Free US Law Dictionary

Crisis Management

Crisis management is the systematic attempt to avoid organizational crises or to manage those crises events that do occur (Pearson & Clair, 1998). A crisis is a major, unpredictable event that threatens to harm an organization and its stakeholders. Although crisis events are unpredictable, they are not unexpected (Coombs, 1999). Crises can affect all segments of society – businesses, churches, educational institutions, families, non-profits and the government and are caused by a wide range of reasons. Although the definitions can vary greatly, three elements are common to most definitions of crisis: (a) a threat to the organization, (b) the element of surprise, and (c) a short decision time (Seeger, Sellnow & Ulmer, 1998).

There are four types of organizational crises: Sudden Crises, such as fires, explosions, natural disasters, workplace violence, etc; Smoldering Crises, problems or issues that start out small and could be fixed or averted if someone was paying attention or recognized the potential for trouble; Bizarre, like the finger in the Wendy's Restaurant Chili, a one-of-a-kind crisis; and, Perceptual Crises, such as the long-running problem Proctor & Gamble used to have with their former corporate logo, that included a half-moon and stars, which critics would claim were symbols of devil-worship, calling for boycotts of P&G products. (Smith & Millar, 2002)

The practice of crisis management involves attempts to eliminate technological failure as well as the development of formal communication systems to avoid or to manage crisis situations (Barton, 2001), and is a discipline within the broader context of management. Crisis management consists of skills and techniques required to assess, understand, and cope with any serious situation, especially from the moment it first occurs to the point that recovery procedures start.

Crisis management consists of methods used to respond to both the reality and perception of crises such as a Crisis Management Plan. Crisis management also involves establishing metrics to define what scenarios constitute a crisis and should consequently trigger the necessary response mechanisms. It consists of the communication that occurs within the response phase of emergency management scenarios.

The related terms emergency management and business continuity management focus respectively on the prompt but short lived "first aid" type of response (e.g. putting the fire out) and the longer term recovery and restoration phases (e.g. moving operations to another site). Crisis is also a facet of risk management, although it is probably untrue to say that Crisis Management represents a failure of Risk Management since it will never be possible to totally mitigate the chances of catastrophes occurring.

Crisis management is occasionally referred to as incident management, although several industry specialists such as Peter Power argue that the term crisis management is more accurate.[1]