems for Emergency Management: An Empirical Analysis of Current Use and User Preferences

Computer‐aided decision support systems can be valuable tools in crisis response and preparedness training for emergency management professionals. However, to realize their full value, these tools must be designed with the needs of a broad range of potential users in mind. This paper describes preliminary research to determine how decision support systems are used by emergency managers and other officials as well as specific user needs for decision support in the planning, response and recovery from natural hazards and other extreme events. It seeks to identify which attributes of these systems are most desired by emergency management practitioners, the benefits and drawbacks as perceived by both users and non‐users of the systems and areas where improvements are desired.     

Understanding Business Failure: Learning and Un-Learning From Industrial Crises

Crisis management theory, developed through the study of industrial disasters and socio-technical failures, is applied to three cases of business failure. The principle objective of the research reported in this paper was to identify whether or not successive failures could have been avoided through organizational learning from similar prior events and what factors might have contributed to or prevented learning. The research also aimed to establish whether or not theoretical frameworks for analyzing and understanding industrial disasters and socio-technical failures are applicable to business failures. Using detailed case analyses of the failures of Johnson Matthey Bank, the Bank of Credit and Commerce International and Barings, the paper illustrates a series of remarkable similarities in these business failures. It also demonstrates an apparent inability of the management involved in the later failures to learn from what had happened before. Organizational culture is singled out as the main contributing factor in these failures. This paper, in part, proves the case for applying industrial crisis management theory to business failure.     

Pulling the Same Way? A Multi‐Perspectivist Study of Crisis Cooperation in Government

After crises have occurred, limitations in crisis management capacity often cause surprise and frustration. An explanation that frequently recurs in evaluations is a lack of efficient cooperation between organizations. Even though crisis cooperation is anticipated and planned for, it seems to create several problems. How is cooperation possible between organizations with different mandates, cultures and professions? This paper aims to identify factors that strengthen or hamper cooperation in crisis management between Swedish government agencies. A rationalist organizational and a social psychological perspective are applied, respectively, to demonstrate the interdependence of organizational context and human behaviour. One conclusion is that long‐term organizing and exercises could help authorities to identify strengths and weaknesses such as differences in regulations and culture. If carefully addressed and considered, such insights could improve the effectiveness of cooperation during crises.     

“Damned if you do,damned if you don’t”: Media frames of responsibility and accountability in handling a wildfire

Previous research on media framing of wildfire has chiefly been concerned with the nature of wildfire in the context of climate change and with framing effects on policy and public opinion. Empirical studies on media content, hence what is mediated to crisis managers and the public concerning authorities’ and the public's response, seem to be largely missing. This is remarkable, given that the media represent main sources of information that may influence crisis management and shape public opinion. Thus, the aim of this study was to identify key media frames relating to portrayals of public and authority responses during and after a wildfire crisis. The study is based on media articles from two time periods: immediately after the fire and 1 year later. We used a thematic method of analysis (TA), thus an inductive, “bottom‐up” approach. A core frame, Responsibility/accountability is identified, underpinned by two sub‐themes. One sub‐theme relates to the causes of the fire and its escalation, revealing a number of different interrelated blame frames. The second sub‐theme refers to management of the crisis, reflecting both authorities’ and citizens’ responses. The deficiencies of the former are implicitly suggested to have forced citizens to act to compensate for their inadequacy. The main theoretical contribution is the identification of an interrelationship between frames in relation to different groups of individuals responding to a crisis, pointing to a more complex view of framing effects. In addition, results show how media tend to assess crisis management based on idealistic criteria, inevitably making the evaluation negative. This contributes to an understanding of how media blame frames, thus “blame games,” may unfold. Practical implications of these results are discussed.     

Anatomy of Organizational Crises

As the business environment gets more complex, the crises faced by management are more frequent and, potentially, more devastating. Previous research on crises looks at specific cases, typologies and definitions of crises. This paper argues that crises are better understood through the way they develop. Based on the theory of punctuated equilibria in biology, two types of crises are proposed: abrupt versus cumulative. An organizing framework based on a punctuated equilibria view of crisis is presented. In addition, the key concepts and mechanisms of the framework that provide management with a broadened view for coping with the ubiquitous nature of crises are discussed.     

How Does Corporate Reputation Affect Customer Loyalty in a Corporate Crisis?

It is widely accepted that corporate reputation plays an important role in determining the impact of crises on firms. Crises may erode corporate reputation. However, reputation may also attenuate the negative effects of crises. This study investigates how corporate reputation moderates the relationship between crisis occurrence and customer loyalty which is expected to decrease given a crisis. Drawing on opposing theories, namely dissonance theory and expectancy‐violation, we conduct a scenario experiment set in the airline industry. Results demonstrate that the moderating effect is weaker in the case of a favourable corporate reputation. This may indicate that a pre‐existing favourable reputation does not shield the firm from the negative effects of the crisis, but may rather present a liability because customers have higher expectations with regard to well‐reputed firms. Contrary to that, ill‐reputed firms have less to lose in the case of a crisis and suffer comparatively smaller decreases in customer loyalty. Marketing management might take into account the role of crisis and reputation management for customer bonding strategies while crisis management should recognize the importance of reputation effects in crises given their impact on customer loyalty and firm profitability.     

Crisis Politics in Authoritarian Regimes: How Crises Catalyse Changes under the State–Society Interactive Framework

Most studies and research on crisis management and government crises focus on nations that are advanced and democratic. Through the institutionalized mechanism of voting, the public can respond to a government's handling of a crisis without destabilizing the democratic system of government. However, the consequences of crises, particularly governance crises, in authoritarian regimes have not been adequately addressed. Drawing upon different frameworks in the field, this paper proposes a heuristic crisis development ladder and a state–society interactive framework more relevant for studying crisis management in authoritarian nations such as China. By focusing on the catalytic effect of crisis that accelerates reforms and changes, this paper argues that critical crises are politically powerful and decisive in authoritarian systems, especially in the context of an increasingly proactive civil society. This paper illustrates the crisis provoking politics that influences decision‐making under non‐democratic rule.