Crisis Leadership

training can make them aware of the current technology and global situation. Moreover, classroom training may be inadequate to deal with the practical world. Rost (1990) questions the efficacy of present leadership training because people cannot assimilate the leadership although they can identify the abilities and characteristics of successful leadership. What kind of training the modern public leaders need? Modern public leaders must be capable of dealing with people from the diverse world. For example, the US Office of Personnel Management made efforts to change the Executive Core Qualification (ECQ) focusing on leading change, leading people and delivering service through strategic management of resources (Holmes 2012). The emergence of Executive MPA program is a positive development in terms of preparing the future public leaders.

parTnership, coLLaboraTion, and Leadership In an interdependent world, it is crucial for leadership to partner and collaborate with public and private actors, both nationally and internationally. Archer and Cameron (2013, p. 38) note that we are now living in an interconnected world and they argue that the success of the organization lies in their ability to work together with organizations from different backgrounds and culture. They explained that organizations nowadays are becoming atomized. Instead of controlling everything, they now tend to focus on what they did best and outsource the parts that are not. Archer and Cameron (2013) proposed for a fruitful partnership by respecting the differences, and simultaneously by emphasizing the importance of partnerships. They proposed for partnership in different dimensions: governance, administrative, autonomy, mutuality, trust, and reciprocity.

Several researchers have proposed the establishment of co-production by the public and private sectors. Pestoff et al. (2012) defined co-productions as the combination of activities that public servants and citizens engage in in producing public services. The United Nations Commission for Europe emphasized the concept of Public–Private Partnerships (PPP) for good governance. The Commission also emphasized that there is presently a structural deficit marked by congested roads, deteriorated schools, hospitals, etc. The PPP can provide access to capital, a certainty of outcome, and reduce costs. The challenge of the PPP is to develop the institutions, procedures and the processes for delivery of the services. As a result, the PPP needs a strong public sector, which can develop stronger rules with abilities.

crisis Leadership The global leadership must be prepared to deal with crises considering the increased threats today from natural disasters and terrorism. The crisis management, prevention, and responses pose serious challenges to leadership. Akindele and Afolabi (2013) emphasizes that leadership determines success and failures in every endeavor. Boin and Hart (2003) assert that crisis and leadership are intertwined. Crises require urgent action because of its devastating effects. People expect leaders to solve the problem and to act decisively. The crises can also bring the opportunities to reform the long-standing institutional structures and long-standing policies (Keeler 1993). Burrell (2007) emphasized the training of leadership on crisis management and terrorism prevention. A crisis is defined as the serious threat to the person or the society, with a high degree of uncertainty needing immediate action. There are other examples of crises like technological failures and soft-core crises (Korac-Boisvert and Kouzmin 1994, 1995), such as product and development failure; management failure; dramatic market shifts, boycotts, and embargoes; and technology transfers and dependencies. Foster (2009) spoke of the crises of financial instability, and the global warming.

However, there are four important stages in crisis management: prevention and mitigation; preparation and planning; response and decisionmaking; and recovery, consolidation, and change (Comfort 1988). There are high degrees of ambiguity, uncertainty, and risk involved in crises (Nutt 1989) In the words of Korac-Kakabadse et al. (2002): “Crisis events occur whenever there is seizure of the existing mechanisms of functionality; a need for a major resource (re) distribution; and/or a constituency’s recognition (perception) of one or both of those events” (Korac-Kakabadse et al. 2002, p. 38).

During a time of crises, leadership is judged quite extensively. People look for the leadership during the time of crises to deal with the situation judiciously, build confidence, taking necessary measures to help the public. So, the leadership must be prepared to take appropriate measures to prevent and at the same time, to deal with crises effectively, if they happen. If leadership fails to take appropriate measures, leadership is criticized for far reaching consequences for the society, as it happened during Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans, Louisiana in the United States. The FEMA director was criticized for the mismanagement of the disaster and the ineffectiveness in handling the crisis.

The question of the ability of governments to discern and solve different, perhaps unique crisis situations is a topic of long-standing academic interest (Dimock 1991). The “protracted debates surrounding Allison’s (1971) analysis of the Cuban Missile “Crisis” is well-documented and ongoing (Kouzmin and Jarman 2004, p. 182). In crisis situations, organizations will attempt to learn and adjust to “return to the “original” state of operations-single-loop learning-instead of learning how to prevent critical incidents precipitating crisis processes-generative or double-loop learning” (Argyris 2004). Vulnerability audits and proactive crisis management sensitivities require sophisticated reconstructive policy logics (Jarman and Kouzmin 1990; Kouzmin and Jarman 1989) and institutional leadership behavior rather than managerial behavior (Kouzmin and Dixon 2006). There are “human-made” and “natural” disasters and “crisis events” from the human-error lens and policy-implication perspectives (Rosenthal et al. 1989). Technological, political and economic disasters can create crises.

Technological Disasters

The world is dependent on technology, meaning that any failure can cripple the way of life. A simple power outage can make us helpless. Cyberterrorism can cause havoc for the lives and functioning of government. The danger of technological disaster can create a doomsday situation. How to prevent technological disaster is a major challenge faced by the leadership of the developed world.

Terrorist Attack

A major crisis can also take place as a result of a terrorist attack. There is a constant threat of terrorism, which poses a serious challenge to global leadership. Since any country can be subject to terrorism, all leaders must be prepared to take every necessary measure to prevent terrorism.

Natural Disasters Crises can occur as a result of natural disasters. Although leaders cannot prevent natural disasters, their important task is to take all of the necessary measures to deal with natural disasters, making sure that the victims are

properly cared for. The important issue is to provide the victims with the basic necessities of life: shelter, food, water, etc. The failure of the government during Hurricane Katrina in the United States caused much frustration because the people were not provided with basic necessities.

A crisis situation poses the greatest challenge, and, at the same time, opportunities to probe leadership skills. Any failure can doom the leadership. However, the successful management of the crisis by the leadership can lead to widespread acclamation. Still, decision-making can be complicated by several problems.

Groupthink

Groupthink prevails in crisis responses (Janis and Mann 1977; Hart 1984; Hart and Kroon 1997) and can limit the rational calculation of the choices. Groupthink can occur for a number of reasons: because of the pressure arising from the crisis, intergroup conflict, structural problems, monopolies on decision-making, or the nature of leadership. The symptoms of groupthink include illusions of invulnerability, rationalizations, stereotyping of out-groups, and illusions of unity. Groupthink can lead to poor decision making with far reaching consequences. It is important to eliminate the tendencies for group think by becoming devil’s advocate challenging each decision. Other suggestions to eliminate group think are parallel decision-making, using outside experts and splitting the groups to see if they come up with different decisions. “One ongoing manifestation of groupthink within crisis management top teams, especially within public sector contexts, is the ‘blindness’ to, or phobia about, organizational and interagency forms of concurrency in crisis response strategies. In complex, contingent conditions, administrative coordination based upon preplanning is obviously a difficult administrative requirement. One administrative strategy responsive to contingency is associated with “synthetic” forms of organization” (Thompson 1967, pp. 52–53). Dror (1987) outlines some functional requisites for high performance in enhancing the “central mind of government” (p. 82). These include longrange policy views; with deeper thinking, and crisis decision-making, and rapid learning processes. Leadership can take all the necessary steps to eliminate any possibility of group think that may jeopardize rational decision-making.