Abstract
Our world is beset by claims of crises, on issues as varied as Brexit, Trump, immigration and the sustainability of economic growth. Some suggest that the world is more prone to crises than ever before (for a counterpoint, see review on Enlightenment Now, Baba, 2019). This is frequently followed by the assertion that the solution is ‘better’ leadership. Management consultants, who thrive by promising to ease a panic that they themselves have partially created, argue that we face business challenges which are more volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous than any time in the past. This has led many to popularize the acronym VUCA. But, ironically, there are multiple precedents for assertions that we are facing unprecedented crises. As R.E.M. sang in the 1980s: ‘It’s the end of the world as we know it.’ Spector (2014, p. 305) has referred to this mindset as the ‘presentism and tranquillity fallacy’: that is, ‘the tendency to find the current era to be exceptionally, even uniquely turbulent and past eras to seem calm in comparison.’ Pessimism has always spoken with a louder voice than optimism. He has now made this discourse of panic a key theme of his new book, and redoubled his efforts to challenge it.
Spector’s central point is stated at the outset: Crises aren’t things at all, but constructions made by leaders, claims that insist that their social unit faces an urgent situation . . . [but] claims of urgency are not neutral, scientifically objective readings of the external environment. Rather, they are exercises in power and assertions of interests on behalf of the claims makers. (p. xi)
The narrative of crisis invariably means that we must embrace whatever panacea its authors are keen to promote. Does this argument stack up, and what are its implications?
In Chapter 1, Spector identifies what he terms an ‘ideology of usefulness’ and an accompanying anti-intellectualism that predominates in his country, the United States. It seems almost quaint to challenge the straightforward notion of crisis and the simplistic prescriptions for a way forward that accompany it. But Spector argues forcefully that claims of ‘a crisis’ are often little more than rhetorical devices employed by leaders to legitimize their authority, and behind which they can advance their own sectional interests. It isn’t that crises don’t exist. But it is the case that these are framed by ideological assumptions that express particular power relations, and which validate some courses of action while invalidating others. Klein (2007) offers many examples, including the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, which destroyed many parts of New Orleans. Schools were devastated and many children dispersed around the country. A now elderly Milton Friedman acknowledged that this was ‘tragic’, but also argued that it was ‘an opportunity to radically reform the educational system’ (Klein, 2007, p. 5). Thus inspired, right-wing think tanks secured the rapid auctioning off of the city’s school system.
Chapter 2 shows how over-used the crisis narrative has become. Events as insignificant as a reduction in the size of Toblerone chocolate bars have been described in the doom-laden language of ‘crisis’. Newspaper headline writers trade in sensationalism. They are schooled to avoid such apocryphal headlines as ‘Small Earthquake in Chile. Not Many Dead.’ But politicians and business leaders also use hype and exaggeration to advance blatantly sectional interests. Spector offers the example of Donald Trump’s claim that immigration on the southern US border was a crisis, one that justified harsh measures and underlined the urgency of building a wall between Mexico and the US. This is the use of moral panics to bolster the President’s legitimacy and thus his right to agency and power. The precise nature of events and the significance that we attach to them are always the product of social constructions. This isn’t to suggest that, in the words of Bobby McFerrin’s song, we should just ‘Don’t worry, be happy.’ But it is an invitation to critical thinking.
It is hardly surprising, as Spector shows in Chapter 3, that what he calls a ‘robust crisis management industry exists’ (p. 37). Increasingly, organizations employ experts in crisis management. Universities offer courses in crises, communication experts abound, PR firms market themselves as experts in ‘crisis communication’. Many moonlight as leaders in ‘change management’, for where there is a crisis there is surely the need for ‘change’. Overall, Spector argues, this dialogue depicts a crisis as an ‘event’. Crises are definite, material and obvious things that for some reason are becoming more frequent. Moreover, leaders are central to their resolution, and topdown communication from that leader is critical for success. But, happily for the crisis management industry, even the most omnipotent of leaders needs the advice of specialists, who will help them to determine if it is an opportunity or a threat, or maybe both. And who is better placed to resolve the diagnosed crisis than the formal leaders of organizations? The ambiguity of events is shoe-horned into whatever template most easily facilitates diagnosis, and the application of remedies that invariably privilege some interests and outcomes over others.
Chapter 4 extends this discussion of how crisis claims are socially constructed to serve distinct power interests. How events are (mis)represented banishes some options from debate and brings others into play. Exploring these issues, Spector concludes that ‘believing something to be true makes it true in its consequences’ (p. 66), a characteristic of self-fulfilling prophecies. He illustrates this with reference to gun crime in the US. Many supporters of the National Rifle Association attempt to define it as a problem of ‘evil’ and therefore one that can’t really be resolved. Others argue that mass shootings are caused by ‘mental illness’ rather than the ready availability of guns. These approaches privilege inaction over the need for gun control. Definitions of a problem reflect competing interests and levels of power that joust in what Spector refers to as ‘a tournament of competing claims’ (p. 80). In such competitions, not all contestants have equal body armor on their side.
Chapter 5 explores some typical narrative tropes that accompany the crisis as event model. In 1999, Nissan’s then chief operating officer, Carlos Ghosn, decided that its executives suffered from ‘a lack of urgency’ in responding to a major decline in sales. He had no such qualms. Five factories were closed at the cost of 21,000 jobs. The story justifying this was that ‘we have no choice’, a narrative also often used by politicians to justify particular policy choices. Fortune magazine named him Asia Businessman of the Year. But, as Spector shows, what happened afterwards was a salutary lesson in the hyping of one individual and their depiction of events. Ghosn was fired for various acts of misconduct and the under-reporting of his own levels of compensation. As I write this review, he is free on bail while awaiting trial, but is under house arrest and deprived of internet access. Examining his crisis narrative, Spector highlights the importance of his interpretation of the publicly available data. As he says: ‘The statement that “we didn’t have a choice” can’t be judged on the basis of accuracy. It is neither true nor false. It represented, after all, nothing more (or less) than Ghosn’s judgment’ (p. 92). From this flowed one set of actions rather than others. In reality, of course there are always alternatives. Without the existence of choices there would be no need for democracy. Spector then disaggregates claims of urgency into various typologies that explore the degree to which there is an objective accuracy, or otherwise, in their formulation, accompanied by subjective ascription – that is, how urgency claims are presented to others. As he stresses, such claims can be deceptive, legitimate, bogus or even reckless.
But what makes people believe or disbelieve narratives of urgency? This is the topic of Chapter 6. A well-worn tactic is the creation of moral panics, through the identification of an existential threat. The invasion of Iraq in 2003 was premised on the specious claim that Saddam Hussain had weapons of mass destruction, famously said to be able to reach London within minutes of their launch. The success of this approach, at least among some, rested on making claims that were filtered through what Spector calls belief mediators – that is, the credibility of those making the claims, like-minded group influence, people’s desire for cognitive comfort and the subjective ascription that this was a real and immediate threat to people’s lives.
There are, Spector points out, high costs for each of us to acquire information on our own. Hence the value of experts. But what makes some sources more credible than others? Using Enron’s Ken Lay as an example, Spector argues that he capitalized on a track record of apparent success. He used the credibility derived from this to deny that Enron faced a crisis, and persuaded many employees to hold onto their shares even as the company teetered towards one of the most spectacular bankruptcies in business history. Meanwhile, Enron’s top executives divested themselves of their own shares. The story Lay told was one of malign external forces seeking to bring down an otherwise healthy business. The more people trusted his narrative rather than the voices of independent critics the more their own financial futures were blasted into oblivion. Our own credulity often turns out to be the author of someone else’s credibility.
Chapter 7 looks in more detail at how compelling narratives are constructed. Spector shows how much we still remain in thrall to the ‘Great Man’ view of history, in which progress is attributed to the exceptional prowess of outstanding (male) individuals. In particular, a crisis narrative is regularly accompanied by the demand that we give more power to political or corporate leaders who promise to single-handedly fix our ills. This is part of a master narrative of what Bloom and Rhodes (2018) describe as ‘the idolisation of the CEO’. It discourages the critical interrogation of leader-centric narratives that urge us to vest our hopes and our own agency in a powerful other. I have before me a typical product of this discourse. It is an article in Harvard Business Review by Jeff Immelt (2017), then the outgoing CEO of General Electric. Its title perfectly captures the tone: How I remade GE and what I learned along the way. One whole page bears a colour picture of the author. The narrative here is that of the ‘CEO as superhero’ (all that’s missing are red underpants), and it is one that dominates much of the literature on crisis management.
The remaining two substantive chapters (Chapters 8 and 9) of this book look critically at various crisis narratives that are commonly used. Sometimes these describe a crisis as a threat, an attack, a disturbance, a storm, a panic, a failure, a loss, a disaster, some higher-order trouble, a horrific occurrence, a grave predicament, an existential danger, something unthinkable . . . The leader’s job is to navigate the unit through a turmoil unleashed by the crisis and preserve the status quo. This is the dominating view of the crisis-as-event model. (p. 165)
No wonder, as Chapter 9 explains, that crisis management experts tend to converge on appealing checklists of what leaders should do in a crisis. He summarizes these as: (i) Encourage a proactive crisis culture; (ii) Establish and enforce standards and processes; (iii) Prioritize and set an example; (iv) Properly assess the full range of risks; (iv) Promote open upward communication; (v) Build relationships before the crisis; (vi) Be ready to deal with the news media; and (vii) Encourage a learning environment and shared experience. (p. 192)
Yet many CEOs are unexceptional people struggling to do difficult jobs. They are often torn between complacency and panic, paralysis and frantic improvisation. Moreover, these recommendations seem akin to urging people to wrap up in winter and wear sunscreen in the summer. We have here the banality of crisis management. Who, these days, would advocate that leaders shouldn’t be ready to deal with the news media, and should discourage a learning environment?
If claims of crisis and urgency are social constructions used to promote the power of individual leaders who claim to be articulating a mythical universal interest, much of the functionalist and positivist discourse that pervades management research collapses. The unremittingly pro top-management tone of many top (that is, US) journals jars all the more on reading this book. Yet, in his concluding chapter, Spector is at pains to stress that we can’t automatically reject all claims of crisis, or the interpretations that are offered of what caused it and how we should respond. That said, the closing words of his book capture the essence of his approach better than any I can offer: ‘critical thinking is always advised’ (p. 252).