Crisis Response Planning Toward a Contingent Analysis

Abstract

Abstract Social scientists studying responses to disasters have suggested ways to overcome recurrent operational and behavioral problems during implementation. An analysis of the response of a number of jurisdictions to the 1980 eruption of Mount St. Helens shows the techniques are useful to local government. Officials only adopted those techniques, however, after some ad hoc learning in the heat of emergency. The question of how to foster the development of adaptive strategies before a crisis strikes has received less attention, and it is often dismissed as a problem of political apathy. Beyond apathy alone, evidence presented here is used to argue that we ought to attempt to identify organizational arrangements or contingencies that act as incentives for, or barriers to, more effective public-sector crisis management strategies.