Managing Crises: Threats, Dilemmas, Opportunities

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 world’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.