Outline As crises - ranging from mildly disruptive to disastrous - (1) become more frequent, corporate managers have no choice but to accept them as an inescapable reality to be factored into their planning and decision-making. When a crisis occurs, the performance of its crisis managers will determine the future of an organization. This thesis discusses four public crises that occurred in Taiwan in the 1990¡¦s which illustrate the key importance of a corporation¡¦s crisis management. After a thorough analysis of the four cases, we reached the following conclusions: Corporate culture is an important factor in crisis management. It determines how crises are perceived by people within the company, and the way in which they deal with the crises. Hence the corporate structure and reward system should be designed to encourage positive behavior. The management of stakeholder relationships is an integral part of crisis management. The concerns, views, and ideas of a wide variety of people ¡V employees, managers, customers, suppliers, the public and foreign trading partners ¡V need to be considered. (2) And the company must be willing to discuss all matters with the aim of achieving mutual trust and understanding. A carefully considered contingency plan is always the best solution. Careful attention paid to these processes will, without doubt, help to anticipate and avert crises.

Thesis (M.A.)--Michigan State University, 2007. / Adviser: Yoonhyeung Choi. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (Master of Arts in Tourism) -- University of Canberra, 2007.

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This study describes a conceptual framework that portrays information system project failures as organizational crises. The main assumption of this study is that such failures will invariably happen and thus there is a need to make them less costly and more beneficial to organizations. To identify the behaviors and factors that influence an organization's ability to effectively manage a project failure, this dissertation reviews the crisis management literature. Based on this review, a three-stage model is formulated. To understand the mechanisms underlying this model, a number of hypotheses (which are informed by a number of related organizational behavior areas) are generated. These hypotheses focus on three key crisis management factors: the organization's ability to promptly detect an impeding failure, its capacity to manage the failure's impacts, and its propensity to learn from it. To empirically assess the validity of the conceptual model, three case studies of Canadian public organizations were conducted. The empirical findings provide strong support to the model's conjectures and indicate that project failures generate several crisis-related behaviors and responses. More specifically, the findings suggest that an organization's proactive preparation for a failure can have a significant moderating effect on its impact. However, the findings clearly show that an organization's ability to promptly detect (and prepare for) a failure is impeded by behaviors that are motivated by escalation of commitment. Such behaviors lead to a prolonged pre-crisis denial period and have a suppressing effect on whistle-blowing, which is pursued as a denial-curtailing strategy by non-management participants. The empirical findings describe both operational and legitimacy tactics used by organizations to cope with the aftermath of a project failure and indicate that credibility restoration is a significant concern during large crises. Finally, the empirical evidence indicates that organizational learning and adaptation are more likely to follow major project failures than less significant ones. This contradicts threat-rigidity arguments and provides support to the failure-induced learning theory.

The aim of this thesis was to examine the cognitive processes through which experienced Offshore Installation Managers (OIMs) make decisions during emergencies, and to determine whether they use a naturalistic or normative decision making strategy. That is, do they recognise the emergency as familiar and base decisions on condition-action rules serially generated (naturalistic), or do they need to concurrently compare and contrast options before selecting the best possible (normative). Emphasis was on the individual OIM's understanding of an emergency and the meaning he attached to the information or events taking place. The method employed to achieve this objective, was a Cognitive Task Analysis (CTA) based on triangulation principles, i.e. using multiple methods to examine the same research question and so enhance reliability and validity. The main findings of this thesis were: • Decision making in Safety Case (1992) identified offshore installation emergencies is primarily based on condition-action rules, or rule-based according to Rasmussen's (1983) model, not Standard Operating Procedures. • Decisions are serially generated. There is no evidence of option comparison. • The environment severely limits the number of options available to the OIM. • Decisions are predominantly made when one element of the present status of the incident changes. • Tactical decisions account for approximately 54% and operational decisions for 46% of the decisions made. • Nearly 50% of the decisions taken are instigated by other team members. • The majority of the time (86.8%) is spent on situation assessment. • The OIMs' situation awareness is limited to a maximum of eight interdependent problem categories. • Situation awareness comprises approximately four categories at any one point. • Risk and time pressure are the two major factors contributing to incident assessment. • There are individual differences in decision making style and situation awareness.

"Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Business Administration from the Naval Postgraduate School, September 2008." / Advisor(s): Powley, Edward H. ; King, Cynthia L. "September 2008." "MBA professional report"--Cover. Description based on title screen as viewed on November 4, 2008. Includes bibliographical references (p. 49-54). Also available in print.

Thesis (Ph. D.) -- University of Maryland, College Park, 2005. / Thesis research directed by: Counseling and Personnel Services. Includes bibliographical references. Also available on the World Wide Web as a PDF file.

Thesis (M.P.A.)--University of Hong Kong, 2002. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 83-86).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Rutgers University, 2008. / "Graduate Program in Classics." Includes bibliographical references (p. 227-238).