Managing Crises in the Twenty-First Century

Abstract

Editor's Note:As we near the midpoint in the first decade of the new century, more citizens as well as leaders are becoming aware of the changing nature and constant presence of crises in our midst, be they at the local, national, transnational, or international levels. Last summer (August 6–10, 2003), three institutes engaged in the study of how crises are managed—the Crisis Management Research and Training (CRISMART) program located in the Swedish National Defence College, the Crisis Research Center at Leiden University, and the Transboundary Crisis Management Working Group at Syracuse University—held a conference at the Minnowbrook Conference Center in the Adirondack Mountains, bringing together twenty-eight scholars and practitioners from Europe, the United States, and Australia who are considered to be among the leading experts in examining the wide variety of situations that currently threaten national, societal, and human security. These participants are currently involved in translating theory into practice and practice into theory regarding crisis management. The meeting was funded in part by the European Commission. The essays in this forum are representative of the discussions that took place at the meeting. Much debate focused around the nature of crisis, whether we are seeing a change in what is considered a crisis, and just who gets to define a crisis. In addition, the participants looked at factors that we should be observing in trying to understand crisis management and what we know after forty years of research on the topic. The disciplines represented at the meeting were business, communications, economics, history, management, political science, psychology, and public administration. The pieces that follow suggest that a shared language to use in talking about crises and crisis management has begun to emerge, even though a consensus does not exist about a particular way of conceptualizing or examining crises—and, indeed, disagreement exists over whether or not such a consensus should be a goal.