Crisis management managing paradox in a chaotic world

This paper extends the recent work of the authors in the field of crisis management (CM). The authors explore two related phenomena that compromise seriously the effectiveness of CM plans and procedures: (a) vicious circles that are the result of unexamined and unintended human interventions in complex systems and (b) the ‘contextual nature’ of complex sociotechnical systems themselves. Major crises threaten both the ‘structural’ and the ‘affective’ domains of complex systems. Two general strategies for coping with complex crises are proposed. Each strategy not only recognizes the existence of a different domain but proposes a method for treating them.