Transforming the Crisis-Prone Organization: Preventing Individual, Organizational, and Environmental Tragedies

"The Authors THIERRY C. PAUCHANT is assistant professor of management at I'Ecole des Hautes Etudes Commerciales, University of Montreal, Canada. IAN I. MITROFF is Harold Quinton Distinguished Professor of Business Policy and Strategic Management and director of the Center for Crisis Management at the Graduate School of Business, University of Southern California." "Very well done... It not only provides deep insights into those cultural aspects of an organization which aid or inhibit the implementation of a crisis management program, it also provides valuable guidance to those WHO WANT TO CREATE OR IMPROVE SUCH A PROGRAM" --- Donald W. Carlin, vice president and deputy general counsel, Kraft General Foods. "Jacket Design By WILLI BAUM." [from the back flap]

This is certainly another "must read" in crisis management and risk management. The authors provide a detailed analysis of crisis-prone organisation, including the first typology of what exactly constitutes the weaknesses. It is highly interesting to follow their conclusions on what type of organisation (I particularly liked the "tragic bureaucracy" type!) is crisis-prone and why. While the conclusions and suggestions for improvement are not quite as strong as the analytical part, they still represent one of the first contributions to a managerial theory of crises and risks. This is not to say that sociology and earlier disaster research did not address the topic, but "Transforming the Crisis-Prone Organisation" tackles the problem from a different angle. The hidden structures and indicators are useful - very useful, and one could even use them today to characterise the ever-repetitive human disasters that are building up over time. Managers don't change, it seems, and many of the crisis-prone types are described in such a way that one easily recognises familiar patterns. Definitely worth the money !