Constructing Crisis

Bert Spector
Cambridge University Press, Sep. 5, 2019 - Business & Economics - 316 pages

https://tinyurl.com/y956cah5

There is no such thing as a crisis. Rather than an actual, corporeal thing, a crisis is a claim asserted from a position of power and influence, intended to shape the understanding of others. A constructed crisis by a leader may or may not be legitimate, and, legitimate or not, the content of a claim alone does not determine whether people decide to believe it. Rather than viewing crises as the result of objective events, Spector demonstrates that leaders impose crises on organizations to strategically assert power and exert control. Interpreting crisis through a critical lens, this interdisciplinary book encompasses not just management and organizational literature, but also sociology, history, cognitive science, and psychology. The resulting wide-ranging, critical, and provocative analysis will appeal in particular to students and academics researching leadership and crisis management.

Contents

Undertaking a New Interpretive Effort	1
10	16
Crisis as a Reification of Urgency	18
Advancing the Crisis as Event Model	37
Problems Crises and Contextual Constructionism	58
An Objective Description and a Subjective UhOh	81
Believing Claims of Urgency Or Not	106
The Power of a Good Crisis Narrative	140

To Create Such a Crisis to Foster Such a Tension	165
Beyond ForgedinCrisis Leadership	191
So What?	221
References	253
Index	292
111	294
Copyright