N1073 – Managing Change

Week 10: Managing Crisis & Disasters

Dr. Joshua R. Moon (SPRU)

December 2023

SPRU –
SPRU Science Policy
- Science Research Unit
and Technology Policy Research
 Outline
•What makes something a crisis?

•Haiti 2010

•Phases of crisis

•Communicating Crisis

• Learning from Crisis

• Common Organisational Responses
• Expert Commissions
• Responding to Outbreaks of Disease
• Knowledge Trajectories
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 Can we estimate emergencies?

Is this an
appropriate way
to define whether
an emergency is
occuring?

Lenton et al. (2019) Climate tipping

points — too risky to bet against,
Nature 575, 592-595
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 Is it a crisis or a disaster?

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 Faulkner (2001)
Disaster – situations where an enterprise (or collection of enterprises in
the case of a tourist destination) is confronted with sudden
unpredictable catastrophic changes over which it has little control
Crisis - a situation where the root cause of an event is, to some
extent, self-inflicted through such problems as inept management
structures and practices or a failure to adapt to change

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 When is a change a crisis?
One of Faulkner’s key contributions was to combine two frameworks
for phases of crisis into one:

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 Managing Crisis - Faulkner
Faulkner used this to create six phases for managing a crisis:

Crisis Phase Response Phase Elements

Pre-event Precursors appointing accountables, preparedness planning,
strategizing, training, gaming, etc.
Prodromal Mobilisation Warn publics, establish command centre, prepare
mitigations
Emergency Action Health/medicine, logistics, communications, etc.

Intermediate Recovery Damage audit, clean-up & restoration, media comms

Long-term Reconstruction & Repair of infrastructure, rehabilitation, victim counselling,

assessment restoring business/consumer confidence, debriefings and
strategy recalibration
Resolution Review Public Inquiries, ‘lessons learned’, accountability reviews

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 Managing Crisis - Faulkner
Faulkner used this to create six phases for managing a crisis:

Crisis Phase Response Phase Elements

Pre-event Precursors appointing accountables, preparedness planning,

strategizing, training, gaming, etc.
Prodromal Mobilisation Warn publics, establish command centre, prepare
mitigations
Emergency Action Health/medicine, logistics, communications, etc.

Intermediate Recovery Damage audit, clean-up & restoration, media comms

Long-term Reconstruction & Repair of infrastructure, rehabilitation, victim counselling,

assessment restoring business/consumer confidence, debriefings, and
strategy recalibration
Resolution Review Public Inquiries, ‘lessons learned’, accountability reviews

SPRU - Science and Technology Policy Research

 Psychodynamic approach to
change
The Kübler-Ross model

integration
discovery
shock
experimentation
relief

Elizabeth Kübler-Ross

- see Cameron and Green 2015

With additional phases from Adams, Hayes, Hopson (1976) change curve

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SPRU Science Policy
- Science Research Unit
and Technology Policy Research
 Communicating Crisis

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 Who’s been paying the most
attention? Stand up!

This Photo by Unknown Author is licensed under CC BY

This Photo by
Unknown
Author is This Photo by Unknown
licensed under Author is licensed under CC
CC BY BY

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 Pollock (2013)

Lessons from crises are

often highly similar, as a
review of lessons learned
documents found.

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 Learning from crisis

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 Learning from crisis
Event Rarity

Event Heterogeneity Event Complexity

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 Birkland Crisis Learning

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 Common Organisational Responses
•Simplification
Normalises the crisis by constructing an account that is simple and ‘makes
sense’ of the crisis

•Reduction
Normalises the crisis by reducing the emotional weight of the crisis

•Exceptionalising
Normalises the crisis by rebuilding trust in the organisation and framing the
crisis as a ‘blip’

•Blame
Normalises the crisis by shifting blame to single individuals or ‘scapegoats’

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 Appoint an Expert Commission!
A common and useful way of doing all these things is to
appoint an expert commission to look into the crisis in detail:
•Simplifies the crisis by making sense what happened
•Reduces emotional weight by making the crisis technical
•Exceptionalises by labelling the crisis as ‘extraordinary’
•Blames by identifying human causes

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 Appoint an expert commission?
Expert commissions & these responses to crisis can cause
problems with learning from crisis, however:
•Simplifying identifies simple causes that may not address
deeper issues
•Reducing an issue technical simply avoids dealing with the
personal and individual changes in crisis
•Exceptionalising the crisis obfuscates the possibility of
recurrence and makes people feel like they don’t need to
learn
•Blaming individuals moves focus away from systems where
crisis build and occur

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 Global Health Lessons Learned

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 Knowledge Trajectories

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 Knowledge Trajectories

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 Learning from Crisis

•Participatory
To emphasise learning from
Hutton 2019 •Evidenced
crisis, two sources have •Disseminated
produced frameworks for
‘lessons learned’ from
expert commissions. Aitsi-Selmi, •Useful
Blanchard, &
Murray 2017 •Usable
•Used

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 Conclusions
•Crisis is a particular, extreme kind of change
•Crisis and Disaster are not necessarily interchangeable
•Crisis can be deconstructed into phases which each require different
responses
•Communicating crisis is a key aspect of responding and requires
constant adjustment and awareness of communities
•Learning from crisis is imperative, but difficult
•Appointing expert commissions to learn from crisis can help in some
ways but hurt in others
•Learning from crisis follows particular trajectories that depend on
how learning happens, not necessarily the specifics of what the crisis
was

SPRU –
SPRU Science Policy
- Science Research Unit
and Technology Policy Research
 References
Faulkner (2001) “Towards a framework for tourism disaster management”
Tourism Management, 22, pp. 135–147. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0261-
5177(00)00048-0
Zhong, Y. & Low, S.P. 2009, "Managing crisis response communication in
construction projects - from a complexity perspective", Disaster Prevention and
Management, vol. 18, no. 3, pp. 270-282.
Pollock, K. “Review of Persistent Lessons Identified Relating to Interoperability
from Emergencies and Major Incidents since 1986” Emergency Planning College
Occasional Papers, New Series, Number 6
Aitsi-Selmi, A., Blanchard, K. & Murray, V. Ensuring science is useful, usable and
used in global disaster risk reduction and sustainable development: a view
through the Sendai framework lens. Palgrave Commun 2, 16016 (2016)
doi:10.1057/palcomms.2016.16
Hutton, J.R. (2019) “Knowledge accumulation from disease outbreak response”
[Thesis] University of Sussex

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 Live Lecture

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 Haiti (2010)
•In 2010 Haiti experienced a 7.0 magnitude earthquake
•Death tolls range upwards from 100,000 people
•The response effort included UN, ICRC, MSF, and many others
•UN Peacekeepers were transferred from Nepal, where cholera is
endemic
•Those same UN Peacekeepers allowed their foecal matter to flow into
the Meille River which local use for basic sanitation, hygiene, and
drinking
•The resultant epidemic of cholera claimed 50 lives per day in 2010
and has become endemic in Haiti even now

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