Birdflu (May, 2006)

Management > Crisis Management > Lectures > Independent Research > Staples > Scott et al. > Nohria

Nohria - Survival of the Adaptive

Crisis management is all about preparation. In the event of a sustained and evolving crisis, such as Bird flu, the firms that will survive are those which have had "continuing sensing and response capabilities" (Also known as "Signal detection", in Mitroff, 1996). Those which can adapt will survive.

There are two types of organisation:

Organisation 1:

• Hierarchical,
• Centralised leadership,
• Tightly coupled (See Perrow, 1984 for more information on this term),
• Concentrated workforce,
• Specialists
• Policy and procedure driven

Organisation 2:

• Distributed leadership
• Loosely coupled
• Dispersed workforce
• Cross-trained generalists - people who learn different things can see problems from different perspectives, leading to innovative solutions (See "Mixed metaphors" in Mitroff, 2005)
• Guided by simple, yet flexible rules

Nohria - Continued

Bennis - Leading for the Long Run

Fischhoff - Getting Straight Talk Right

Brilliant - What to Expect from Government

Dobson and Golden - All Eyes on China