The main goal of this research project was to explore the question “What is the crisis responder’s experience with youth suicide?” The primary researcher was a crisis responder who, over the course of seven years, worked in the field of crisis intervention and encountered situations involving youth suicidality. Research has shown that exposure to youth suicide can produce dramatic effects upon the perceptions and meaning of work for crisis responders. A self-case study approach based upon heuristic concepts and processes was utilized for the present study because a first-person account enabled the uncovering of phases of effects of exposure to suicidality, including immersion, incubation, and illumination. These phases were applied to clarify the nature of the lived experience of a crisis responder working in Manitoba, Canada on a mobile crisis team. Insight into the phenomenon was gained by synthesizing the personal experiences of being a crisis responder, and contextualizing it within the theoretical and empirical literature on exposure to suicidality. Based on current findings, directions for future research and implications for the professional development of crisis responder practitioners experiencing youth suicide were provided. The ramifications of long term service within this area were also explored.

The main goal of this research project was to explore the question “What is the crisis responder’s experience with youth suicide?” The primary researcher was a crisis responder who, over the course of seven years, worked in the field of crisis intervention and encountered situations involving youth suicidality. Research has shown that exposure to youth suicide can produce dramatic effects upon the perceptions and meaning of work for crisis responders. A self-case study approach based upon heuristic concepts and processes was utilized for the present study because a first-person account enabled the uncovering of phases of effects of exposure to suicidality, including immersion, incubation, and illumination. These phases were applied to clarify the nature of the lived experience of a crisis responder working in Manitoba, Canada on a mobile crisis team. Insight into the phenomenon was gained by synthesizing the personal experiences of being a crisis responder, and contextualizing it within the theoretical and empirical literature on exposure to suicidality. Based on current findings, directions for future research and implications for the professional development of crisis responder practitioners experiencing youth suicide were provided. The ramifications of long term service within this area were also explored.

Scarce community mental health resources have led to people in crisis (PIC) overusing the emergency department (ED) and encountering police more frequently. To divert PIC from the ED and criminal justice system, and support them in their community, police services have implemented crisis response teams (CRTs). CRTs refer to police, health and mental health crisis response. Evidence of CRTs’ effectiveness in achieving their desired outcomes is limited, mixed, and/or anecdotal. I completed three studies using various theoretical and methodological approaches, which included: (a) a critical interpretative synthesis (CIS) of the conditions under which CRTs are formed, their features, and their outcomes; (b) a policy analysis using a case study design to examine how and why a CRT model was adopted in Hamilton, Canada; and (c) a what’s the problem represented to be (WPR) critical policy analysis of why police are implicated in crisis response. The CIS presents a conceptual framework depicting how unresolved structural conditions produce system- and individual-level challenges. Second, the case study examines the mobile crisis rapid response team (MCRRT) development in Hamilton. The analysis shows that initiatives that incrementally expand on the boundaries of existing programs are likely to be adopted. Third, drawing on WPR, we excavate problem representations within policy and policy-related texts to understand why police-based CRTs are expanded in Ontario. When mental health is framed in terms of safety and implicated within discourses about risk and danger police intervention is legitimized. Collectively, these studies provide a theoretical framework connecting structural, system, and individual factors most relevant to CRTs; demonstrate that an incremental approach to CRT adoption did not disrupt existing system arrangements; and problematizations within government policies that legitimize police in mental health crisis response. / Thesis / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) / Since deinstitutionalization, during which mental health patients were discharged into the community, this population has had more frequent encounters with police, contributing to criminalization and tragedies. They have also increasingly sought mental health crisis support in emergency departments. Police, health, and mental health crisis response teams (CRTs) have been implemented as an alternative response to people with mental health issues who are in crisis. To date, CRTs have been widely implemented but with little, mixed, and/or anecdotal evidence demonstrating their effectiveness. This dissertation contextualizes information about CRTs by presenting (a) a conceptual framework on CRTs, outlining the structural, system, and individual conditions under which CRTs are formed, their features, and outcomes; (b) a case study that examined under what conditions a CRT was developed and implemented in Hamilton, Canada; and (c) a critical discourse analysis of CRTs.

No description available.

The 2006 Swedish parliamentary election was a historic election with the largest bloc transfer of voters in Swedish history. The 2002-2006 incumbent Social Democratic Party (S) received its lowest voter support since 1914 as roughly 150,000, or 8%, of the 2002 S voters went to the main opposition, the conservative Moderate Party (M). This became the most decisive factor in ousting S from power after 12 years of rule. As a result, the M-led Alliance (A) with the People's Party (FP), the Center Party (C), and the Christian Democrats (KD) won the election. Natural Disasters and National Election makes the novel contribution of proposing two natural disasters, the Indian Ocean’s 2004 Boxing Day Tsunami and 2005 Storm Gudrun (Erwin), which struck only two weeks following the tsunami, as major events that impacted government popularity in the 2006 election and contributed to the redistribution of voter support, within and across party-blocs. The core findings from this thesis show that the S government’s poor crisis response to Gudrun, which is the hitherto most costly natural disaster in Swedish history, alone has an estimated effect of a magnitude that likely contributed to the 2006 historic regime shift, while the tsunami also seems to have mattered. The tsunami is particularly interesting, as S’s poor international crisis response to the event constitutes the first natural disaster situation to knowingly have affected an election on the other side of the planet. Moreover, to some degree voters recognized the active opposition by C as effective representation and rewarded the party for its strong stance on the poor handling of both events by S. In fact, the active voice of C concerning these disasters likely helped move the party from the periphery of party politics to becoming the third-largest party in Swedish politics. In sum, this research investigates accountability and effective party representation via retrospective voting, which is an essential mechanism for the legitimacy of democracy. Findings suggest that the average Swedish voter indeed may be voting retrospectively to hold publically elected officials accountable, which suggest a healthy status of the retrospective voting mechanism and Swedish democracy.

Abstract This study focuses on the process of communication between government agencies and the public during crisis situations, and the development of an effective response strategy when a significant threat to public health and/or safety is believed to exist. My specific research interests are (1) the nature of the decision-making process that influences the communicative choices made during such events, and (2) how decision-makers make sense of an evolving, ambiguous, and unpredictable situation, in order to establish credibility with the public, determine the appropriate response strategy, and gain the public's trust in order to influence its behavior. This is a qualitative research study based on a series of in-depth interviews conducted with key staff members of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) regarding the CDC's organizational response to the 2009-2010 H1N1 influenza pandemic. As global public health threats have the potential to significantly affect critical areas of the U.S. economy, national security policies are evolving to include strategic planning for issues related to global public health threats. However, despite having faced several serious public health threats during the past decade, governments worldwide and the global public health community continue to struggle with developing sufficient contingency plans and effective response strategies to meet the challenges of unexpected, highly unpredictable, and potentially devastating public health crises. My research addresses gaps identified in exploring the experience of crisis response participants in order to understand the process of response development. Additionally, I identify practices, processes, and recommendations that will be useful for future response teams confronted with equally challenging emerging threat and/or crisis scenarios.

<p>Purpose</p><p>To study how improvisation allows a crisis manager to answer the crisis when it has occurred, and how the improvisational act and the environment are linked. Methodology/ApproachFirst, we led research on the concepts of crisis, crisis management and improvisation. We were able to distinguish two major characteristics of the crisis situation – uncertainty and time pressure – as well as two moments in crisis response – containment and recovery. In parallel, we studied improvisation. The improvisation act intervenes when one realizes the environment conditions, reduces the gap between thinking the action and executing the action, and increases the speed of his actual action. Also, we identified that improvisation was expressed through the use of creativity, bricolage and intuition. At last, some authors developed levels of improvisation whether based on creativity levels or on the distance between the way one acts and the procedures, the normal ways to act. From this literature review, we were able to highlight two research propositions: Proposition 1: As soon as a situation enters a crisis phase, improvisation is used. Proposition 2: The way and the extent to improvise depend on the extent of time-pressure and uncertainty.Our belief in a mainly subjective conception of reality and of our knowledge and the fact we could use enough existing knowledge to enunciate propositions led us to have a semi-inductive research approach and a qualitative strategy. Our data were collected by using recorded semi-structured interviews. Our sample was constituted of managers specialized in the management of a crisis – surgeons and high mountain rescuers.</p><p>Findings</p><p>Our data analysis allowed us to confirm the research propositions. Crisis managers improvise when responding to a crisis by being creative, aware and adaptable to the environment conditions, and by having quick decision-making processes. Their improvisation levels are dependent on the situation uncertainty/novelty levels. In fact, we could identify a “mirror effect”: the level of improvisation increases as uncertainty increases.</p><p>Limitations</p><p>Some points are factors of the limitation of this research. These limitations are essentially linked to a reduced transdisciplinary approach. The topic of this research deserves a larger sample of interviewees in order to improve the relevance of our findings and their capacity to be generalized.</p><p>Originality/Value</p><p>The value of this study comes from the relevance of the investigated fields – fields with recurrent crisis management – and from the experience of their interviewed members. This research was also led with philosophical considerations materialized by a transdisciplinary approach. Indeed, we interviewed persons from fields outside business management.</p>

While evidence of the exceedingly important role of technology in organizational life is commonplace, academics have not fully captured the influence of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) on crisis response. A substantive body of knowledge on technology and crisis response already exists and keeps developing. Extensive research is on track to highlight how technology helps to prepare to crisis response and develop service recovery plans. However, some aspects of crisis response remain unknown. Among all the facets of crisis response that have been under investigation for some years, improvisation still challenges academics as a core component of crisis response. In spite of numerous insights on improvisation as a cognitive process and an organizational phenomenon, the question of how improvisers do interact together while improvising remains partly unanswered. As a result, literature falls short of details on whether crisis responders can rely on technology to interact when they have to improvise collectively. This dissertation therefore brings into focus ICT support to organizational improvisation in crisis response in two steps: We first address this question from a general standpoint by reviewing literature. We then propose an in depth and contextualized analysis of the use of a restricted set of technologies – emails, faxes, the Internet, phones - during the organizational crisis provoked by the 2003 French heat wave. Our findings offer a nuanced view of ICT support to organizational improvisation in crisis response. Our theoretical investigation suggests that ICTs, in a large sense, allow crisis responders to improvise collectively. It reports ICT properties - graphical representation, modularity, calculation, many-to-many communication, data centralization and virtuality – that promote the settling of appropriate conditions for interaction during organizational improvisation in crisis response. In the empirical work, we provide a more integrative picture of ICT support to organizational improvisation in crisis response by retrospectively observing crisis responders’ interactions during the 2003 French heat wave. Our empirical findings suggest that improvisation enables crisis responders to cope with organizational emptiness that burdens crisis response. However, crisis responders’ participation in organizational improvisation depends on their communicative genres. During the 2003 French heat wave crisis, administrative actors who had developed what we call a “dispassionate” communicative genre in relation to their email use, barely participated in organizational improvisation. Conversely, improvisers mainly communicated in what we call a “fervent” communicative genre. Therefore, our findings reveal that the ICT support to organizational improvisation in crisis response is mediated by the communication practices and strategies that groups of crisis responders develop around ICT tools.

Background: The field of crisis management has been researched extensively in the last two decades, with a focus on man-made organizational crises in large corporations (Mitroff et al., 2001; Pearson et al., 1993; Weick, 1988). Crises, as phenomena, are very complex events with a low probability of occurrence (Pearson et al., 1998), which subsume multiple layers in their construction causes and manifestation. In the recent years, the number of crises has increased dramatically, with either natural, technological or human causes and each of us can name at least a few dozen examples. Crises are no longer an aberrant, rare, random, or peripheral feature of today’s society. They are built into the very fabric and fiber of modern societies" (Mitroff et al., 2001, p.5). Aim: The purpose of the present research paper is to enhance the understanding of the importance of crisis management for organizations, where the crisis can be triggered by a political unrest situation. Our empirical study will address the issues of how the Gulf Agency Company Egypt team identified, responded and learned from the organizational crisis they were faced with, due to protests against the formal regime of Hosni Mubarak, in the beginning of 2011. Methodology: The goal of our research paper is firstly using existing theory and previous knowledge which will serve as the bricks of our academic construction. Further on, the GAC Egypt case study will be the principal empirical tool that will support and prove or contrast the theoretical roots. In this way, we plan to make use of already existing theory, while in return bringing our own contribution by our results and empirical findings. Completion and results: Our results entail that there are numerous gaps between what the literature on crisis management presents and the organizational procedures in GAC Egypt. In this respect, our findings lead us to notice the absence of an official crisis management plan, minimal perception of credible early signals, weak top management support correlated with a high degree of employee empowerment, as well as the learning outcomes for the organization.

Purpose To study how improvisation allows a crisis manager to answer the crisis when it has occurred, and how the improvisational act and the environment are linked. Methodology/ApproachFirst, we led research on the concepts of crisis, crisis management and improvisation. We were able to distinguish two major characteristics of the crisis situation – uncertainty and time pressure – as well as two moments in crisis response – containment and recovery. In parallel, we studied improvisation. The improvisation act intervenes when one realizes the environment conditions, reduces the gap between thinking the action and executing the action, and increases the speed of his actual action. Also, we identified that improvisation was expressed through the use of creativity, bricolage and intuition. At last, some authors developed levels of improvisation whether based on creativity levels or on the distance between the way one acts and the procedures, the normal ways to act. From this literature review, we were able to highlight two research propositions: Proposition 1: As soon as a situation enters a crisis phase, improvisation is used. Proposition 2: The way and the extent to improvise depend on the extent of time-pressure and uncertainty.Our belief in a mainly subjective conception of reality and of our knowledge and the fact we could use enough existing knowledge to enunciate propositions led us to have a semi-inductive research approach and a qualitative strategy. Our data were collected by using recorded semi-structured interviews. Our sample was constituted of managers specialized in the management of a crisis – surgeons and high mountain rescuers. Findings Our data analysis allowed us to confirm the research propositions. Crisis managers improvise when responding to a crisis by being creative, aware and adaptable to the environment conditions, and by having quick decision-making processes. Their improvisation levels are dependent on the situation uncertainty/novelty levels. In fact, we could identify a “mirror effect”: the level of improvisation increases as uncertainty increases. Limitations Some points are factors of the limitation of this research. These limitations are essentially linked to a reduced transdisciplinary approach. The topic of this research deserves a larger sample of interviewees in order to improve the relevance of our findings and their capacity to be generalized. Originality/Value The value of this study comes from the relevance of the investigated fields – fields with recurrent crisis management – and from the experience of their interviewed members. This research was also led with philosophical considerations materialized by a transdisciplinary approach. Indeed, we interviewed persons from fields outside business management.