Citation

Heath R. Safety Sci. 1998; 30(1-2): 151-163.

Copyright

(Copyright © 1998, Elsevier Publishing)

DOI

unavailable

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

Evaluating crisis management and training exercises is fundamental for the improvement of crisis management, yet most theorists and practitioners pay passing reference to the process (e.g. Albrecht, 1996 and Barton, 1993). While the domain of crisis management is still devloping issues of due diligence (Albrecht, 1996 and Schreider, 1996) and organizational liability (Allinson, 1993; Cohen, 1991 and Schreider, 1996) suggest that crisis managers, crisis management experts, coroners, official investigators and judges need to consider how crisis management can be appropriately evaluated. Research indicates that judgements are distorted by biases (Fischhoff, 1975 and Hogarth, 1981, lack of organizational openness (Allinson, 1993), and a need to find scapegoats (Allinson, 1993) or establish blame (Drabek and Quarentelli, 1967). This paper outlines a number of the aspects that need to be considered when evaluating crisis management and includes suggestions on countering the effects of hindsight judgement and temporal distortions, and a methodical approach to evaluation.