From floods to fires, tornadoes to terrorist attacks, governments must respond to a variety of crises and meet reasonable standards of performance. What accounts for governments’ effective responses to unfolding disasters? How should they organize and plan for significant emergencies? With fifteen adapted Kennedy School cases, students experience first-hand a series of large-scale emergencies and come away with a clear sense of the different types of disaster situations governments confront, with each type requiring different planning, resourcing, skill-building, leadership, and execution. Grappling with the details of flawed responses to the LA Riots or Hurricane Katrina, or with the success of the Incident Management System during the Pentagon fire on 9/11, students start to see the ways in which responders can improve capabilities and more adeptly navigate between technical or operational needs and political considerations.

Publisher Fact Sheet Shows executives & managers how to overcome an "it can't happen to us mentality" & prepare for crises, both large & small, before they happen.

In this book, the editors, with 25 notable contributors, expand the knowledge of crisis management, focusing on case studies of high-profile events that have occurred in recent history. Part One of the text aims at theoretical development through empirical case studies and also postulates a crisis typology and charts specific theoretical and administrative challenges. The 'case bank,' which comprises the bulk of the book, is presented in four additional sections. The first deals with the development of crises and compares the infamous Watts riots with the 1992 L.A. riots. It also analyzes the fragmented and complex international environment that allowed the 'safe area' in Bosnia to be overrun by Bosnian Serbs in 1995. The final chapter chronicles the incredible human costs of mismanaged crisis in the Rwanda massacres in 1994. The second section explores the many decisional dilemmas that confront crisis managers. Cases include the fire at the Piper Alpha oil rig; the 1999 Turkish earthquakes; the Eindhoven, Holland plane crash; and crisis management of the Mad Cow epidemic disease in the U.K. The third section explores the long-term dimensions of crises and crisis management and particularly the development of national traumas such as the assassination of Sweden's Prime Minister Olaf Palme in 1986, the 1992 Amsterdam air crash, and the TWA flight 800 disaster in 1996. The final section shifts focus to future scenarios such as speculative information technology disasters, potentially devastating viral epidemics, deteriorating environmental and societal conditions in Russia, the southwest U.S. coming water shortage, and the outlook for Japan, one of the worldÂ’s most disaster-prone countries. Summarizing the research findings of the past decade, the authors describe patterns in the paths toward crises, the dilemmas and coping mechanisms that emerge during the thick of crisis, and, very importantly, the pathways that lead away from crisis.

Modern organizational crises are complex, diverse, and frequent. Ineffective crisis management can result in catastrophic loss. Crisis Management: Resilience and Change introduces students to best practices for preventing, containing, and learning from crises in our global, media-driven society. While covering the strengths of existing works on crisis management, such as systems, leadership, communication, and stakeholder perspective, this innovative new text goes beyond to include global, ethical, change, and emotional aspects of crisis communication. Using her proven transformative crisis management framework, Sarah Kovoor-Misra illustrates how organizations of all sizes can be adaptable, proactive, resilient, and ethical in the face of calamity.

As the scale, frequency, and intensity of crises faced by the world have dramatically increased over the last decade, there is a critical need for a careful evaluation of knowledge of managing disasters. Managing Emergencies and Crises presents the experience of emergency management from a continental perspective by focusing on the emergency response systems, processes, and actors in the context of the United States and Europe. It explores the institutional, socio-cultural and political aspects of crisis response and management. Your students will examine questions such as: What does the experience of disaster response from Japan, Pakistan, Greece and Turkey to the UK and US tell us about the state-civil society cooperation in such environments? How effective are the existing prevention and preparedness mechanisms to protect societies against disasters? What specific roles are attributed to state, federal, international and private sector participants at a rhetorical level and how those actors actually carry out their ‘responsibilities’ and work with each other in the event of a crisis?

From general theories and concepts exploring the meaning and causes of crisis to practical strategies and techniques relevant to crises of specific types, crisis management is thoroughly explored. Features & Benefits: @* A collection of 385 signed entries are organized in A-to-Z fashion in 2 volumes available in both print and electronic formats.@* Entries conclude with Cross-References and Further Readings to guide students to in-depth resources.@* Selected entries feature boxed case studies, providing students with "lessons learned" in how various crises were successfully or unsuccessfully managed and why.@* Although organized A-to-Z, a thematic "Reader's Guide" in the front matter groups related entries by broad areas (e.g., Agencies & Organizations, Theories & Techniques, Economic Crises, etc.).@* Also in the front matter, a Chronology provides students with historical perspective on the development of crisis management as a discrete field of study.@* The work concludes with a comprehensive Index, which-in the electronic version-combines with the Reader's Guide and Cross-References to provide thorough search-and-browse capabilities.@* A template for an "All-Hazards Preparedness Plan" is provided the backmatter; the electronic version of this allows students to explore customized response plans for crises of various sorts.@* Appendices also include a Resource Guide to classic books, journals, and internet resources in the field, a Glossary, and a vetted list of crisis management-related degree programs, crisis management conferences, etc.