What is crisis management?

As experts state, crisis in an organization, a nation, business, family or in a relationship is unpredictable. It comes in times when you are actually best prepared or, worse, least prepared. Crisis may come in many forms, fiscal, relational or natural. And often times when not prepared, dealt and responded accordingly a crisis could lead to a catastrophe. Crisis however is never unexpected, which definitely suggests that people in an organization, business, government, family or relationship know the risks and the incidents that may occur.

Also called incident management

This is in this light that crisis management is formed inside an organization. In a business organization particularly, crisis management is referred also as the incident management. Often times it is associated with business continuity management and emergency management although these terms only refer to short term or “first aid” response to a crisis. Crisis occurs in different sectors of the society and this does not exempt educational institutions, non profitable units and even churches and religious groups. In crisis management, crisis is defined in three ways: it could mean a threat or risk to an organization, a brief decisive time or an component of surprise.

Risk to the organization

One of the definitions of crisis in crisis management is that it is a risk to the organization. But it must be made clear that crisis management is only a component of risk management. The results of a failed risk management all the more cannot be called crisis.

To better understand the purpose of crisis management, here are its benefits and the objectives.

Evaluate a situation

First, crisis management will give the organization the capability to evaluate a situation both from the outside and inside of the body. Second is to aid the organization in the redirection of an unfavorable course. Next is to find ways in implementing business continuity despite crisis. Fourth is to gain better resilience. Fifth is to uphold social responsibility. Sixth is to acquire management skills in dealing with serious events. Seventh is to magnify the expectations and roles of every member. Eighth is to augment morale, confidence and ability within the body. Ninth is to enhance risk management. And finally, crisis management is made to protect the reputation of the organization.

Crisis management has helped many large corporations in the US including Johnson & Johnson which destroyed millions of its medicinal capsules after being sabotaged by a murderer. Crisis management may involve temporary serious incidents; survival however is still the key. So don’t allow crisis to escalate into a catastrophe.