Crisis Management

This project examines the special challenges of leadership in crisis situations and the associated challenges of leadership in preparing in advance for the possibility of crises to come. It includes both physical life safety crises (natural disasters, industrial accidents, and terrorism) and reputational crises (scandals, embezzlement, stock fraud, and so on). What behaviors and organizational structures perform best when crises strike? And what can leaders do in advance to create the structures and conditions that make high performance more likely in the event of a future crisis? This project includes work on designing organizational structures that are most likely to be able to handle both the technical challenges of crisis action and the political challenges that are likely to arise as well.