When Conventional Wisdom Fails: Responding to Disasters

The history of management thought provides justifiable reasons for pride in our ability to manage complex public and private organizations. Indeed, one can confidently argue that public health organizations are perhaps better managed today than at any time in our history. Yet, the appearance of helpless crowds around the Superdome and massive traffic jams leaving New Orleans and Houston in anticipation of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, the chaos after the London subway bombing, and other crises challenged our contentment with our ability to “manage” complex emergencies. What happened we asked ourselves? Was our planning flawed? Did our leaders fail us? Was the crisis simply too complex to manage? The conventional wisdom of management seems better suited for stable and predictable environments. The purpose of this paper is to realistically access the limitations of conventional management theory and practice in dealing with problems of emergency preparedness and response. There are five important reasons why we need to re-examine the applicability of conventional management prescriptions to emergency preparedness. These are: (1) traditional management seeks to apply standardized solutions to a wide range of situations. Emergencies, by contrast, are unique events; (2) traditional management seeks to simplify. Emergencies are inherently complex; (3) traditional management focuses on the ordinary, averages, and variances around the mean. Emergencies represent the extraordinary, the outlier, and the extreme. (4) traditional management encourages planning and reflective thinking. Emergencies demand initiative and action; and (5) traditional management seeks efficiency of single organizations. Emergencies require effective integration of multiple organizations.