The Routledge Companion to Risk, Crisis and Emergency Management

Robert P. Gephart, Jr., C. Chet Miller, Karin Svedberg Helgesson, Robert P. Gephart, Jr., C. Chet Miller, Karin Svedberg Helgesson, Jr. Gephart

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• eBook ISBN: 9781315458151
• Topic: Negocios y empresa
• Subtopic: Negocios en general

This volume provides a comprehensive, up-to-date overview of the latest management and organizational research related to risk, crisis, and emergency management. It is the first volume to present these separate, but related, disciplines together. Combined with a distinctly social and organizational science approach to the topics (as opposed to engineering or financial economics), the research presented here strengthens the intellectual foundations of the discipline while contributing to the development of the field.

The Routledge Companion to Risk, Crisis and Emergency Management promises to be a definitive treatise of the discipline today, with contributions from several key academics from around the world. It will prove a valuable reference for students, researchers, and practitioners seeking a broad, integrative view of risk and crisis management.

PART I

An Introduction to Risk, Crisis and Emergency Management

1
INTRODUCTION TO RISK, CRISIS AND EMERGENCY MANAGEMENT IN ENTERPRISES AND ORGANIZATIONS¹

Robert P. Gephart, Jr., Karin Svedberg Helgesson, and Max Ganzin

June 30, 2013, was another hot day in a demanding fire season in Arizona for the Granite Mountain (GM) Hotshot crew. The crew members were experienced but tired when they arrived at the Yarnell Fire Station early in the morning to assist with a nearby fire and had worked 28 out of 30 days fighting wildfires. After consulting with local officials, the crew had a look at the fire. The front of the fire was 1.5 miles long, but 45 minutes later, the fire had grown to 1,500 acres and was spreading rapidly. Additional air support was requested for the fire control operation, but a shortage of aircraft meant only two of four aircraft requested arrived by noon to coordinate the operation and drop fire retardant.

Brendan McDonough, a GM hotshot, was assigned to monitor the fire and warn the crew of danger. The other 18 crew members and their leader Eric set off to the anchor of the fire (McDonough, 2016, pp. 187–188). By 1.04 p.m., the fire was defeating all attempts at control. Soon thereafter, the fire status was increased to Type 1 TMT – the highest designation for fire, making the Yarnell fire the largest fire burning in Arizona.

When a thunderstorm rolled in, the wind reversed direction and the wind speed increased to 45–50 miles per hour due to the outflow winds, a situation that occurred in a previous fire that killed 14 firefighters. The Type 1 TMT fire designation was approved at 2.13, but the fire continued to be unstoppable, and the fire front grew to 3 miles in size. Then, the fire shifted suddenly and headed for the town of Yarnell.

At this time, the GM crew were positioned in a safe area near the fire (without the lookout McDonough), and they declined to redeploy to Yarnell. Then at 3.50 p.m., the GM crew learned the fire had turned toward Yarnell and would soon reach the GM vehicles. Eric, the GM crew leader, worked on an escape plan while he received a weather update. The fire line became increasingly unstable with tongues of flame heading in multiple directions as winds rose to 40–50 miles per hour.

McDonough abandoned his lookout position at 3.52 p.m. when the fire, “moving faster than anyone could remember” (p. 199), came within 300 yards of his position. McDonough thought the other crew members were safe. But by 3.54 p.m., the fire was beyond control and closing in on the GM crew. At 4.04 p.m., Eric radioed that the crew were using the escape route. The fire was 0% contained, and the town of Yarnell was engulfed in flames.

The GM crew reached a saddle on a ridge enroute to the safe area at 4.20 p.m. and then moved down into a box canyon near the safe area for reasons that are unclear. Suddenly the wind speed increased to 50 mph, the fire changed direction, and a 100-feet high wall of flame that the crew could not see ran up the canyon toward the crew.

By 4.39 p.m., the GM crew were the only crew left in the area. Eric called an air tanker requesting a fire-retardant drop. He confirmed the crew were now cut off from their escape route and was preparing to deploy their fire shelters. The fire, now over 70-feet high and over 3,000 degrees F in temperature, passed over the crew who no longer responded to radio calls.

When the medical response team’s flight medic finally reached the deployment area by foot, he found the 19 bodies of the GM crew laid out on the ground in a horseshoe shape. The safe area they sought was only 600 yards away. Their radios were still working, but they were unable to survive a fire hot enough to melt uranium.

Introduction

This volume provides a comprehensive, broadly based and contemporary discussion of management and organizational research addressing risk, crisis and emergency management. Risk, in quantitative terms, is the probability of an event occurring multiplied by the magnitude of losses or gains involved in the event (Lupton, 1999). Historically, risk was essential to accessing opportunities and included both positive and negative outcomes. The meaning of risk has changed in late modernity, and it now refers to threats, hazards and dangers that are unquantifiable uncertainties with unknown probabilities of occurrence. And risks may require expertise for detection and/or mitigation.

Consider the GM example above. Wildfire management requires skilled workers trained in the technical challenges involved in controlling wildfires that by nature are unpredictable in their behavior. Firefighters at Yarnell faced numerous risks including the threat of incineration by the wildfire. The GM crew were early responders to a risky event that quickly escalated into a crisis. Organizational crises can thus be conceived as realized risks that involve major, unpredictable events that have the potential to produce extensive harms and where the aftermath of the events may “damage an organization and its employees, products, services, financial condition and reputation” (Barton, 1993, p. 2). The GM case shows the company’s firefighters experienced a crisis because the risks they anticipated evolved into a crisis when the crew were unable to properly locate and monitor the boundaries of the fire. They then became trapped by the fire and lost their lives. The fire was part of a larger, preexisting crisis – the wildfire threatening the town of Yarnell. In addition, the management of emergencies by definition requires urgent efforts by individuals and organizations to address and remediate the immediate and local impacts of an emerging danger. In this case, local officials attempted to contact the GM crew and sent emergency workers to rescue the trapped workers. They were unsuccessful because the 19 workers had lost their lives due to the unanticipated intensity of the fire when they sought to protect themselves.

This example also shows how risk, crisis and emergency management can occur in close temporal and physical proximity as part of the triad of risk, crisis and emergency management processes explored in this volume. The current volume extends the conceptual boundaries of the risk, crisis and emergency management domain addressed in previous research. It encourages and assists readers to envision a broader perspective on risk that addresses risks and crises in emergency contexts, thus emphasizing the interactions between these three aspects and the need to examine and understand risk and crisis events in their naturally occurring contexts. To do so, the volume includes theoretical and conceptual reviews, original empirical research including case studies that illustrate the issues involved, as well as essays and opinion pieces that extend and inform management practice. Overall, the volume provides an important, stand-alone introduction to the field and an important and detailed resource for use in teaching, designing research and informing practice.

Following from this, the general purpose of the book is to offer an up-to-date and state-of-the-art understanding of risk, crisis and emergency management issues based on social science theories, concepts, methods and empirical findings. Practitioner insights are presented in actionable frameworks, practical essays, case descriptions and data from interviews included in the chapters. The book also contributes to the advancement of the field of risk and crisis management by integrating three interrelated streams or areas of scholarship and practice that often overlap but are seldom considered in the same volume: the areas of risk and risk management, industrial crisis management, and emergency and safety management. The book is therefore distinct because it seeks to be highly integrative across previously isolated areas. Further, it takes a strong social and organizational science view rather than emphasizing engineering practice or financial economics and incorporates advances from cultural studies of risk. Because many, if not most, of the existing general texts on risk, crisis or emergency management are becoming dated and do little to address all three of the interrelated features the current book will address, the book offers a uniquely up-to-date and integrated perspective on the field of risk and crisis studies.

The volume builds on the needs of the field initially outlined in part by Pearson, Roux-Dufort and Clair (2007). It strengthens the intellectual foundations of risk, crisis and emergency management, foundations that are not yet fully developed. It captures grounded perspectives based on evidence, research and practice rather than on speculation or armchair theorizing. It brings the contributions of organizational science and cultural studies of risk more fully into the field of crisis management and related areas. And it provides insights to help create more integrated, effective and practical approaches to anticipating, preventing, managing and recovering from crisis. To ensure the quality and timeliness of these contributions, the contributing authors are actively involved in the field of risk, crisis and emergency management. Many of the authors have undertaken extensive and recent research in the field, thus ensuring the scholarly quality and rigor of the book. Also, a number of authors have experience as risk, crisis and management consultants and practitioners. Finally, the specific issues addressed in the book were identified through an extensive review of recent and foundational scholarly research in the field of risk and crisis management. The parts of the volume are presented in terms of the general themes we found in the scholarly literature as well as the important features or components of scholarly research.

The Current Volume

Part I: Introduction

The first part of the volume provides an overview of the background, objectives, contents and contributions of the present volume.

Part II: Foundational Processes

The second part addresses common processes and essential aspects of risks and crises. It provides readers with information on the context of crisis management and research and addresses basic challenges in crisis management including recovery from disaster, communication and emergency response teams foundational to risk, crisis and emergency management scholarship.

Chapter 2, “Key Challenges in Crisis Management” by Wolbers and Boersma, addresses the role of the four c’s of crisis management – cognition, communication, coordination and control. The focus is on the needs of first responders and the organizational challenges they face as they attempt to address the situation. The issues are illustrated with a description of the initial response to the February 2009 Turkish Airlines crash at Schiphol Airport that killed nine persons and wounded 86 others, and the authors discuss how these processes are essential but often problematic during the initial response operations. Based on the dilemmas observed, the authors suggest three themes for future research related to the four c’s: the use of ad hoc teams in emergency management, the need to monitor and implement command tactics to ensure co-ordination, and developing and using a flexible information management process.

Chapter 3, “Post-disaster Recovery: Pathways for Fostering Disaster Risk Reduction” by Le Dé and Shrestha, examines the process of disaster recovery from a geographer’s perspective. The authors emphasize the importance of recovery that reduces the risk of future disasters. Challenges to disaster risk reduction in the recovery process are noted, extensive examples of disaster recovery issues in developing and developed countries are provided, and the chapter discusses how to overcome the challenges of recovery to build back better.

Chapter 4, “Crisis Communication: The Best Evidence from Research” by Timothy Coombs, provides an overview of evidence-based knowledge generated through experimental research and content analysis in crisis communication. Coombs covers topics that are important to crisis managers: effectiveness of various crisis response strategies, timing of crisis communication, the use of news stories and social media, and the qualities that enhance the effectiveness of spokespersons. Coombs emphasizes the critical role crisis communication plays in crisis management and provides insights into effective ways to engage in crisis communication.

Chapter 5, “Collective Fit for Emergency Response Teams” by Schantz and Woods, develops a multilevel model of team-level fit in emergency response teams. The authors extend the individually focused concept of person-environment fit by developing the concept of collective fit as a meso-level property and explore how individual, environmental and contextual factors influence collective fit in emergency response teams. Because the work of emergency response teams saves lives, it is very important to understand the conditions of collective fit that leads to optimal functioning. The model can be used by emergency management leaders to strengthen the development of collective fit in emergency response teams.

Part III: Theoretical Viewpoints and Methods

The third part describes theoretical perspectives and methodological orientations that are commonly used in the field of crisis management research including newer and emerging approaches.

Chapter 6, “Risk, Crisis and Organizational Failure: Toward a Post-rationalist Theory” by Thomas Beamish, reviews the strengths and limits of prevailing rational sociological theories of risk and organizational failure to explore how normative processes that lie outside of rational actions lead to failure as theorized by institutional theorists. The chapter reviews sociological theories of organizational risk including normal accident theory and high reliability theory, noting strengths and limits of these theories. Beamish then offers a post-rational theory of risk and organizations that extends the institutional perspective on risks, crises and organizational failures in rationally planned to organizations to situations where nonrational factors including “normal” technological failures, informal normative processes and informal structures play a central role.

Chapter 7, “Risk Sensemaking” by Gephart and Ganzin, explores risk sensemaking as the primary agentive process in crisis and emergency management that involves noticing, interpreting, understanding and reacting to risks and crises. Sensemaking is foundational to understanding risks and crises because it addresses the active and agentive aspect of human conduct – noticing, interpreting and acting in the social world. The chapter describes and compares two important approaches to sensemaking about risk: (1) the sociological approach of ethnomethodology (Garfinkel, 1967) and (2) the cognitive approach of Karl Weick (1995, 2001). Examples of research using each approach are described, and guidance is provided for future research using the perspectives.

Chapter 8, “Qualitative and Quantitative Methods” by McKee, Lubojacky and Miller, explores questions of rigor and balance in the methods used in the field of crises, risks and emergency management through analyses of 139 unique and recent empirical studies. The authors primarily analyze five issues: the relative use of quantitative vs. qualitative approaches, preferences for theory-driven or phenomenon-driven underpinnings, the assortment of archival and more proximate data sources, emphases on real-time vs. retrospective vs. prospective data, and how the surfacing of victims’ voices rather than only those of elites are handled. The chapter also probes the possible presence of publication bias and limited triangulation in the empirical studies analyzed. The authors conclude that, overall, the field is reasonably well balanced and rigorous. Still, they raise concerns relating to the underutilization of quantitative studies, an overabundance of theory-driven foundations, probable publication bias and limited triangulation.

Chapter 9, “Researching Extreme Contexts: Taking Stock of Research Methods on Extreme Contexts and Moving Forward” by Hällgren and Rouleau, explores research on extreme contexts where risks, crises and emergencies can occur. The researchers identified three time periods of extreme context research that they label emergence, expansion and consolidation. They then assess the methods sections from 120 papers published in top-tier journals in each period between 1980 and 2015 to uncover trends in methods and suggest opportunities for future research.

Chapter 10, “Local Translations of Operational Risk” by Barbara Czarniawska, extends the theoretical viewpoints in the volume by offering a translation perspective on risk management and highlighting its merits relative to a diffusion perspective. The chapter then provides a comparative analysis of the translation of a European financial regulation in two local national contexts, Sweden and Poland, and discusses how local translations are influenced by both present and past circumstances and how they differ from one another. The chapter finds that a widely shared belief in the value of quantifying risks is the main suggested remedy and preferred way to manage risk across the two contexts. This illustrates how vague formulations of risk, combined with sophisticated calculation techniques, take precedence over the complexity of actual practices.

Part IV: Types of Crises

The fourth part, Types of Crises, addresses a range of well-known and important forms of crises recently studied and that are highly salient today.

This discussion starts with Chapter 11, “The Co-evolution of Reputation Management, Governance Capacity, Legitimacy and Accountability in Crisis Management” by Christensen, Lægreid a...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication Page
• Table of Contents
• List of Figures
• List of Tables
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• Authors
• Contributors
• Part I An Introduction to Risk, Crisis and Emergency Management
• Part II Foundational Processes
• Part III Theoretical Viewpoints and Methods
• Part IV Types of Crises
• Part V International Case Studies
• Part VI Current Issues
• Part VII Dialogue and Commentary on the Future of Risk, Crisis and Emergency Management
• Index