Abstract
Teaching crisis management is both fascinating and frustrating. It is fascinating because crises, by their very nature, are spectacular, dramatic, and intense; immediately arouse the individual and collective imagination; and because everyone seeks explanations for what, at first glance, appears inexplicable. It is also fascinating because educators are exposed to a transdisciplinary and transborder field of studies with wide-ranging ramifications. Yet it is frustrating because educators must often deconstruct the popular perception that crises are rare, improbable, and unpredictable phenomena, often leading individuals to feel powerless and fatalistic. It is also frustrating because of the lack of knowledge in the field itself, at three levels: conceptual/theoretical, practical, and reflective. This article highlights the teaching challenges in this rich and diversified field at each of these three levels and examines three teaching tools to address them: case studies, crisis simulations, and the reflexive journal. The authors also consider that a crisis cannot be viewed as a homogeneous concept. With the help of Gundel’s crisis typology (conventional, unpredictable, intractable, and fundamental crises), the authors present promising teaching approaches to deal with each of the three aforementioned teaching challenges, explaining how each approach can be seen as a function of the four types of crises.
Although the field of crisis management has grown considerably, the teaching of crisis management does not seem to have developed apace. At the time when an MBA course in crisis management was being conceived in the winter of 2006, our benchmark study showed us that very few universities, whether in Canada, the United States, or Europe, offered a specific course in crisis management either at the graduate or undergraduate level, and even fewer offered a program or a certificate in this field. 1 In the course of our review, we observed that crisis management could, in fact, be taught within the context of existing courses, most often in business strategy, public communication, or international politics, or even in specialized courses in public security affecting emergency management. Within these courses, teaching would be limited to each area and would necessarily be less extensive. The educator, preparing to develop a new course in crisis management, is in a pioneering role and must expect to confront new challenges. The goal of this article is to offer a conceptual and theoretical perspective on crisis management teaching by taking stock of the challenges and presenting promising teaching approaches in response.
The challenges of teaching crisis management stem from the limits of knowledge related to the field itself, often at three levels: first, the conceptual challenge reflected in the difficulty of reaching a consensus on the very definition of the concept of a crisis and the theoretical challenge reflected in the coexistence of multiple theories that may be sources of confusion; second, the practical challenge resulting from the difficulty of delineating the skills required at various phases of a crisis and of managers other than senior managers; and third, the reflective challenge related to the lack of knowledge with respect to the actors’ behaviors, emotions, and decisions in the period immediately preceding the crisis (incubation) and in the immediate aftermath (learning). Crisis management is, in itself, a paradoxical expression to the extent that it combines two apparently contradictory terms: management and crisis. On the one hand, management involves anticipation and planning, providing guidance, and help to control a crisis; on the other hand, the crisis is unique, exceptional, and, a priori, impossible to plan or to manage. So how could crisis management be teachable? The following question is sometimes raised in the classroom: What is the point of learning to manage crises if each crisis is unique? In addition, most case studies in crisis management are the result of an analysis done a posteriori so that we know relatively little about the crises that were averted (near misses), those on a smaller scale than anticipated, or those whose effects were latent (such as a crisis of confidence or a crisis of legitimacy). We explore each of these elements in greater depth in the following sections.
The Conceptual and Theoretical Challenge
Conceptual Challenge
An initial stage in teaching crisis management generally consists of clearly defining what is meant by the word crisis (Borodzicz & Van Haperen, 2002). Far from being purely semantic, this stage determines what follows, especially because students often arrive with their own conception of what is and what is not a crisis, a conception that might come from personal experiences, political contexts, or the media (Coombs, 2004; Coombs & Holladay, 2001; Weick, 1988). In our experience, educators who neglect this stage of defining the concept of crisis are risking confusion and a series of misunderstandings in subsequent teaching. Thus, this is a necessary and essential step. Defining a crisis is far from simple, considering the multidisciplinary nature of the field of crisis management (Lalonde, 2004; Pauchant & Douville, 1993; Sheaffer & Mano-Negrin, 2003) and the associations often made with other related terms such as catastrophes, disasters, and conflicts, terms that are not, in fact, completely synonymous (Boin, 2005; Borodzicz & Van Haperen, 2002). This led Robinson (1968) to remark that “crisis is a commonly used term, searching for a scientific meaning” (p. 510). In addition, similar for all the aforementioned terms, a crisis mobilizes multiple, intertwined dimensions (Kovoor-Misra, Clair, & Bettenhausen, 2001) of a technical, political, ethical, economical, and psychological nature that make its teaching difficult, inasmuch as a given educator may not always be able to master all these dimensions.
Certain scholars, including Morin (1993), believe that most of the definitions of the concept of crisis tend to strip it of its original meaning, which dialectically combines a negative side (threat, danger, and disorder) and a positive side (opportunity, possibility, and a new order), putting undue emphasis on its destructive effects to the detriment of its mobilizing effects. Morin reminds us that, in Greek etymology, the word crisis signifies a moment of decision making, whereas, in the modern world, a crisis tends rather to indicate indecision (Denis, Dompierre, Langley, & Rouleau, 2011). A good number of definitions referenced and often quoted in the literature support Morin in emphasizing the potential threats of crises rather than the opportunities they generate. Appendix A presents some definitions of the concept of crisis.
Theoretical Challenge
The coexistence of different theories in this field may also complicate the task of the educator. These theories include the following: the planning school (Fink, 1986; Perry & Lindell, 2003a), the school of organizational contingencies or the sociology of catastrophes (Dynes, 1970; Fischer, 1998), the configuration school (Meyer, Brooks, & Goes, 1990; Miller & Friesen, 1980), the school of organizational learning (Smith & Elliott, 2007), the school of situated cognition (Jacques, Gatot, & Wallemack, 2007; Weick, 1993), normal accident theory (Perrow, 1999), the “high reliability organizations” model (Roberts, Bea, & Bartles, 2001; Rochlin, 1996), and the theory of postmodern risk (Beck, 1992; Gephart, Van Maanen, & Oberlechner, 2009). (For more information about these schools of thought in crisis management, see Appendix B, which is available online at http://jme.sagepub.com/supplemental.) All of these may be considered “middle-range theories,” insofar as they “deal with delimited aspects of social phenomena” (Merton, 1968, pp. 39-40). In presenting them as “middle-range theories,” the educator may also discuss each one and illustrate its main strengths or contributions to crisis management knowledge, its principal limitations, and what makes it or prevents it from being complementary. In so doing, educators must be frank and honest about support for their own ontological preferences.
The field of crisis management is not the only one that faces this phenomenon of many definitions of a single concept and the coexistence of multiple theories. Anderson (2007) observes the same phenomenon with respect to the concept of motivation in the field of organizational behavior, as does Craig (1993) for the overall field of communications. For Weick (2007), far from constituting a problem, the cohabitation of many perspectives instead reflects the complexity of the modern world (Sheaffer & Mano-Negrin, 2003), which requires many answers, sometimes even contradictory ones, echoing the principle of “requisite variety” developed by Ashby (quoted in Anderson, 2007). In terms of teaching, this obliges both the educator and the student to drop their tools, 2 that is, to consider fresh perspectives in order to avoid the fate of Mann Gulch’s firefighters (Weick, 1993), who perished along with their preconceived ideas. Management students, conditioned to seek the “one best way” or the “one size fits all” model, must, according to Weick (2007), abandon their fixations and adopt the idea of equifinality (Gresov & Drazin, 1997; Katz & Kahn, 1978), according to which a number of approaches or theories could lead to the discovery of complementary, indeed previously unsuspected, aspects.
A number of scholars, including Anderson (2007), report that students experience confusion and frustration when faced with a field of study that is, a priori, disorganized and poorly integrated. Anderson (2007) explains that students exposed to many definitions and theories tend to cling to one that corresponds most closely to their preferences and/or experiences and to apply this to all possible situations in contemporary life, thus succumbing to the law of the instrument (Kaplan, 1964). To avoid “false consensus bias” (Ross, Greene, & House, 1977), Anderson (2007) proposes relying on the metaphor of the “conceptual toolbox” in education:
The metaphor of the contextual toolbox highlights how each management theory is merely a tool to help understand and explain a particular (and limited) range of experience . . . management education is really about learning new tools that may be useful and that enlarge the requisite variety the students can register in their environments. (p. 761)
We would suggest that the instructor orient students by synthesizing these different definitions, highlighting common elements, and identifying distinguishing features. Students should also be invited to express their views on each of these elements, to discuss crisis situations to which each element applies, and to determine other situations in which the defining element applies less or not at all. In that respect, certain typologies (Gundel, 2005; Hwang & Lichtenthal, 2000; Milburn, Schuler, & Watman, 1983; Pauchant & Mitroff, 1990; Quarantelli, 1993) allow for the presentation of a large enough register of crises that could be brought together according to their common characteristics (Appendix C, which presents some of these typologies, is available online at http://jme.sagepub.com/supplemental). Each category of typologies can then be used to illustrate certain elements of the definition of a crisis. Given that each typology considers different variables, the instructor must take care to avoid falling into an interminable debate about the choice of variables or expending excessive resources on the intrinsic validity of typologies. The emphasis should be on the utility of each typology to enhance the understanding of various types of crisis.
Case studies can highlight the various dimensions of a crisis featured in both the definitions and the typologies. The case on the controversy between Shell and Greenpeace, related to the dismantling of a Brent loading buoy in the North Sea, is particularly useful to illustrate the distinction between the triggering event and the crisis it triggers, 3 a central feature in a crisis management class. As long as students confuse the triggering event (the dismantling of the buoy) and the crisis (the public opinion controversy and the political implications), they can sort out only technical or legal responses to maintain the initial position of Shell at all costs. The instructor may offer an alternative avenue of reflection to help them view the crisis not only as an event but also as a process. The students then quickly recognize that focusing on the dismantling process prevents them from exploring the wide set of Shell’s internal dysfunctions that had led to the controversy. This change in perspective illustrates how Shell made a decision whose impact went well beyond its own interests without taking into account various elements present in the environment, the dismantling crisis being only the tip of the iceberg. Thus, a practical exercise consists of asking students how they would characterize a particular crisis as a function of different aspects of the definition:
What were the key elements triggering this crisis?
What was the extent of the crisis and the pace at which it developed?
Was there a turning point?
Were there early signs of the coming crisis? (Was there an incubation process or a build-up in speed, or was the event sudden?)
Was it predictable?
What were the dangers?
What were the opportunities?
What were the areas of uncertainty or ambiguity?
Was there time pressure?
Did actors know what to do (capability and influence)?
To facilitate his/her task, the instructor may ask students to classify their responses for each item on a scale from 1 to 10 (1 = not important, 10 = very important) with the understanding that this is a subjective evaluation to be discussed in small groups of 4 or 5 students and to be shared in class at the end of the exercise (see Appendix D, which is available online at http://jme.sagepub.com/supplemental). A regular MBA course of 15 sessions allows the instructor to cover almost a dozen different crisis case studies (for the case studies we used in our MBA course in the fall of 2008, see Appendix E, which is available online at http://jme.sagepub.com/supplemental). Over the semester, the educator synthesizes all the case studies and classifies them as a function of student responses to the various questions posed. Thus, this exercise shows the dimensions perceived as being common to crises and those that differentiate them. The exercise also reveals the defining elements for which there is a consensus and those for which there is a divergence of opinion.
The Practical Challenge
A considerable portion of the literature on crisis management deals with leadership in crisis situations. Despite the fact that crisis leadership is essential, it focuses primarily on plans and procedures to deal with the unexpected (Schoenberg, 2005). However, the magnitude of such events, more often than not, requires much more than a “good plan.” Thus, focusing on leadership qualities can add a new dimension to a crisis plan by having a team think in terms of values, authenticity, and trust. This call for more crisis leadership than crisis management has led researchers in the field to determine the most critical skills that a manager must acquire, develop, or consolidate tasks that a manager needs to accomplish to handle crises adequately.
Leadership Skills: Strengths and Limits of the Literature
In a recent empirical study, Van Wart and Kapucu (2011) identified three main demands in times of crises: calm but strong leadership, pragmatic decision making under severe times and resources constraints, and coordination and reorganization. According to these authors, these demands provide the conditions for developing a set of 15 crisis leadership competencies: (1) self-confidence, (2) willingness to assume responsibility, (3) motivating and articulating vision and mission, (4) resilience, (5) communication skills, (6) decision making, (7) analytic skills, (8) decisiveness, (9) flexibility, (10) delegating, (11) operations planning, (12) teambuilding, (13) networking, (14) partnering, and (15) social skills. However, it is noteworthy that the literature is a bit vague in its handling of the notions of tasks, skills, and competencies, seeming to view them as interchangeable. On the one hand, some authors, including Boin, Hart, Stern, and Sundelius (2005), explain that their approach is based on managers’ tasks and not on their personal characteristics; on the other hand, Wooten and James (2008) emphasize competencies, but their definition refers to skills and tasks. This ambiguity is significant because it is not certain that these tasks, competencies, or skills will be internalized in the same way by different individuals. Instead, a controlling personality could have trouble delegating tasks or working with a team. An analytical person could have difficulty making decisions under pressure and in the absence of detailed information. A relational person might value a consensus to the detriment of taking rapid action. Yet those who presume a generic character of crisis leadership skills would lead us to believe that these skills would apply regardless of (1) the personal style of each actor, (2) the specific contingencies of the various crisis situations, or (3) the emotions raised in the context of a crisis (Ackerman & Maslin-Ostrowski, 2004; Halverson, Murphy & Riggio, 2004).
Another limitation of the literature on crisis leadership is the fact that the proposed nomenclatures and typologies are especially centered on the upper management of large organizations, and there is no indication that the same skills or tasks or competencies might apply to managers more involved at the operational level and in smaller enterprises. For example, communication and public relations researchers put considerable emphasis on media relations as an essential task for management (Coombs, 2001; Seeger & Ulmer, 2001). In fact, “the CEO is often designated as the crisis spokesperson bringing authority and credibility to a highly equivocal situation” (Seeger & Ulmer, 2001, p. 369). An astonishing fact in this era, when the notion of social responsibility is on the agenda of a number of courses in business schools, is the absence of any reference to the importance of ethical behavior on the part of management (on this topic, see Seeger & Ulmer, 2001).
We must also note the formalism inherent in the proposed typologies and nomenclatures. Thus, making decisions under pressure, a skill often cited in effective crisis management, can be either meaningful or meaningless to the extent that the process of decision making is inherent in the sociopolitical context and in the effects of the phenomenon of “groupthink” (Janis, 1982, 1989), as Allison and Zelikow’s (1999) analysis of the Cuban missile crisis demonstrated. Moreover, the acquisition of such a skill generally stems from tacit knowledge drawn from an individual’s own experiences or internal images (Sternberg et al., 2000).
Finally, the empirical bases, from which these skills or portraits stem, are merely specific examples, providing only a partial view of managers’ actions at different points of a crisis. Thus, although the documentation on crises generally allows us to know what happened during the crisis, it rarely allows us to know what happened before and after (Wooten & James, 2008). In addition, certain data essentially relate to senior managers in public administration (Boin et al., 2005) or the business world (Wooten & James, 2008), and sometimes these two environments are merged (Coombs, 2001).
Leadership Skills at Various Phases of a Crisis
One of the most popular current approaches to teaching crisis management consists of describing the tasks or skills required at various phases of the development of or evolution toward a crisis (see Table 1). Thus, while analyzing crisis leadership in public administration, Boin et al. (2005) identify five critical tasks decision makers need to accomplish: (1) sense making at the incubation phase, (2) decision making, (3) meaning making at the onset, (4) terminating, and (5) learning in the aftermath of a crisis. The authors mention that, in developing their typology, they based their findings essentially on their experiences and observations of the political scene, as researchers in crisis management.
Leadership Skills at Different Phases of a Crisis
For their part, Wooten and James (2008) analyzed 20 crisis cases in the business world, starting with a data bank made available to them by the Institute for Crisis Management (www.crisisexperts.com) 4 and various other documents archived in the written electronic media or in the business press. The authors drew from these a set of key competencies for five phases of a crisis:
During the signal detection phase, the capacity to give meaning to signs warning of a crisis and to anticipate the potential impact on others constitute two key skills.
In the prevention/preparation phase, a vital skill is the capacity to sell the issue, to convince organizational members of the importance of investing in crisis management planning. Two other skills in this phase are organizational agility (i.e., having a detailed knowledge of the organization, a systemic view of interaction dynamics likely to be deployed to face the crisis) and creativity (i.e., the capacity to imagine novel scenarios to confront the contingencies of the crisis situation).
At the height of the crisis, in the context of direct and active interventions to contain it and mitigate damages, the capacity to make decisions under pressure, to communicate effectively, and to have the courage to take needed risks are critical success factors.
After the crisis, during the phase of reconstruction and returning to normal activities, the promotion of organizational resilience and the adoption of ethical and responsible behavior are two additional skills. Developing a learning mentality allows for further reflection on the improvement in crisis management practices outside the phases linked to the crisis itself.
The typology developed by Coombs (2001) quite closely resembles that of Wooten and James (2008), but has a more marked emphasis on crisis communication skills and on relations with stakeholders. Furthermore, his categorization of the phases of a crisis is slightly more detailed. Table 1 summarizes the leadership’ skills and tasks at different phases of a crisis.
Despite the limitations we have mentioned, these typologies and nomenclatures may be useful in teaching crisis management. Thus, because all these typologies emphasize the skills of upper management first and foremost, two approaches might be used in terms of teaching: (1) critically analyze these typologies and nomenclatures with the help of specific cases and (2) attempt to determine the skills applicable for managers who are not in the upper ranks.
Techniques and Exercises for Developing Leadership Skills
A number of researchers (Bergström, Dahlström, Henriqson, & Dekker, 2010; Borodzicz, 2004; Borodzicz & Van Haperen, 2002; Carrel, 2000; Cartier & Forgues, 2006; Crichton, Flin, & Rattray, 2000; Paton & Jackson, 2002; Perry, 2004; Smith, 2004; Wybo, 2008) have been interested in simulation exercises as a pedagogical approach for testing crisis management skills. Indeed, to tackle the practical challenge, and more specifically, to illustrate certain necessary crisis management skills identified in the typologies, simulation exercises seem relevant and useful.
According to Blanchard and Thacker (1999), simulation exercises allow students to integrate theory and practice as they learn experientially in realistic circumstances 5 and gain awareness of their reactions in stressful situations. Simulation exercises are most effective when they evoke strong emotions such as surprise and uncertainty, as well as a sense of time pressure, an excessive workload, and some obstacles in reaching key individuals. This learning process may prove frustrating for students and difficult for the instructor to manage. The classroom environment must feel secure for the student, and the instructor’s attitude must be supportive toward the exercise to achieve its goal of the students’ integration of crisis management skills.
Following researchers in crisis leadership, Paton and Jackson (2002) consider that simulation exercises in crisis management must allow for the development of situational awareness that manifests itself at three levels: perception of critical elements in the environment (or environmental monitoring), selection of meaningful activities in the light of salient goals, and a keen understanding of when to switch from one goal to another. Students’ acquisition of these skills depends largely on their instructor’s ability to provide quality feedback, to master the debriefing sessions, to clarify learning objectives, and to choose a simulation exercise that fits these learning objectives (Borodzicz & Van Haperen, 2002; Paton & Jackson, 2002).
One of the difficulties with simulation exercises for teaching crisis management is that they are often designed by experts in emergencies and catastrophes. Thus, the exercises are developed such that students must demonstrate their mastery and knowledge of procedures and routines already defined in emergency management plans. Such exercises are not necessarily adaptable and directly transferable to organizational crises where, by definition, there are no predetermined routines or procedures and where the emphasis needs to be on the acquisition of interpersonal skills, such as flexibility, negotiation, and communication. Moreover, the numerous skills employed during these simulations may not transfer from one occupation or industry to another (Boin et al., 2005; Paton & Jackson, 2002; Wooten & James, 2008).
In addition, a number of authors distinguish between simulation exercises in a classroom with people who will not have to work together during a “real” crisis, and simulation exercises done within the organization itself with the people, both internal and external, who must work together during a crisis. The latter option would have the advantage of reinforcing team work, developing the same framework when plunged into action, as well as sharing tacit knowledge. Nonetheless, Borodzicz and Van Haperen (2002) issue a warning with respect to the feedback given to participants: the team-oriented feedback must not camouflage different individual performances and perpetuate certain individuals’ dysfunctional behavior. In that respect, these same authors suggest that a written report on the experience could be produced by each individual, which would permit students to personalize their feedback. In short, ultimately, the simulation exercise, as a learning model to confront the challenge of actual practice, remains instructive and engaging for students and their instructors.
The Reflective Challenge
Metaphors are useful teaching devices because they allow us to broaden the perspectives of possible actions during crises and they lead students to re-examine their deeply held assumptions (Cirka & Corrigall, 2010; Cunliffe, 2004; Hedberg, 2009). They encourage students to think outside the box and to bring together different, even opposite, situations. The following examples illustrate this point: (1) the crisis management consultant who introduces himself or herself for the first time, who has already been presented as a “visible minority,” meaning that he or she is external to the organization; (2) a manager said to have a “wandering” style during a crisis to indicate that he or she considers it important to be directly on the ground; and (3) interveners who invoke the notion of “a dysfunctional family” to qualify functional problems within their crisis teams or cells. As part of our regular, face-to-face MBA course, we created and introduced a special online discussion forum. The virtual discussions took place just before students came to class. Thus, each student was invited every week to present an example from current events or from their own personal experience in collective discussion forums, conceived as “practical e-communities,” to illustrate a particular theme of the course. When students presented their examples, the educator established connections between situations that appeared extremely diverse at first glance. For example, deaths related to listeriosis occurring in Canada and suicides occurring during the privatization at France Telecom were often mentioned by students as part of these forums. It was then possible for the instructor to emphasize the role played by the media in these two situations and to highlight the mismanagement in two seemingly very different situations. Students participated in the discussion forums during the subsequent weeks and the instructor identified the metaphors that connected the most disparate situations.
Teaching future managers to become reflective practitioners constitutes a challenge in itself, because management schools tend to dismiss the subjective dimension inherent to the human condition (Cunliffe, 2004; Hedberg, 2009). Reflective practice reintroduces this subjectivity to some degree by inviting students to question certain fundamental postulates and initiating a critical reexamination of their behavior and actions, so that they might eventually know themselves better. Nonetheless, a number of students tend to limit their reflective practice to “saying what they think” in a spontaneous manner. To help them to make this distinction between “saying what you think” and developing a critical sense inherent to a truly reflective practice, we use a very simple activity: we ask right-handed students to write their name with their left hand and left-handed students to write with their right hand. 6 The discomfort or disorientation created by this change of habit illustrates the effect created internally when one seeks to become reflective, either in questioning the first idea that pops into one’s head or in rethinking the first gesture one is inclined to make.
A number of educators use the learning journal to make reflective practice concrete. This type of journal is not limited to the task of writing on a given subject (Pavlovich, Collins, & Jones, 2009). Instead, it serves as a personal reflection on the process of learning as experienced by the students, a reflection that can promote awareness of their way of interacting with others, their communication style, their degree of openness to one another, and their capacity to receive feedback from others. For example, the learning journal should allow students to respond to questions such as: What have you been struck by? What areas do you need to work on? What do you feel or what do you think when you encounter or experience certain situations in class or in professional settings? To ease the discomfort that may be created by the introspective character of this method of learning, we tend to combine reflection on a theme, a subject, a case, or a reading (the “what,” such as the role of routines in managing a crisis or the concept of resilience in crisis management) and the responses to questions that we have suggested (the “who”). This combination of two dimensions (what and who) serves in some way as a double heuristic (Douglas & Moustakas, 1985). Not only does it permit the educator to verify student comprehension, but it also helps the student to distinguish between the learning journal and other forms of journals such as the private diary (Cunliffe, 2004) or log book (Barribeau, 2005). For students with or without first-hand experience in crisis management, the learning journal is an engaging means of personal and professional guidance.
Teaching Crisis Management: A Blended Approach
We have seen that the field of crisis management may be understood as a “conceptual toolbox” whose multidisciplinary nature is a pooling of middle-range theories, each tackling a particular aspect of social reality. We believe that this “conceptual toolbox” should correspond to a “pedagogical toolbox” such that teaching crisis management should involve a range of pedagogical methods with wide-ranging but complementary objectives. This approach has the advantage of combining inductive and deductive methods of teaching and avoiding a pernicious dichotomy for the student between “thinking” and “doing” (Whetten & Clark, 1996) or between “knowing” and “being” (Cunliffe, 2004). In the following section, we present various teaching approaches to address each of the three teaching challenges presented at the beginning of this article (conceptual/theoretical, practical, and reflective). We explain nuances within the approaches as a function of the four types of crisis Gundel (2005) identified: conventional crises, unexpected crises, unresolvable crises, and fundamental crises.
Employing Gundel’s typology encourages us to remember that crisis management education must help students develop a capacity to discern the situations that, by their very nature, do not always constitute a crisis. The theoretical and conceptual deficit emphasized earlier often involves a lack of judgment or, at least, frequent confusion about crisis situations. There is initial confusion about emergency management and crisis management, in spite of significant differences between these two situations. Even though in both these domains the time available for decision making may be compressed, emergency management is generally based on lists of formalized and known responses, whereas in the case of crisis management, responses are rarely formalized (Aubert & Roux-Dufort, 2003). Furthermore, the classic lists in emergency management must often be accompanied by organizational development interventions to avoid recurrent flawed patterns (see Lalonde, 2011a).
According to Borodzicz and Van Haperen (2002), a “crisis should be distinguished from emergencies and disasters as distinct from the perspective of response. . . . A failure to understand this distinction results in exercises which are not realistic” (p. 140). There is also a distinction to make according to the sectors in which these concepts are applied. For example, in the private sector, the term crisis management often refers to the prevention of and response to all unexpected events. In the public sector, in which a significant portion of resources are devoted to this purpose, untoward events that are planned for are called emergencies (Van Wart & Kapucu, 2011). Emergency management implies planning how best to mitigate, prepare for, respond to, and recover from anticipated accidents or catastrophes, whereas crisis management implies that the system has been overwhelmed and has required outside resources (Perry & Quarantelli, 2005; Rubin, 2007).
Once the instructor has cleared up the students’ initial confusion, another source of confusion becomes manifest, that of thinking that all crises have the same characteristics. It is here that certain typologies of crises, such as that of Gundel (2005), may help the instructor better target approaches and pedagogical methods. Indeed, with the help of two characteristics he sees as recurrent in the definition of a crisis—(1a) predictability and (2) capacity to influence (or respond to) the unfolding of the crisis—Gundel describes four cases: conventional crises, unexpected crises, intractable crises, and fundamental crises.
Conventional Crises
Gundel (2005) defines conventional crises as predictable crises on which organizations have an influence. The means to face them are usually available and result from a classic assessment of proven risks. Because the crises are predictable, organizations have plans ready to cope with them and train employees for these interventions (Gundel, 2005). The majority of product recall decisions, fires, and small-scale natural catastrophes fall into this category. With the planning school (Mintzberg, 1994a, 1994b) being fairly dominant at this level, the entire theoretical challenge consists of questioning the largely prescriptive premises and models advanced by this school to manage such crises effectively. Thus, the student is confronted with this contradiction between prescriptive models, seen as most efficient in managing these so-called conventional crises, and the results of research revealing the game, seen as often extremely political but also largely emergent (Mintzberg, 1987; Mintzberg & Waters, 1985; Stacey, 1993), played by the actors in the crisis. Focusing students’ attention on the event triggering the crisis, the dynamic and destructive characteristics of the crisis, and the role of civil society (Perry & Lindell, 2003b) permits a nuanced explanation of the planning school’s precepts. In drawing on the critiques and limitations of the planning school, the student will gradually reflect on the role of routines, plans, and procedures in crisis management and question the command and control model so prevalent in a number of these conventional crisis management practices (Dynes, 1994).
Inherited from experiences in the world of security and civil protection or that of engineering and supply chains, the practices proposed to manage conventional crises are often presented as “rational” and tested measures. However, faced with the repeated failures of established practices based on plans, routines, and procedures of which a good number are seldom used or not used at all in conventional crisis management, the educator may invite students to consider practices outside the box and thus enlarge the range of practices possible in managing these crises. To push the students outside the limits of their comfort zone, we suggest the following exercise. In class, put students in teams of three. Give them 5 minutes to create a short crisis scenario. Have them address the four following questions: What is the problem? What are the traps to avoid? Who are the four or five key stakeholders? What initiatives can we take toward these stakeholders? The time compression with no preparation forces students to tap into different repertoires of reasoning and thinking and reduces the possibility of applying a planned, linear approach to a crisis. More generally, practices stemming from the field of behavioral sciences that encourage organizational development interventions provide promising avenues for practitioners at four levels: human processes, technostructure, human resource management, and organizational strategy (Lalonde, 2011b). Thus, various conventional crises can be studied in class, contrasting prescriptive models advanced by the planning school and interventions suggested by practitioners of the organizational development approach to determine the usefulness of single or combined approaches.
The reflective challenge in which students are invited to engage might involve expressing their thoughts based on multiple experiences with testimonies collected from commissions of inquiry, coroners’ reports, and experts’ or consultants’ audits of crisis management. This reflection allows students to understand the issues and behavior, as well as the logic, both individual and collective, applied throughout the crisis. A careful examination of these various sources of information plunges students into the heart of traps and errors to which managers involved in the crisis have succumbed and their subsequent bureaucratic entanglements.
Unexpected Crises
Gundel (2005) defines unanticipated crises as those on which organizations have an influence but which are difficult to predict. This difficulty with prediction complicates any attempt to determine the means of response and the appropriate scale of the response. The recent case of John Galliano, a famous high-fashion designer at Dior, who received a suspended sentence in September of 2011 for anti-Semitic and racist remarks he made at a bar, is a case in point demonstrating an unexpected crisis. Dior made the decision to dismiss Galliano as soon as the press started covering the event but did not anticipate such a scandal involving its star designer. The theoretical challenge is substantial: How do we act when there is so much we do not know? And what resources must be drawn on to face the unknown? These questions confront students with the paradox of having solutions but not problems. They force them to face the inadequacy of the classic solutions proposed by the planning school.
To put it differently, in unanticipated crises, students feel like Mann Gulch’s firemen, learning to construct meaning at the heart of the unknown (Weick, 1993) and to doing what the three surviving firemen of Mann Gulch did: become resilient and learn to unlearn (drop their tools). Therefore, the theoretical challenge consists of showing the conditions for the construction of meaning and enabling resilience through four key concepts advanced by Weick (1993): the meaning of improvisation, the fluidity of roles, the capacity to maintain a system of mutual interaction, and a certain wisdom. Consistency among crisis teams and the transparent exchange of information are important elements. Although mental rigidity in a crisis situation may lead an individual to deny or dismiss troubling details, a spirit of openness and a willingness to listen to others develops one’s capacity for curiosity, creativity, and improvisation.
The practical challenge lies in considering the crisis management tools proposed by the planning school to manage conventional crises as minimal bases around which one must learn to recombine and refashion the available resources to take action and construct meaning. Being attuned to the environment of the crisis (rather than systematically taking shortcuts or relying on what is familiar and comfortable in analyzing situations and decision making), rapidly detecting any groupthink phenomena (Janis, 1982), and further investigating any unusual information, however seemingly harmless or unexpected, are all skills that may be acquired to deal with unanticipated crises.
These skills may be taught with musical or theatrical improvisational techniques (Boggs, Mickel, & Holtom, 2007; Roux-Dufort, 2001), allowing students to develop a capacity to use uncertainty and ambiguity as a source of inspiration (Spolin, 1999). These techniques, designed to facilitate improvisation and creativity at the heart of the crisis, may be combined with crisis simulation exercises whose objectives are precisely to have students experience the four characteristics evoked by Weick (1993), especially the importance of the team in the generation of meaning within a crisis.
Intractable Crises
According to Gundel (2005), although intractable crises are predictable, there is no way to respond to them given that the complexity of the systems in which they appear prevents managers from understanding their underlying dynamic. The Deep Horizon oil spill belongs in this category of crises, inasmuch as oil spills are predictable for companies like BP that are aware of the risks inherent to the oil platform and drilling. They are ready to respond to such occurrences, but nothing could have prepared BP for such a large-scale crisis and for its inability to stop the oil leak for more than 4 months. Intractable crises rapidly induce a feeling of powerlessness in managers.
Therefore, the conceptual challenge of an intractable crisis resides in understanding the process of acceleration, often a counterintuitive process, as well as the exacerbating factors (Gatot & Jacques, 1997) that could turn an accident into a crisis. Complex systems theory and normal accidents theory (Perrow, 1999; Sagan, 1993) and, from a different but complementary perspective, the model of high reliability organizations (Roberts et al., 2001; Rochlin, 1996) constitute the necessary theoretical bases to understand these crises. The instructor needs to introduce the student to knowledge of the inherent complexity of postindustrial systems of production as the principal incubation factor in crises. Managers’ feelings of impotence, when faced with this type of crisis, often stem from limited analysis that stops at surface-level difficulties posed by the event. There is usually too little exploration of the underlying dynamic of the event. Yet it is these crises that allow the instructor to lead students to a new level of analysis, where they must become interested in the process preceding the crisis, in order to engage in the thinking necessary for learning.
In practical and pedagogical terms, mapping out the stakeholders in the crisis may allow students to acquire relational intelligence, one of the skills of crisis management. This exercise consists of charting the stakeholders in the crisis and asking students to identify which of their reactions are appropriate and well-founded, including those that are most demanding or even confrontational. Rather than identifying scapegoats, the instructor suggests going beyond apparent attacks and determining which stakeholders are justified in their demands and actions, to investigate their reactions from the perspective of their own reasoning rather than that of the organization. Then, students are encouraged to reconsider their viewpoint and to imagine novel solutions that would respond more effectively to the central issues at play in the crisis.
Fundamental Crises
According to Gundel (2005), fundamental crises are neither predictable nor subject to any influence. The most tragic example of a fundamental crisis is the terrorist attack of 9/11, which was neither predictable nor controllable. This crisis has challenged many assumptions sustained by Western countries about global security and geopolitical order, indicating a fundamental shakeout brought about by this crisis. Authors such as Mitroff and Alpaslan (2003) and Watkins and Bazerman (2003) have tried to imagine how to predict these fundamental crises or “unpredictable surprises.” The question that arises in these cases is, “How do we envisage the unimaginable?” This may quickly discourage students, given that the exceptional nature of these crises may leave them with the impression of wasting their time, because it is highly unlikely that a fundamental crisis will occur and they will not be able to influence it if it does.
Students need to understand, however, that complete unpredictability does not exist. Even though the likelihood of fundamental crises is very low, the instructor may depict them as powerful events that force us to think beyond the conventional frame of probabilities and rational anticipations. On this point, inspiring literary sources may be helpful to illustrate this aspect. Some novelists and scenarists, tapping into their own imagination and creativity, have, in a sense, anticipated some of the major catastrophes the world has faced so far. Morgan Robertson, for example, in his 1898 novella, Futility, or the Wreck of the Titan, featured a huge British passenger liner called the Titan, which, deemed unsinkable, sank after hitting an iceberg in the North Atlantic. Likewise, Tom Clancy imagined in his 1994 novel Debt of Honour the scenario of a plane crash on the U.S Capitol in Washington, D.C.
Thus, pedagogical methods must kindle students’ imagination. The conceptual challenge and practice of fundamental crisis consists of emphasizing that crises are as much the result of vulnerabilities reaching the saturation point as a genuine lack of awareness of their vulnerabilities (Roux-Dufort, 2009). The pedagogical approach involves reducing the mechanisms of ignorance to become aware of the vulnerabilities that had heretofore remained latent or gone ignored.
The instructor can propose a complementary avenue to the metaphorical approach suggested by Cirka and Corrigall (2010), consisting of using the revealing nature of crises to remove any cognitive limitations and highlight the vulnerabilities that could lead to a crisis. Here, the instructor calls on one of the most significant definitions of the concept of crisis, that of Morin (1993), according to whom a crisis has two characteristics that we may also use for our own ends as educators: (1) it is revealing and (2) it should be viewed as an effector, that is, “it triggers even if only for one moment, even if only in a pregnant state, everything that can bring out change, transformation and evolution” (Morin, 1993, p. 20). This is to say that a crisis reveals some vulnerabilities of which individuals had been unaware (Roux-Dufort, 2007) and it sets in play forces of change and transformation. Hence, these crises reflect the meaning of individual, organizational, or social imbalances leading to the breakdown. This conception of the crisis may serve as a pedagogical principle.
The instructor proposes two scenario-writing exercises. These exercises, like the metaphor exercise, are designed to change students’ traditional frames of reference. Scenario writing puts students to work, not to predict certain crises, but to develop a plausible scenario that can shed light on the vulnerabilities of contemporary organizations.
A method characterized as “the revealing scenario method” is similar to the metaphorical tool Cirka and Corrigall (2010) proposed. However, rather than using a free metaphor, the instructor invites students to identify an organization that they would like to study. In executive courses, students usually choose their own organization. Students are then asked to select a crisis case that they consider particularly illustrative of what constitutes a crisis. They may choose among the case studies already studied in class, but it is preferable for them to draw a current case from the press. The instructor forms small groups around each of the selected cases and then asks them to brainstorm all the characteristics that they view as constituting a crisis. They complete the following statement: “This is a crisis because . . .” Students generally come up with a number of characteristics such as the high number of victims, the rapidly escalating process, the negative media coverage, and management or diagnostic errors. Once students have identified these characteristics, they are told to classify characteristics according to broad categories to reduce the amount of data and to establish a crisis table. After students have completed their crisis table, the instructor asks them to find links between the crisis characteristics they brainstormed and their chosen organization. In the majority of cases, students see that their own organizations could be affected by crisis.
Other approaches, including the method of basic assumptions surfacing (Mitroff, 1983), can counterbalance evidence solidly anchored in students’ thinking about crises. The instructor invites students to determine the main strategic priorities of an organization of their choice and to make a list of stakeholders that strongly influence this organization. In this exercise, students must uncover the assumptions that underpin the strategy of an organization; uncovering these assumptions allows students to understand the behavior of various stakeholders in a crisis. The instructor divides the class again into two teams. The first team must collect all the necessary documentation that supports the assumptions of one or many stakeholders; meanwhile, the second team collects information that contradicts these assumptions. 7 For example, a big oil company intends to implement a pipeline in a country. The success of this project lies in the support of the local government, which appears to be a key stakeholder of the pipeline project. The organization may assume: “As far as the local government supports us, we are in a position to implement the pipeline successfully.” From that point on, one team of students is expected to collect information that supports the assumption about the local government (e.g., past relations between the company and this government that makes the implementation likely, aspects of the energy policy of the country that favor the implementation of such a project, financial aid provided in the past to the company for other projects). The other team of students brings in other inputs that question the assumption (e.g., past incidents or accidents recorded by the company in this country, unfavorable press coverage toward the project, public announcement of some ministers who do not support the idea of pipeline). This exercise allows students to test the robustness of the organization’s strategic choices and to envisage crisis scenarios for which it could prepare.
Conclusion
This article has presented the principal theoretical and conceptual, practical, and reflective challenges that crisis management educators will very likely confront in the course of their teaching and other interactions with students. Table 2 summarizes our main ideas. We have associated the three teaching challenges—theoretical and conceptual, practical, and reflective—with various pedagogical approaches that need to be kept up to date as crises evolve. We have illustrated how to deal with these challenges for four different types of crises (Gundel, 2005). The multidisciplinary nature of the field may not only be seen as a disadvantage (due to the lack of consistency and of integration) but also as an advantage if this diversity provides a conceptual toolbox composed of middle-range theories for responding to the variety of events in our contemporary world (Merton, 1968; Weick, 2007). The first part of this article discussed pedagogical methods for responding positively and constructively to each of these challenges, regardless of the type of crisis. The second part presented the challenges at work in dealing with crises classified according to two dimensions: predictability and the capacity for influence (Gundel, 2005). We have tried to paint an ambitiously comprehensive and integrative portrait, from which each instructor can make his or her choices and experiment accordingly. The task of teaching crisis management may appear daunting. It is up to each of us to make teaching this subject more fascinating than frustrating. We can do so by sharing the pedagogical techniques that have succeeded in our own classrooms.
A Synthesis of Approaches and Teaching Methods Based on the Three Challenges and Four Types of Crises
Footnotes
Appendix A
Some Definitions of the Concept of Crisis
| Hermann (1972, p. 13) | A crisis is a situation that threatens the high priority goals of the organization, restricts the amount of time available for response, and surprises decision-makers by its occurrence. |
| Milburn, Schuler, and Watman (1983, p. 1144) | We define an organizational crisis as: (a) an opportunity for the organization to attain its current goals; or (b) a demand of or threat against the organization which either prevents the organization from attaining its goals or actually removes or reduces an organization’s ability to attain its goals, that the organization seeks to resolve because the outcomes at stake are important and the resolution strategy is uncertain. |
| Rosenthal, Charles, and Hart (1989, p. 10) | A crisis represents a serious threat to the basic structures or the fundamental values and norms of a system, which under time pressure and highly uncertain circumstances necessitates making vital decisions. |
| Pauchant and Mitroff (1990, p. 121) | We define a crisis as a disruption that either affects or has the potential to affect a whole system, thus threatening the very core of its social identity. |
| Keown-McMullan (1997, p. 8) | Three elements characterize a crisis: (1) a triggering event causing significant change or having the potential to cause significant change; (2) the inability to cope with the change which has taken place; (3) a trigger so significant as to pose a threat to the survival of the organization. |
| Pearson and Clair (1998, p. 60) | An organizational crisis is a low-probability, high-impact situation that is perceived by critical stakeholders to threaten the viability of the organization and that is subjectively experienced by these individuals as personally and socially threatening. Ambiguity of cause, effect and means of resolution of the organizational crisis will lead to disillusionment or loss of psychic and shared meaning, as well as to the shattering of commonly held beliefs and values and individual basic assumptions. |
| Seeger, Sellnow, and Ulmer (1998, p. 233) | Organizational crises are specific, unexpected and non-routine events that create high levels of uncertainty and threaten or are perceived to threaten an organization’s high priority goals. |
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) wish to thank the Social Sciences and Humanities Council (SSRH) of Canada for the financial support in the production of this article.
Notes
References
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