Crisis Management and its Importance

A crisis is a situation that the organisation is unprepared to cope with. An unexpected and often unwelcome change in the environment or the behaviour of key stakeholders may lead to a crisis. At any point in a crisis, the organisation may be functioning well but will quickly begin to fail if it does not quickly address the issues causing the crisis.

Crisis management plans include actions to take in the event of emergencies. The plan is intended to help people stay safe, minimise damage, and to restore normal operations as soon as possible.

Crisis management:

Crisis management refers to various practices through which a state or group of states seeks to manage the repercussions of a crisis. Such crises can be natural disasters, political upheavals, or social movements. Crisis management comprises a set of practices aimed at preventing, containing, and mitigating crises and minimising their impact on the state’s institutions and society.

Types of crisis:

There are three types of crises. 

• The first is the usual crisis, which has been the subject of much research and is now a well-studied phenomenon. 
• The second is the crisis that is unexpected and involves the unexpected. 
• The third is the crisis that is not unexpected.

Types of crisis management:

The four major management types are crisis avoidance, crisis management, crisis communication, and crisis resolution. Crisis avoidance is the action of not incurring the crisis; crisis management is the action to avert the crisis; crisis communication is the action to manage the crisis once it is underway, and crisis resolution is the action to resolve the crisis once it has occurred.

Some incidents of crisis management over the past few years:

Crisis management serves as a foundation on which a country constructs its identity. In the US, we have heard a lot about crisis management in the past few years, but a crisis can happen anywhere. For instance, in 2014, the crisis of Ukraine led to the annexation of Crimea by Russia. Thus, crisis management has emerged as a tool to increase the country’s power, control, and stability. The example of the Greek crisis is an event that shows us how the crisis is managed in a global market and how the Greek crisis could have been managed differently. In the 1990s, the world witnessed a global economic crisis in which many people lost their jobs and homes. With the help of international agencies, governments could stabilise and then reconstruct the global economy.

An example of crisis management in International Relations is the crisis that occurred in the relationship between Argentina and Britain after the British-Spanish War (1862-1864). This relationship became strained after the seizure of the Malvinas, a British colony in the South Atlantic, occupied by Argentina. The British government called for the expulsion of the Argentine ambassador from the British Isles. He was then expelled by the British, and the crisis was resolved after the British occupied the Falkland Islands themselves.

Importance of crisis management:

The management of a crisis is an essential aspect of IR. It can also be an essential aspect of a country’s foreign policy. It is also a vital component of the study of international relations. It is crucial to manage crises as they are often associated with losing human lives. 

Management of crises is essential because it helps to impact the entire organisation as a whole positively. If a crisis is not managed correctly, it can quickly escalate and lead to a loss of business.

Disasters:

Disasters are events in which damages can be catastrophic and affect people or property. A natural disaster is an event that causes damage to people or their property and disrupts the people’s daily life, such as an earthquake, tornado, or flood. A human-made disaster is when someone or something acts in a way that leads to damage. A terrorist attack, like the bombing at the Boston Marathon, is an example of a terrorist act. In a natural disaster, weather systems such as hurricanes, earthquakes, and tornadoes can cause damage.

Classification of a disaster:

It is essential to understand the differences between disasters to prepare and respond to each. There are eight types of disasters, and all eight can be classified into one of four types: natural, artificial, economic, or technological. Each type of disaster can also be further classified into one of three levels of severity. The levels depend on the impact on the people, property, and environment. The three levels are: Low, Moderate, and High.

Impacts of disasters

A disaster has many effects on children, their families, and communities. The impacts of disasters are not one single event. They can happen in different ways and over different times. A disaster can affect children in many ways; some of the most common are: physically, including loss of life, injuries, and trauma; emotionally, including feelings of fear, helplessness, and uncertainty; cognitively, including confusion, and mental health issues such as depression, anxiety, and post-traumatic stress disorder.

Conclusion:

In conclusion, crisis management is a process that can be applied to any scenario, and crisis management is a part of crisis communications. Companies must use crisis management to overcome the negative impact that a crisis can have on their business. Crisis management was effective in providing a crisis experience which was beneficial when compared with experience without crisis. The experience included; a positive crisis experience and a negative crisis experience.