Handbook of Critical Incident Analysis

Richard W Schwester

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN: 9780765627247
• eBook ISBN: 9781317469124
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Organisational Behaviour
• Index: Business

Critical incidents all too often explode onto the social conscious and challenge our sense of security. This comprehensive handbook brings together a range of experts who provide a foundation for the field of critical incident analysis by examining specific incidents9/11, the Virginia Tech massacre, the H1N1 pandemic, the BP oil spill, and more--through various methodological and disciplinary lenses.

This groundbreaking book develops a new organizational theory derived from ideas in statistics and psychometrics. The author's core premise is that errors known to occur in social science research must also occur when managers look at their data and seek to make inferences about cause and effect. Statistico-organizational theory uses methodological principles to predict when errors occur and how great they will be. Expanding on this concept, The Meta-Analytic Organization offers new theoretical propositions about organizational strategy and structure with wide application to human resource management, international business, and more.

PART I

UNDERSTANDING THE FIELD OF CRITICAL INCIDENT ANALYSIS

CHAPTER 1

The Emergence of Critical Incident Analysis as a Field of Study

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FRANK OCHBERG

This Handbook of Critical Incident Analysis gathers scholars from remarkably different disciplines who share a common quest. We recognize that certain newsworthy events explode into public awareness, dominate discourse, challenge our sense of equanimity, and have the potential to live on as icons of an era. We seek a better understanding of these episodes so that we can define their elements, recognize their antecedents, anticipate their consequences, and gather evidence for scholars and interveners who will confront future incidents. Our work follows other organized efforts to analyze incidents, but emphasizes the creation of an academic enterprise, rather than the critique of crisis management from the perspective of public officials. Our quest, therefore, is the field of critical incident analysis itself. To create this interdisciplinary discipline we need a compendium of cases; an archive of data; an approach to analysis that includes science, history, and other tools of the academic trades; and a common language. Along the way, we must set boundaries and limits, but understand relevant issues that abut on those perimeter walls. We need to recognize and respect differences among scholars who represent conflicting perspectives. For example, one of our founders, a natural scientist who designed and taught a course in critical incident analysis to honors undergraduates, limits his purview to destructive episodes, whether natural disasters (the San Francisco earthquake), colossal mistakes (the Exxon Valdez oil spill), or intentional acts (the Oklahoma City bombing). This distinguished professor argues forcefully and persuasively for a model of community disruption that reflects, in the aggregate, what post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) defines in the individual: a diagnosable disorder of thought, feeling, and function that can be studied and ameliorated. But other scholars, including several chapter authors of this handbook, contend that positive occurrences, such as the first manned mission to the moon (those memorable steps on lunar soil and the view of Earth as a beautiful but vulnerable celestial orb), fit the definition of “critical incident” and should be included in our list of cases for contemplation. Good or bad, these advocates argue, an incident is critical when it attracts widespread attention, changes the way we think or act, and lives on in the collective consciousness.

Since we began this journey in the early 1990s, lively debate has engaged and motivated our participants. My role has varied from instigator to facilitator to avuncular occupant of a seat at the table as others ably lead. I am very, very grateful to all who have contributed, particularly the W.A. Dart family, who saw fit to fund this new field from its inception at MSU; through incarnations at the University of Virginia (where it endures as the Critical Incident Analysis Group) and the National Defense University (where it is called the National Center for Critical Incident Analysis); to our home, the Academy for Critical Incident Analysis at John Jay College of Criminal Justice. Thank you. And no more commercials.

My plan for this chapter is to walk through the past two decades of direct involvement in critical incident activity, focusing on the issues rather than on the actors or the institutions that received Dart Foundation grants. Much has emerged, but the shape of this field remains inchoate. This handbook is the first attempt to define the academic science of Critical Incident Analysis. Chapter 1 initiates discussion, but does not resolve the following fundamental questions:

• What is a critical incident?

• How do we best analyze such incidents?

• What do we hope to achieve through critical incident analysis?

Let us return to 1991, where the journey began.

SADDAM HUSSEIN CALLS A MEETING

Remember the term “human shields”? It was during the George H.W Bush administration that Iraq invaded Kuwait and we prepared to retaliate with Desert Storm. To make us think twice about an air attack, Saddam captured Americans and other westerners who worked in the oil industry and held them at various locations so that we would not bomb those locations. Many of these hostages were married to Islamic women who were natives of Kuwait and Iraq. The women evacuated to the United States, congregating on the East Coast. I received a call from a journalist friend who described the hardship of these women, who were filled with fear, alien, and alone, and in need of psychological and social support.

I also heard from a mental health colleague who wanted to mobilize PTSD experts to provide pro bono therapy for these wives of human shields. We formed a unit of volunteers, most of whom were founders of the International Society for Traumatic Stress Studies, and did just that. We called ourselves USA-Give. This activity caused us to convene in weekly phone calls to manage the new charity.

The work went well, but then an extraordinary event occurred. One of the wives decided, on her own, to seek an audience with Saddam Hussein to implore him to release her husband. Another wife learned of this and asked to join. A movement began, with prominent Americans (Andrew Young, John Connelly), interested in coleading the mission. I found an advisor in the Bush administration who agreed to provide anonymous guidance to me and the group about the timing of the visit. She was of high rank in the U.S. State Department, and she said, “If my husband were a hostage I would do this. But we cannot appear to be involved.” The very first donation from Dart that I secured as foundation representative supported this mission, once Saddam Hussein agreed to meet with the wives of his human shields. I made sure that the journalist who alerted me to the plight of the wives had a place on the plane to Baghdad.

It worked.

The husbands of these wives were released as a gesture of humanity, and the other human shields were granted freedom several weeks later during the Christmas holiday season.

This “incident” was never critical as a diplomatic, political, or historic occurrence. Other events dominated the public agenda and shaped the flow of history. But it mattered to a small circle of therapists, journalists, and unofficial interveners. We helped Saddam Hussein call a meeting, and we celebrated a significant victory.

WACO BURNS—AND SO DO THOSE WHO EXPECTED BETTER FROM THE FBI

Fast-forward a few years to the spring of 1993 and the Branch Davidian standoff at Waco, Texas. A cult leader named David Koresh created a bizarre community of followers—men, women, and children—who revered him as a prophet, permitted him sexual access to married women and underage girls, and lived as a collective in an armed compound. Because their weapons were illegal, a field office team from the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms attempted an assault and arrest. In retrospect, this was a badly botched job. Agents were killed, the compound became a barricaded fortress, and the FBI was deployed to intervene. Like the 444-day American embassy siege in Tehran 1979, this 51-day televised incident became popular theater, started a national conversation, and ended in a deadly encounter.

I had a minor role. An ABC Nightline producer asked me to participate in a Ted Koppel interview on the question of whether the FBI was trying to influence David Koresh through its press conferences. To better prepare for that interview, I called the former chief of the behavioral science unit of the FBI, who put me in touch with the incident commander, the deputy assistant director of the FBI. I was told that the FBI did not use media to influence Koresh, but I was asked to mention a few things in my Nightline interview that might advance a theme in the current negotiation. Interesting paradox! We do not send signals through television interviews, but we will try it this time.

The interview was taped, but it never ran. The FBI attacked the compound that very night and Waco burned. The losses were terrible. Insiders knew about conflict between advocates for prolonged negotiation and advocates for an aggressive end to a national spectacle. The attorney general was new on the job and, in the opinion of all those I knew and trusted as insiders, was misled into believing that Koresh posed an immediate threat to his followers when actually he was injured and was focused on his idiosyncratic analysis of the book of Revelation, which was central to his terms for surrender to authorities.

Possibly because of this limited personal involvement, possibly because of my optimism from the mission to free human shields, I was delighted to receive separate requests from a retired FBI leader and an investigative journalist to help each analyze the tragedy at Waco. One wanted to prepare a white paper for the FBI director, constructively criticizing the erroneous use of force. The other was tasked by a prestigious journalism review to criticize the reporting of Waco. I decided to invite both to MSU, to ask the Dart Foundation to donate a small amount to cover costs, and to invite an eclectic group of faculty to attend a private discussion of emerging ideas.

Both individuals eventually wrote their critiques. Our faculty group never made a public report, but we did conduct a conversation at a television studio that resulted in a training tape for the FBI Academy. And we generated several ideas for seminars, research papers, and college courses.

Waco became a major national incident, with a national commission charged to investigate and report to the government and the people. A dissent was authored by a Harvard University professor who is a psychiatrist and a lawyer. He came to MSU to address a large audience. The sponsor of this event was the new Critical Incident Analysis Group, and the host was the dean of the College of Natural Science. The audience was an interesting mix of students, faculty, and members of the Michigan Militia.

Waco was a critical incident because children were burned to death as a large television audience watched in horror. Waco was critical because the FBI was the crisis management arm of the new administration, and the attorney general and the president were clearly responsible for approving the “terms of engagement.” But Waco was also critical because the nation was experiencing a strange phenomenon called “the patriot movement” or the “citizen militia.” This was not entirely new, but it took shape in that era with military uniforms, insignia of rank, training camps in rural counties, and leaders who were preachers and gun store owners and frequent guests on Nightline. Michigan had one of the largest militias in the nation. They were incensed by the slaughter at Waco, and they wanted government agents held accountable.

I found myself more concerned about the rise of the militia than about radical cults like the Davidians. Would the movement grow into a powerful political force? Could it undermine legitimate law enforcement as a rural vigilante operation? And would the FBI find itself drawn into a series of battles with this new adversary, further wounding its agents and its reputation?

The losses at Waco were profound, but something was growing out of the disaster that could be even more disastrous: a breach of trust between government and the governed.

DOMESTIC DIPLOMACY

To address this dire consequence of a bungled federal operation, my ex-FBI colleague and I decided to search for allies in the militia movement. We reasoned that men who cared about the U.S. Constitution and who claimed to abhor violence would appreciate respect and recognition from an odd couple of retired federal employees.

I asked a rural Michigan newspaper editor about approachable militia leaders, and he arranged a meeting in his office. The man who agreed to talk with me was, from 9 to 5 on workdays, a sanitary engineer with a county health department. After hours, he trained with the Wolverine Militia. We eyed each other warily, but gradually found common ground, deploring the tactics at Waco and regretting the shooting of Vicki Weaver at Ruby Ridge in Idaho in a previous incident involving a family of white separatists and an FBI marksman...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Introduction
• Part I Understanding the Field of Critical Incident Analysis
• Part II Disciplinary and Policy Perspectives in Critical Incident Analysis
• Part III Issues in Critical Incident Analysis Management
• About the Editor and Contributors
• Name Index
• Subject Index