CRISIS MANAGEMENT AND ANTICIPATORY MANAGEMENT

Phuoc D. Nguyen

If an organization deals strategically with issues, it should classify issues to identify the severity and then assess risks that issues may bring to the organization and it should implement corrective actions to fix issues, monitor and manage issues, or implement preventative actions to prevent possible crises that may arise.

Based on Ashley and Morrison’s (1995) Anticipatory Management Process, we can integrate crisis management into this process, in the emerging issues identification we can use tools of Scanning and Monitoring, Strategic Trend Intelligence System, Issues Vulnerability Audit, and Scenario Technique to identify emerging issues and possible crises. During we wrote an issue brief that we based on forces driving to suggest implications on issues and crises if any. In the stage of issues prioritization to be able to complement of high priority issues, medium-priority issues, and low-priority issues we can classify issues into highest-priority crises for crisis resolve if these crises can happen immediately and monitor crisis resolve, if crises are evaluated will happen in the future that we will start to manage crisis separately with issues management.

Jaques (2009) defined, “A fundamental concern relates to where crisis management and issue management are positioned within the organizational structure” (p. 285). Crisis management and issues management do not belong to any business function separately, they are cross-functional and inter-department. Every leader, manager, supervisor, specialist, and worker who is responsible manages, monitors, and resolves issues and crises based on in-house responsibilities assignment in Ashley and Morrison’s (1995) Anticipatory Management Process.

Unlike issue management, where both strategic and tactical elements are recognized, the same distinction for crisis management is less well understood, which perpetuates superficial distinctions and impedes progress. Within a strategic context, crisis management should be seen not just as a tactical reactive response when a crisis hits, but as a proactive discipline embracing interrelated processes ranging from crisis prevention and crisis preparedness through crisis response and to crisis recovery (Jaques, 2007, p. 148). Crisis management should project crisis management strategy to prevent crises, while the tactical reactive response to emergency crises that the organization should establish a procedure of crisis management and issues management to plan, implement crisis correction and issues resolve, monitor and control crisis and issues, prevent crises, and recover crisis.