Syllabus

Short Course Description

Course description:

Crisis management is the application of strategies designed to help an organization deal with a sudden and significant negative event. A crisis can occur as a result of an unpredictable event or as an unforeseeable consequence of some event, which had been considered a potential risk. In either case, crises almost invariably require that decisions be made quickly to limit damage to the organization. A crisis may be internal when it occurs within an organization, or external, when the crisis occurs in its environment with a significant impact on it. The crisis could be personal, inter-personal, technological, organizational-managerial, or inter-organizational. In such organizations, we may be employed in front-line or in leadership and managerial positions. Managers at all organizational levels are expected to be prepared, and to have the professional skills to intervene, when some of these types of crises occur.

Different organizations deal differently with situations of crisis and disaster. Some belong to the public sector (primarily Government Ministries and Local Authorities), while others may be Non-Governmental (NGOs), For-Profit, or Civil Society organizations. They may be located at different levels of management: at the International, National, Regional, Local or at the Community level. Often, some of these organizations collaborate with each other, either to prevent an expected crisis, or to tackle it when it happens. Such collaborations are expected to strengthen intra and inter-organizational resilience, through organizational learning procedures.

Course objectives:

During the course, students will learn the main theories and practices of crisis management in the above mentioned types of organizations. They will learn to identify pre-crisis "red lights" within organizations, which will enable them to prevent and to handle different types of crises and disasters. A number of organization-based case studies will be discussed in class to illustrate the theories and to study their usefulness for practice.