Crisis Management in political systems and the five leadership challenges

 Public leadership
 Nature of crisis
 leadership perspectives
 Leadership in crisis: five critical tasks
 Questions
Broad scope of crisis
 Similarities of such situations: leaders may have to make fast decisions,
while needed information is not available.
 Question: Can leaders be prepared for the crisis of the future?
 COVID-19 showed that some countries do better (East Asian) while others
do worse (e.g., Western countries)
o WHY IS THAT THE CASE?
 LEADERSHIP?
 INSTITUTIONS?
 CULTURE AND VALUES?
 PAST EXPERIENCES?
Crisis management and public leadership
Thomas Jefferson wrote to John B. Colvin in 1810
“...strict observance of the written laws is doubtless one of the high duties of a
good citizen, but it is not the highest. The laws of necessity, of self-preservation, of
saving our country when in danger, are of higher obligation. To lose our country
by a scrupulous adherence to written law, would be to lose the law itself, with life,
liberty, property and all those who are enjoying them with us.”
Crises and leadership
 Crises built up slowly over time or occur suddenly.
 They test organizations, show their weaknesses, strengths.
 Leadership & personalities are critical (pragmatism)
 Politicians rise when succeed as manager and fall fast when they fail.
 For analysts it is important to be aware that: Politicians can misuse their
power in crisis situations, intimidate populations to implement their agendas.
 Efficient management of a crisis: not always priority since leaders often
benefit from crises.
 Institutional consequences: changed laws, organizations, basic rights,

The nature of crisis

Definitions of crisis (Boin et al., p.2)
1. “Crises are transitional phases, during which the normal ways of operating
no longer work.”
2. A crisis is “a serious threat to the basic structures or the fundamental values
and norms of a system, which under time pressure and highly uncertain
circumstances necessitates making vital decisions”.

Threat
 Crises occur when core values or life-sustaining systems of a community
come under threat.
o Values may be safety, security, welfare and health, integrity, fairness.
o The more lives are under threat, the deeper the crisis goes.
o However: a crisis does not automatically entail victims or damages
(see financial crisis, among others)
Urgency and Uncertainty
 Climate change is slow – so there was no feeling of crisis for decades; this
changed now: why?
 Leadership at operational level: decisions about life and death have to be
made fast.
o Example: in 1988, commander of battle cruiser Vincennes decided to
down an incoming aircraft from Iran – 288 civilians died in Hormuz
Strait
o Think about the commander’s situation.

The omnipresence of crisis and leadership perspectives

General Questions about contemporary crises
 Have modern systems become increasingly vulnerable to breakdown?
 Or are modern societies less resilient against shocks?
 Role of media: enhancing “panicking”?
 Are crises an unwanted by-product of complex systems?
 Has globalization gone too far?  deglobalization
o Covid-19 might accelerate de-globalization/protectionism.
o But what would be the costs of changed behavior?
 Many more people died in car accidents after September 11,
2001, because they avoided to take plane.
 Covid-19 policies might save lives, but ruin economies and
depress and kill people.

Systems connected to other subsystems increase vulnerability, while minor

incidents can cause chain reactions and catastrophes.
 globalization and ICT connect world markets and financial systems – even a
small financial meltdown might shock world finance.
 Non-linear dynamics and complexity make a crisis hard to detect, a minor
trigger in an environment of ignorance might initiate escalate destruction
within a system.
Leadership and crisis
 People expect political leadership.
 Leadership in different political and cultural configuration (democracy –
autocracy, East-West)
 Different cultural context: Emperors in China and 天下
o Are there differences between East and West?
o Putin and submarine Kursk: G. Bush and Hurricane Kathrina
o Xi Jinping and Corvid-19
o ‘shut down’ of cities in dictatorships/democracies.
 Crisis management is a deeply political activity that may change
organizational orders: democracies under pressure.

Leadership in crisis: five critical tasks

Sense making:
 Characterize the kind of threat, its meaning, its signals.
Decision making:
 Among different options, with hard to predict consequences.
 Effective response requires interagency and intergovernmental coordination
(role of political system, hierarchies)
 Bureaucracies under stress, demand for flexibility
Meaning making:
 In this process, different actors compete on interpretation and how to best
deal with a crisis.
 Citizens want to know what is going on and protect their
interestsAuthorities struggle with interpretation of information; citizens
often distrust authorities.
 Leaders have to reduce uncertainty and convince the audience.
o otherwise, their policies may not be implemented.
 New organizations (or rising Nations) may challenge the leadership’s
framing of a crisis.
Terminating:
 crises must not take too long; leader need to terminate them as fast as
possible.
 Shift back from emergency to routine:
o re-establishing the system of governance (rules, organizations)
 Accountability: leaders must be beyond doubt being not responsible for a
crisis to occur; avoidance of “blame games”
Learning:
 Political and organizational lesson drawing
 Planning and training for future crisis
 However, “lesson drawing” is one of the most underdeveloped aspects of
crisis management.
 Crises become part of collective memory (German’s fear of hyperinflation
led to inflation goal of ECB, Taiwanese fear SARS)
 Crisis as opportunities to clean-up: reforms often follow crisis.

RECOGNITION AND SENSE MAKING

What is going on? Organizational Barriers to crisis recognition
Question: Why do policy makers fail to see crises coming?
 9/11 terrorist attacks on WTC had roots, there were many warnings by secret
services, that had been neglected.
 However:
o Analogy with body disease – signals are felt, but battle against it
begins after manifestation.
 Therefore:
o 1) impossible to precisely predict a crisis
o 2) but it is possible to understand crisis dynamics when adequate
assessments take place
Barriers to Crisis Recognition: Organizational limitations
1) Organizations are not designed to detect potential crises.
2) Disjunction of information: Organizations are often not able to read the
signals accurately, and coordination and information exchange is weak,
3) “Normalization of Risk”: Modern organizations tend to have wrong (too
optimistic) perceptions of their risk management.
4) Ignorance of signals, ignorance against voices that prospect crisis

Organizations are not designed to detect potential crises.

 Organizations do not look for trouble, but:
o ... they try to achieve certain goals (“business solutions”), not to avoid
risks (achievement instead of avoidance)
 Most organizations do not collect data on unknown events and patterns: no
random scans to see whether there is “something out there.”
o D. Rumsfeld’s “known knowns, known unknowns, and unknown
unknowns.”

Disjunction of information
 Organizations often do not read the signals accurately.
 Although, such information usually would be available somewhere within an
organization.
o Signals may come from different parts of a system, that do not share
information, or that does not make it to the top-level of an
organization.
o Communication/ language problems may occur - example: The
German Coastguard
High-quality intelligence that put pieces together is a scarce resource...
Again, D. Rumsfeld: “if it is not intelligence, it would be fact.”
Why that? Two reasons...
1) Interpretation of data is a political process.
a. “where one stands depends on where one sits.”
b. In intra-governmental struggles, information and data gets
manipulated to best fit organizational interests.
2) People in organizations rarely agree on what data tells them.
a. Absence of mechanisms that facilitate sense-making within
governments.
b. Yet more complex within multiple organizations that get involved in
the sense-making process (some organizations my try to exclude
themselves to avoid blame, other may try to benefit from crisis
situations)

“Normalization of Risk”
 Highly modern organizations try to frame risks as rational as possible to
exclude any possible disasters: they may say “it won’t happen around here.”
 An organization that facilitates an attitude where all kinds of risks are
deliberately assessed may be blind for the unforeseen and unimagined crisis.

Example: The Challenger Explosion in 1986-

 NASA has elaborated a safety system that ran on engineering logic-
 Engineers of a subcontractor recommended a delay.
 However, they could not give exact assessment at which temperature a start
would be risky.
o they tried to rationalize the risk by giving an exact outside
temperature.
o NASA was not convinced, since it contradicted earlier assessments,
and allowed the star.
Ignorance of signals
 Process of recognition of a crisis often takes too long, till the government
reacts.
 Too many political issues struggled for years till they make it on
governmental level, but crisis need fast recognition.
 Much must happen before a significant number of people in charge agree on
the status of a problem.
 Examples include natural resources, natural disaster and their early warning
systems, spread of diseases, and so on.

Psychological dimensions and constraints

Decision maker under stress
 Stress: relationship between task load and coping capacity of individual or
collective
 Experienced experts maintain performance in stress situations, novices less
so
 Relationship between stress and performance: usually a “U”
 Different kinds of stress with different effects on performance (emotional
stress more severe)
 Stress ‘hangover’ (from previous stress situations) demands good personal
skills.

People under heavy stress.... (Boin et al., p.30)

 focus on short term, to the neglect of longer-term considerations.
 fall back on and rigidly cling to old and deeply rooted behavioral patterns
(often forgetting more recent ones)
 narrow and deepen their span of attention, scrutinizing “central” issues while
neglecting “peripheral” ones.
 Be more likely to rely on stereotypes or lapse fantasies.
 Be more easily irritable.
Individual constraints: research shows that...
 Under conditions of ambiguity humans tend to “see” what they expect to
occur
o They take a scrap of information (“cue”) and weave a scenario around
it, which is wrong...
o Problem then: only information is processed, that fits to the
assumption.
 Crucial information may be missing; it may be necessary to “go beyond the
information given.”
 Decision-maker seek for analogies, but often make misjudgments about
information.
 Within organizations, decision-maker tend not to challenge important people
within an organization.
 Conservative options are preferred, that ‘don’t rock the boat’ and “preserve
harmony rule.”
 Leaders with high demand for power and control tend to harden under stress.
 Leaders take political threats often emotional or personal (J.F.K.: “How can
Kruschev do that to ME”)

Organizational Constraints
 When a crisis has become manifest, organization information processing
usually does not become better. Why:
o At different points of time, different organizations may enter the
scene.
o Organizations have different perspectives on crisisThey often do not
share information.
o Information is power, and officials often receive information in an
arbitrary fashion (as punishment, or as reward)
o For security reasons, information is often compartmentalized (but who
knows who needs to know what?)
Conditions for reliable reality-testing
The ‘ideal’ commander
 Veteran military officers, journalists, bureaucrats, senior politicians often
have ability to remain cool.
 ‘Mental slides carousel’: commander with rich experience check previous
situations – once the specific situation is identified, he knows what to do.
 Who is “better”?
o Politicians usually have more time to react than commander and more
information available (interaction)
o but commanders experience more incidents.

....and resilient organizations

 Military, police, rescue service and organizations in high-technology
environment (nuclear power, chemical plants) have strong capacity for crisis
performance. Why that?
o Safety awareness
o Decentralization
o Training

DECISION MAKING
 Assumption: scale of response correlates with impact levels
 Leaders decide, but crisis responses are shaped by many more players.
o E.g., Experts: scientists, army, industries, (social) media
o Facilitation of crisis implementation and coordination is important as
well.
 Question: What role do values and public opinion play?
o Feedbacks with leaders
 Are there varying “risk societies”, if yes, how could that be measured?
 o Germans, e.g., are said to pay the highest security premiums
worldwide.
o Link: Munich Re and Coronavirus

Crises present leader’s choice opportunities that combine a number of

characteristics
 Choices are highly consequential.
o affect core values and interests of communities: price of both “right”
and “wrong” choices is high (socially, politically, economically, and
in human terms)
 Choices contain genuine dilemmas (tragic choices with lose-lose-
consequences)
o Shoot down a terrorist hijacked plane to avoid attacks on cities/
nuclear power plants?
o Intervene with troops in a country to end humanitarian catastrophes?
o In hospitals: first take care for a specific group of patients.

Response in a situation of uncertainty (that is, possible outcomes or

probability of an outcome is unknown)
 Leader face major uncertainties about
o nature of the issues
o likelihood of future developments
o possible impact of various policy options
 Choices have to be made relatively quickly.
o time pressure (no matter real, perceived, or self-imposed), means that.
o tried-and-tested methods of preparing, delaying, politically anchoring
of difficult decisions cannot be applied.
Examples of US American Presidents
passive (W. Wilson) “waits” for the crisis, but manage efficient (Bush senior);
take immediate response (Truman); deliberate efficiently (Kennedy, CC); discuss
almost endlessly (Carter); take a step back, let experts run the show (Obama)
 Fast decisions are not automatically good decisions:
 o Studies: quality of presidential crisis decision making was low in 7,
high in 8, and medium in 4 out of 19 cases
o Poor presidential performance rather relates to stress factors we
discussed before: stress-induced breakdowns is a major cause for
failures.
Newness and Conformity
 Underperformance: either too much conflict, or too much conformity within
small groups
 “New group syndrome” unfamiliar people coming together in crisis situation
increases the probability of easily agree with leaders, disagree covertly.
o People want to maintain their power position within the inner circle.
o Groupthink: collective ignorance, illusory unanimity, self-censorship

Excessive cordiality and conformity

 find shelter among peers...
 “bunker syndrome”: members of a group stick together and reify their
position even when outside situation is changing.
 Behavior depends also on interpersonal relations/ trust, etc.
 How to counter: make leaders responsible for decisions (media, opposition)

Political Infighting
 Competition within a group
o For the opinion leader
o For the leader’s ear
o Exclusion of other, even more competent actors
 Recommendation:
o (large collection of tapes on ‘secretly’ recorded presidential talks with
advisors from Roosevelt to Nixon)
o “The Kennedy Tapes” on Cuba crisis
Success factors of leadership
 Experience of teams on recurrent situations
 When mutual trust is pre-existent at a reasonable degree
 Conflict and competition, rivalry must be avoided.
 “domain consensus” on member roles and common goals and shared
understanding
 Acceptance of different roles of members – it must be clear who leads– and
who advise with duty to “speak truth to power”, even if truth is unpleasant.
 Procedure of “multiple advocacy” (collective deliberation)
 Establish a neutral “custodian”, “magistrate-leader”.
o That is a strong leader, that creates norm of equality within the circle,
but appears to the external world to be in charge.

What governmental crisis decisions “happen”?

Non-decision making
 In general: Crisis response takes shape of a network, where many actors at
different levels operate.
 Non-decision making may involve:
1. decisions that are not taken
2. decisions not to decide.
3. decisions not to act.
4. strategic evasion of choice opportunities

Decentralization or centralization?
 Centralization of crisis management has largest appeal in times of non-crisis,
but is often seen as insufficient, ineffective, or even counter-productive by
“ground staff.”
 However: decentralization is more efficient when crises emerge
 o Only those decisions that cannot be taken on the spot will rise to the
top.
o Example: submarine commanders in cold war had authority to launch
nuclear weapons after potential decapitating

Improvisation
 Some organizations are used to improvise, others not or constrain
improvisation.
 However, improvisation is important in the face of the “unforeseen.”
o NASA and Apollo 13 mission in 1970
 Large organizations have to be trained to recognize when their competence
is not adequate to deal with crisis, since staff otherwise may rely on SOP.

Coordination during crisis

What are problems of crisis coordination?
 Planned response/ SOP is not available.
o E.g., first-hand crisis operators lost their headquarter.
 Matching of place and function
o All organizations have their place and function, but in crisis ad hoc
formulation of function shall be possible (“breathe”)
 Upscaling and subsidiarity: it is often not clear, when higher authority shall
step in
 Unwillingness to cooperate with other organizations – rather rule than
exceptionProblem of bystanders (“mass convergence”)
 Counterstrategy: Countries with “disaster subculture”

Fostering crisis coordination: three conditions

 primary instinct in crisis is to reduce uncertainty: emergence of places where
people interact (“information nodes”) in a fast institutionalization process.
 (II): knowledge and capacity (communication technology, building,
supporting staff, etc.)
  (III): formalization of the coordination process after initial phases of CM
needs strong leadership.
o E.g., new actors may come in, while the “old” actors compete against
the new

Crisis Termination and accountability (International Crisis Management)

The Coffee Spill
 Was the crisis underestimated in the beginning?
 Can you outline different steps of crisis management?
 Which blame games do you observe regarding accountability?

Some crises last long time, others end quickly. Why? What factors make the
difference?
 Assumption: Crisis termination depends on the way how leaders deal with
the accountability (responsibility) process following the operational phase of
crisis
 Democratic accountability does not work in predictable, fair, or controllable
way – today’s heroes might be tomorrow’s villains.
o Example: the Dutch UN soldiers that left Srebrenica in 1995 – first
heroes, later coward after Bosnian Serbs committed massacres against
ca. 8000 Muslim men
 The political (and legal) dynamics of the accountability process determines
where crisis actors end up  court ruling held Dutch partly responsible.

The political challenge of crisis termination

 Crises have different life spans.
 Some actors wish crisis to end soon, other may wish crisis to take longer.
 Crises develop, escalate, and end in dynamic processes
 Some crises come out of the blue, others are permanent on a low level, but
could severely escalate
Two main ideal types
1) THE FAST-BURNING CRISIS
 Is, when termination of operational response marks political end of crisis
o Natural disasters
o Hijackings, hostage-takings met with swift military interventions.
2) THE LONG-SHADOW CRISIS
 Crisis remain alive in political and societal arena, even threats no longer
exist.
o De-escalation can take years, to prepare mentally for embarrassment
(e.g., Vietnam war)
o Enduring crisis may become operational (e.g., AIDS epidemic in
West) and still present, but low-scale.
o “endemic crisis” may include global warming, overpopulation,
deforestation, and water management; such crises can be seen as
“unmanageable” from national, short-term perspective.

Three conditions to rapidly terminate a crisis:

 Resilience/practice: e.g., earthquake in Japan, train crash in England
 Absence of democracy: e.g., leader says “Crisis over, troublemaker dead.”
 Emergence of a bigger or worse crisis: e.g., German chancellor Kohl in
1989 almost party-intern ousted from power, but political turbulences in East
Germany saved him.

3 distinctive types of crisis with capacity for “endurance”

 The “incomprehensible”
o Existing political-bureaucratic practices do not help out: question arise
about leadership, responsibility, future improvement.
  The “mismanaged” crisis
o People maltreated by police, corporations, courts.
 The “agenda-setting” crisis
o A crisis that became symbol for hitherto unseen or neglected risks
shapes problem for years to come

To end a crisis: the timing problem

Two crisis closure at operational AND political level

The challenges of accountability

Accountability and the “crisis after crisis”
 Leaders are required to explain what happened, what went wrong, and where
to go next.
 Societal expectation: policy makers will account for their actions.
 Often, a “crisis after crisis” emerges, that lift the original set of events from
level of operations to levels of policy and politics.
 What began as an accident or series of incidents turns into a story about
power, competence, leadership, and legitimacy (or lack of it)

Crisis managers are asked tough questions....

 Crisis manager who thinks they made a good job, can err about the
judgment...
o “Factual reconstruction”
o Manipulation of images
o Lesson-drawing
 “Why did this happen?”; “What was done to stop it?” “What should happen
next”?
o In the age of technology, “natural disasters” lost currency as
explanation, as does the notion of “human error” – therefore,
“management failure” is regarded as main reason for cause of an
accident.

Characteristics of Accountability
In Western societies, accountability process has moved from “fatalistic no-claim”
to high-accountability, high-remedy system.
 LEARNING AND REFLECTION:
o Crisis Management is about optimizing social abilities to prevent
extreme circumstances in future.
 ACCOUNTABILITY AND BLAME
o Takes place in parliament and in media/ public and in competition.
Blame Games and the politics of meaning making.
Key Questions of Actors:
“Blame game”: refers to the interaction between actors who are out to protect their
self-interests rather than to serve the common good.
1) How bad was the situation? How could it happen? Who is to be
sanctioned?
2) Was situation and incident or a symptom of underlying policy failures?
3) How central was any single actor (individual, organizational) in
producing the undesirable situation?

7 Actors in blame games

 Media: Play a powerful role in shaping the dominant interpretation
 Executive organizations: Hierarchy and political in-fighting within
executive and government
 Crisis response agencies: Accountability process can be a threat, since
everyone expects good job.
 Legislators Opportunity and threat: can proof being good controller, but,
e.g., have they been in charge or government before? Danger of hypocrisy
 Ad hoc commissions: Shall provide “independent”, “comprehensive”
assessments; composition often part of contestation.
 Investigation boards: In countries and sectors like transport, food, safety,
public health, governments have set up permanent investigation bodies, that
usually enjoy high reputation; situation similar to crisis response agencies;
competition between boards can have negative consequences.
 Citizens, victims, and interest groups: Citizens today are much more
active, have much better chances to get heard, and the political climate
favors “restorative justice.
Political Crisis Communication as Meaning Making
Crisis communication as politics
Q.: Why do some leaders fail in their crisis communication, why do others
succeed?
 Leaders attempt to reduce the public and political uncertainty caused by a
crisis (“Meaning Making”)
o That is: communicate a strong narrative, that explains what happened
why, with what consequences, how and by whom it can be resolved,
and who is to blame.
 That all happens in a politically highly competitive environment (mass
media, social media, ‘fake’ reports)

Battle of credibility in a mediated political world: a triangular relationship

Actors: Mass Media, Publics, Government

Mass Media
 Technical changes in recent decades: public news organisations in retreat,
newspapers less well staffed and financed, (private) TV news gained much
influence; Satellite TV, Internet, mobile phones globalized the media sector;
“24/7” news cycle.
 Politicized media
 o See media cases: Murdoch’s empire and Australian bush fires.
o The Guardian and “climate refugees”
o propaganda channels Russia Today; Global Times, China
o Fake news
o Persecution of free press (journalism in China, Russia, Turkey)
 Evolving media trends: more competitive, sensationalistic, aggressive in
their surveillance of political elite
o NYT, WP on Triump’s Corona crisis management
Has the role and work of media also changed? Academic debates
 Is Politics able to steer crisis communication in a certain direction?
 Are the “Watchdogs” less critical than decades ago?
 Or are media more aggressive than before (“attack journalism”)?
 Ideal: media as “Transmitters of vital public information” during crisis
 In Practice: media’s crisis reporting ranges from
o mere “faultfinding” to
o uncritical echoing of government positions
 Character of crisis reporting also depends on:
o organizational factors (reporting styles)
o Capacities
o experience of editors
The Public
 Common stereotype of public authorities: “citizens panic during a disaster”
o In fact: most citizens improvise rationally.
 However, citizens are more critical about information they receive during a
crisis (discrepancies? Inconsistencies?)

The government
Effectiveness of governmental crisis communication depends on degrees of:
 Preparedness
o No preparedness at all
o Too technical language
o Pro-active rumour tackling through precise information.
 coordination of outgoing information
 o “message discipline” in a hard to coordinate crisis environment with
many actors.
 professionalization
o Communication through PR professionals
o Crisis manager (pics: German virologist)

Battle of Credibility
Conditions: government as a credible crisis manager
 Credibility and sources of credibility
o Is there “a crisis history” of an organization in charge?
o Importance of “initial responses”: realistic, exaggerating, or
downplaying?
o Remember, Donald: “media tend to be more tolerant for
exaggeration”!
o “Timing of messages”: before or after media come up with the
embarrassing facts?
 Tactical publications: when media or public are occupied with
other very important things like FIFA World Cup...

Credibility management in crisis communication

 Overemphasizing rosy scenarios
o George Bush on aircraft carrier “Abraham Lincoln”: “Mission
Accomplished” in Iraq 2003
o “Trump wants to reopen America ‘By Easter’ “when new infections
are rampant (end of March 2020)
 Temptation to appear decisive.
o Media, public may expect strong statements by politicians, but
without knowing the facts, they are hard to deliver.
o Erratic contradictory statements
  “The Guardian” on South Korea and US leadership response to Corvid-
visus:
o One country acted swiftly and aggressively to detect and isolate the
virus, and by doing so has largely contained the crisis. The other
country dithered and procrastinated, became mired in chaos and
confusion, was distracted by the individual whims of its leader, and is
now confronted by a health emergency of daunting proportions.

Symbolic Crisis Management: Framing, Rituals, Masking

“Framing” of political crisis manager
 Framing involves the “selective exploitation of data, arguments, and
historical analogies.”
 They seek for support among their peer groups first.
 They use rhetorical and judicial language for meaning making.
 Metaphors/emotive concepts are used to increase or dampen fear among the
population.
o E.g., it makes a difference which terms are used to describe events:
“accident”, “tragedy”, “disaster”, or “crisis”, “technical error”, “man-
made”, etc.
 Fukushima Nuclear catastrophe “man-made” or “natural disaster”?
o Green Party in Germany spoke of 20 000 victims of Nuclear
catastrophe, government exit from nuclear power; while today,
Germany has one of the most expensive energy systems globally with
solar power but bad weather, wind power, but little wind, etc.)
 Kursk Submarine:
o Russian Navy: collision with a foreign vessel had triggered the event.
o Government: disaster caused by torpedo explosion
o Vice-Admiral Valery Ryazantsev: inadequate training, poor
maintenance, and incomplete inspections caused the crew to
mishandle the weapon.
Role of rhetoric
 Strong rhetoric “lifts” an event to a case of highest priority
 “Securitization” is aimed at increasing the leader’s political room for
maneuvering.
o “In security discourse, an issue is dramatised and presented as an issue
of supreme priority; thus, by labelling it as security, an agent claims a
need for and a right to treat it by extraordinary means” (Barry Buzan
et al. 1998)
 Judicial language
o aims at de-politicization, “non-partisan channel for defining situation
and assess success or failure.”
 After “framing” is done, psycho-political imperatives weighing upon crisis
manager.
o Thus, the “framing” of an event by language, rhetoric, also frames the
politics on crisis management, e.g., the more alarmist a language is,
the bolder may be politics.
 Rituals: Rituals are defined as symbolic behavior that is socially
standardized and repetitive; rituals follow highly structured, more or less
standardized sequences and are often enacted in certain places and times
(Boin et al.:84)
o Media: Merkel “shall talk to population every day on TV”
 o Ceremonies

Importance of “compassion” by political leaders cannot be overstated (in

democracies)
 Negative example 1: The Russian nuclear submarine Kursk exploded for
technical reasons in 2000. For months, Russian military declared it was an
attack by US military; President Putin was not a place, too.
 Negative example 2: Xi’s ignorance of scientist’s warnings
 Negative example 3: “We did a good job when 100 000 are dead.”
 Positive example: Chancellor Merkel on Corona Crisis March 2020: “It is
serious”: “a test for our country, for our rationality, our heart and our
solidarity.”

Corporations are in a similar situation.

 Example: Japanese Airlines (JAL) did well response to the plane loss in
1985 (memorial service, personal apologies by the JAL- President, financial
reparations paid, JAL/President took full responsibility,
o and the chief maintenance officer made all just “perfect” with his
Japanese-style ceremonial suicide)
 Do you know any other failed/successful examples?

Judicial rituals are important as well.

 People need the belief, that “justice” is done.
 Example situation: Street protests where police clashes with protesters, that
are injured/ killed.
 “full-scale, objective inquiry”, “independent experts”, or “wise men” may
help to reinvigorate public trust.
 “truth commission”, “transitional justice”

Politicians afterwards may claim to “have learned their lesson.

“Masking”
  Crisis manager “may sometimes see greater advantage” in concealment than
exposure.”
 Some say, “governments have the right to lie”, since status-quo-oriented
politicians may want to protect “social order.”
 Sometimes, catastrophes are simply ignored, or the “truth” is only revealed
piece by piece.
 Masking efforts may succeed and buy the official time or political credit
(Trump’s popularity increased during Corona crisis)
 However, masking failure occurs often.
o See BP oil spill in Gulf of Mexico (20010), Three Mile Island nuclear
incident (1979)

1) What is a crisis?

a) When values like safety, security, welfare and health, integrity, and fairness are severely
threatened, we can speak of a crisis.

b) A crisis is when many people are threatened to lose their lives because of extraordinary
circumstances, although not each crisis will bear civil losses.

c) It is a severe threat to the underlying structures or the fundamental values and norms of a
system, which under time pressure and highly uncertain circumstances necessitates making vital
decisions".

d) all of the above is correct

2) When do crises occur?

a) During and after hurricanes and floods, earthquakes, tsunamis, and other natural disasters, and
when many people are directly affected by such hazards. They occur in the circumstances, in
which leaders are forced to make fast decisions during which standard ways of communication
do no longer work.

b) They occur when the parliamentary opposition rejects governments national budget plan.

c) Crises occur when core values or life-sustaining systems of a community are interrupted or
destroyed.

d) A and c are correct.

3) "Realism" focuses on which actors regarding international crisis management?

a) It focuses on the role of international governmental and non-governmental organizations

b) It would exclusively look at the role of states and governments

c) It would focus on non-governmental organizations, including private corporations

d) It would focus on organizations, states, and non-governmental organizations and how they
coordinate their policies

4) "Liberalism" focuses on which kind of actors in international crisis management?

a) It would focus on the role of international governmental and non-governmental organizations

b) It would exclusively look at the role of states and governments

c) It would focus on non-governmental organizations, including private corporations

d) It would focus on organizations, states, and non-governmental organizations and how they
coordinate their policies

5) According to experts in different fields (economy, climate, cyberspace, politics, health),

there are more crises for humankind to be expected in the future. Which theory would
claim that a crisis is "what humans make of it", and that a different perception (like for
instance a more relaxed awareness of risks as a natural condition of life) could contribute
to a more relaxed attitude regarding many dangers and therefore also to more relaxed
crisis responses?

a) Structuralism

b) Neorealism

c) Liberalism

d) Constructivism

6) What would be new threats that demand crisis management by organizations?

a) Earthquakes

b) The collapse of information and communication systems

c) The spread of unknown viruses

d) Tsunamis

7) What effects on politics and bureaucracy can a crisis have?

a) Crises shake bureaucratic rank orders

b) Crises make and break political careers

c)Crises shape organizational destinies.

d) all of the above is right

8) Why do experts claim that minor incidents today can trigger a major crisis?

a) Non-linear dynamics and complexity make a crisis hard to detect, while a minor trigger in an
environment of Ignorance may initiate destructive escalation within a system.

b) The Chinese use two brush strokes to write the word 'crisis.' One brush stroke stands for
danger: the other for opportunity. In a crisis, be aware of the risk--but recognize the opportunity.

c) Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and we are not sure about the
universe

d) A butterfly in tropical Brazilian forests may, with using her wings, trigger a Hurricane racing
towards the shores of New Orleans

9) What are the critical tasks of crisis management leadership?

a) Sensemaking, misleading, propaganda making, decision making, responsibility transfer

b) Data cooking, opinion-making, power conservation, fact hiding, blame gaming

c) Sensemaking, meaning-making, decision making, terminating, and learning

d) Sensemaking, signalling, media reporting, implementation, enforcement

10) Why do many assume that modern societies would be less resilient against shocks?

a) Because people are too sensitive nowadays

b) Because of women's emancipation and the spread of soft "female" values c)

Because of the growing interdependence of real and virtual systems

d) all of the above

11) What means "crisis management is a deeply political activity"?

a) Politicians of government and opposition do all their best to cooperate and make the best
decisions to overcome the crisis. Crisis management is the time for bipartisanship where all work
together.

b) Politicians do not only think about how to deal with a crisis the best way, but also which
strategies would help them the best way to obtain an advantage against political opponents
within and outside a government, and what best may help them to get a credible image as good
crisis manager.

c) Crisis manager only has in mind how to best terminate the crisis, save people's lives and
restore the situation before the disaster.

d) Crisis managers do all the best to make deliberate decisions to terminate a crisis as fast as
possible after all involved organizations had presented their full information on a given crisis

12) What is "meaning-making" in crisis management?

a) It is a process where different actors may compete on interpretation and how best deal with a
crisis.

b) It is a process which aims to calm down people and regain trust in the institutions
c) It is a process where opposition leaders and other organizations like media are excluded by the
government. It often entails a news embargo.

d) all of the above is correct

13) Why is meaning-making a central task for leadership management?

a) Leaders are expected to reduce uncertainty, and must be convincing against the audience;
otherwise, their policies may not be implemented

b) If the crisis manager fails to interpret a crisis situation convincingly, then other actors will step
in

c) Citizens often distrust authorities

d) all of the above is correct

14) Why do policymakers often fail to see a crisis coming, even if many signals are at hand?

a) Often, the emergence of crisis is constructed by political elites

b) It is still impossible to precisely predict a crisis. One reason is, that organizations often do not
effectively communicate with each other, and they may interpret facts in a different way.

c) There are not enough organizational barriers, that would stop a crisis

d) The problem is that Ignorance became a point of view.

15) What are organizational limitations in crisis management?

a) Most organization suffer from too strong administrations that advance too many rules that
keep away researcher and analysts from their professional tasks.

b) Organizations are often not able to read the signals accurately, and coordination and
information exchange is weak. Besides, modern organizations tend to have wrong (too
optimistic) perceptions of their risk management.

c) Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored. However, war is peace, freedom is
slavery, and Ignorance is strength.

d) all of the above is correct

16) What is the meaning of the sentence "Organizations are not designed to detect potential
crises"?

a) Organizations often do not read the signals accurately

b) Most organizations do not collect data on unknown events and patterns

c) Organizations do not look for trouble, but they try to achieve individual goals

d) all of the above is correct

17) Why is information often not read and interpreted appropriately to predict a crisis?

a) An organization that facilitates an attitude where all kinds of risks are deliberately assessed
may be blind for the unforeseen and unimagined crisis

b) Well, because "where one stands depends on where one sits"! The interpretation of data is a
political process. Moreover, people in organizations rarely agree on the understanding of
information.

c) Highly modern organizations try to frame risks as rational as possible to exclude any possible
disasters: they may say "it won't happen around here."

d) all of the above is correct

18) Good crisis manager needs to be able to adapt well to stress and keep calm. What are
the stress factors that can harm crisis management psychic ability?

a) They are less likely to rely on stereotypes or lapse fantasies and are less easily irritable.

b) They focus on the long term to the neglect of shorter-term considerations

c)They fall back on and rigidly cling to old and deeply rooted behavioural patterns (often
forgetting more recent ones). They scrutinize "central" issues while neglecting less important
ones.
d) all of the above is correct

19) Does organizational information processing usually get better during a crisis?

a) Yes, because when the crisis manager knows each other better, they feel more empathy with
each other.

b) Information is power, and for security reasons, information processing is often centralized, so
that all branches of an organization share the same knowledge of high importance.

c) Often not, since at different points of time, various organizations may enter the scene, that
may have different perspectives and do not share information

d) All of the above is wrong.

20) Is the role of media during crisis different or more or less the same compared to 30
years ago?

a) The media did not change their styles in reporting, although the technology has changed
rapidly in recent 20 years.

b) The media today are more competitive, sensationalistic, aggressive in their surveillance of
political elite. However, it is not fully known whether the "watchdogs" are less critical than
decades ago, or whether they are more aggressive than before ("attack journalism")?

c) It is very much the same.

d) 30 years ago, the media's crisis reporting was keener on "faultfinding", today it is mainly
uncritical echoing of government positions.

21) How may the crisis manager in the political executive dramatize a crisis situation?

a) They may invite to an international conference

b) They may lift an issue to case for national/ international security

c) They may visit the crisis arena

d) They may dissolve the parliament

22) Why is a rational explanation for political leaders to dramatize an event?

a) They want to have more room for manoeuvre during a crisis. When political leaders dramatize
an event, the opposition will have fewer chances to criticize the government.

b) For leaders, it is always better to dramatize than to underestimate a critical event

c) That way, they try to calm opposition, and the leaders may raise their popularity.

d) All of the above

23) How do citizens behaviour regarding media change, do they get more interested in the
news during the crisis, and when, in which ways?

a) In the absence of a crisis, they watch hours TV on average, during a mess it is up to ten hours,
at least in the Western world.

b) During a crisis, citizens panic and often lose control.

c) Citizens are more critical about the information they receive during a crisis and look for
discrepancies or inconsistencies of the crisis management of the leaders.

d) all of the above is wrong