The Politics of Crisis Management: Public Leadership Under Pressure

Cover......Page 1
Half-title......Page 3
Title......Page 5
Copyright......Page 6
Contents......Page 7
Figures and Table......Page 9
Acknowledgments......Page 11
1.1 Crisis management and public leadership......Page 15
1.2 The nature of crisis......Page 16
1.3 The ubiquity of crisis......Page 18
1.4 Crisis management: leadership perspectives......Page 21
Sense making......Page 24
Decision making......Page 25
Meaning making......Page 26
Terminating......Page 27
Learning......Page 28
Toward policy advice......Page 29
2.1 What the hell is going on?......Page 32
2.2 Barriers to crisis recognition: organizational limitations......Page 33
Many organizations are not designed to look for trouble......Page 34
Variable disjunction of information and the politics of organization......Page 35
Cognitive blinders and the perversity of intelligent design......Page 37
The social and political construction of threat perception......Page 39
2.3 Psychological dimensions of sense making: stress and performance......Page 42
2.4 Precarious reality-testing: constraints......Page 44
Individual constraints......Page 45
Organizational constraints......Page 48
Mental slides......Page 49
Resilient organizations......Page 50
2.6 Conclusion......Page 51
3.1 The myth of chief executive choice......Page 56
3.2 Leaders as crisis decision makers......Page 57
3.3 Leaders and their crisis teams: group dynamics......Page 59
Success factors......Page 63
Non-decision making......Page 65
Decentralization......Page 67
Improvisation......Page 69
3.5 From decisions to responses: the importance of crisis coordination......Page 70
Fostering crisis coordination......Page 74
3.6 Putting crisis leadership in its place......Page 77
4.1 Crisis communication as politics......Page 83
4.2 Crisis communication in a mediated political world......Page 84
The mass media......Page 86
The public......Page 89
The government......Page 90
4.3 The battle for credibility......Page 92
Sources of credibility......Page 94
Credibility management in crisis communication......Page 95
Framing......Page 96
Rituals......Page 98
Masking......Page 100
4.5 Conclusion......Page 101
5.1 It ain\'t over till it\'s over......Page 105
The fast-burning crisis......Page 107
The long-shadow crisis......Page 109
To end a crisis: the delicate art of timing......Page 111
5.3 Crisis termination and the challenges of accountability......Page 113
Characteristics of accountability......Page 115
5.4 Blame games and the politics of meaning making......Page 117
Media......Page 119
Executive organizations......Page 120
Legislators......Page 122
Ad hoc commissions......Page 123
Citizens, victims, and interest groups......Page 124
5.5 Accountability, blame games, and democracy......Page 125
6.1 Never again!......Page 129
6.2 Learning from crisis......Page 131
Pessimists: constrained and perverse learning......Page 132
Optimists: enhanced and purposeful learning is possible......Page 134
6.3 Change without learning: crisis as opportunity for reform......Page 136
Why crises make reform possible......Page 137
Why reform does not always follow crisis......Page 140
Conditions for reform success......Page 143
6.4 Implementing lessons of crisis: an impossible task?......Page 144
Persuasion or muscle?......Page 145
6.5 The perils of opportunity: from crisis-induced reforms to reform-induced crises......Page 146
7.2 Grasping the nature of crises......Page 151
7.3 Improving crisis sense making......Page 154
7.4 Improving crisis decision making......Page 158
7.5 Improving crisis meaning making......Page 162
7.6 Improving crisis termination......Page 163
7.7 Improving crisis learning and reform craft......Page 166
7.8 Preparing for crises: concluding reflections......Page 170
References......Page 172
Index......Page 190