Author: Edited by Denis Smith and Dominic Elliott
ISBN No: 0 415 31521 2
Review date: 14/06/2026
No of pages: 436
Publisher: Routledge, Taylor and Francis Group
Year of publication: 11/09/2012
Brief:
If you turn to Key Readings in Crisis Management, or any book in a crisis, it is too late.
The very definition of a crisis is that you cannot put off making a decision. In any case, in the time it takes to read the mere title Key Readings in Crisis Management: Systems and structures for prevention and recovery, edited by UK professors Denis Smith and Dominic Elliott, people can die. Itโs a hefty collection of articles seeking to get to the bottom of crises and accidents and how organisations respond. Cases include the Mann Gulch fire and European stadia facilities. It lurches towards clunky words such as โparadigmโ and โcultural and psychological dynamicsโ. In its defence, itโs useful in two ways. One, in a crisis, teams are often ad hoc and under pressure – itโs no time to be other than trained and well-managed. Second, understanding how managers and organisations fail in a crisis may suggest what are the right ingredients for things to go right, in business. As the two editors put it, โlearning from tragedyโ.
