Deltar Training Solutions From ‘Command and Control’ to ‘Support and Adapt’ DTE024

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DTE024 From ‘Command and Control’ to

‘Support and Adapt’: Incident Command Systems and

21st Century Challenges

Dr David Rubens D.SyRM, CSyP, FSyI

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Abstract

The nature of crises has changed radically in recent

years, so that rather than being merely ‘major

incidents ‘ or ‘routine emergencies’, they are now

characterized by their hypercomplexity and the

catastrophic impact of their consequences. The

centralized command systems that have traditionally

been considered the bedrock of crisis response

programmes are repeatedly failing to stand up to the

challenges posed by this new class of crisis, and it has

become clear, following incidents such as 9/11 and

Hurricane Katrina, that new forms of non-

hierarchical, decentralised decision-making and

strategy-setting frameworks need to be developed.

This paper looks at some of the issues that traditional

hierarchical command systems need to address, and

suggests a numbers of areas where investigation into

the benefits that non-traditional command systems

bring could be explored.

A series of recent events across the world has

significantly tested the fundamental assumptions

underlying current CM methodologies. These have

included the power blackouts that affected 600

million people across northern India; the

consequences of the Fukushima tsunami /

earthquake that, within a few days, left Tokyo on the

edge of being a city without food; volcanic activity in

Iceland that disrupted international travel across

Europe, and increasingly frequent bank IT failures

that have left tens of thousands of people to survive

purely on the money that they happened to be

carrying at the time. In the scale of their impact and

complexity, these situations transcend any traditional

concept of crisis management frameworks or

organisational jurisdictions. The failure to deal with

these primary issues and their secondary

consequences effectively and in a timely and well-

From ‘Comand and Control’ to ‘Support and Adapt’:

Incident Command Systems and 21st Century Challenges

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managed manner can no longer be seen as simple

management failures, but as a challenge to the

legitimacy of governments tasked with ensuring

public safety (Boin & ‘t Hart, 2003: Boin, 2009:367;

Stark, 2010), and with potential implications as to the

social, political and economic continuity of a country

(Boin et al, 2003; Guhar- Sapir, 2011).

Traditional crisis management is based on the

concept of ‘managing the gap’, whether it is the

period between crisis cognition and actual triggering

which gives time to develop and deliver preventative

measures, or the time lapse between triggering and

full-scale escalation which allows time for the

introduction of mitigating measures (Hermann and

Dayton, 2003). In a world of apparently spontaneous

triggering of potentially catastrophic events, and

instantaneous cascading across transboundary and

often global geographical spreads, the luxury of that

time gap no longer exists. The emergence of

‘unthinkable’ and ‘inconceivable’ crises characterized

by catastrophic impacts and hypercomplex

consequences (Lagadec, 2007), has meant that

modern CM has become less concerned with the

prevention of catastrophe as management of its

aftermaths.

Despite the traditional understanding of crises as

existing in the corner of the risk matrix marked by

‘High Impact, Low Likelihood’, situations such as

those listed in the opening paragraph can no longer

be seen as improbable and rare events (Lalonde,

2007:507). The number, magnitude and impact of

natural disasters are all showing an upward trend

(Scheuren et al, 2008), and the scale, impact and

complexity of their consequences on state and

regional stability have all increased beyond the scope

of the original conceptualisation of managed crisis

response (Tatham & Houghton, 2011). The increasing

interconnectedness and interdependency of the

global community, which has led to a growing

inability to control, or even understand, the

governing mechanisms by which our basic social

networks are managed, means that crisis are

becoming more than ever ‘unknowable

unknowable’s’, in Rumsfeld’s memorable phrase. To

put it even more starkly, rather than approaching

these problems from a position of tabla rasa,

confronting them may be considered as entering a

complete Terrae Incognitae (Lagadec, 2009). With a

triggering and escalation period of seconds rather

than hours, days or weeks as was the case in the

past, the world is now permanently on the edge of a

potentially total systems breakdown, and there is

literally nothing that we can do about it. The

increasing complexity and cascading nature of

present day crises means that we can longer

rationalise them in terms of control or management,

but only in terms of recovery, and in many cases,

survival.

Whilst the nature of crisis has changed, it is

questionable as to whether our understanding of the

requirements of effective crisis management models

and methodologies has evolved to the same degree.

The 9/11 attack on the World Trade Centre called

into question many of the issues involving effective

management of, and response to, ‘unthinkable’ crisis

scenarios, but it was the widespread failure to

respond effectively to Hurricane Katrina and the

subsequent damage, destruction and suffering in

New Orleans that called into question the viability of

extant crisis management methodologies and

capabilities (Comfort, 2007; Moynihan, 2009;

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Corbacioglu & Kapucu, 2006). The failure of the

traditional highly-centralized, hierarchically-based

command and control crisis management system,

which was a ‘cornerstone’ for both theoretical and

administrative approaches to crisis management (‘t

Hart et al, 2003: 12), led to a call for a 'redefinition of

organizational framework and standard terms of

emergency management....that fit the reality of

practice in extreme events’ (Comfort, 2007:193).

Rather than simply adapting existing methodologies,

this process of ‘Double Loop Learning’ would call for

a concerted attempt to change the paradigm within

which crisis management is conceptualised, based on

a fundamental questioning of underlying policies and

basic practices (Argyris, 1977).

This paper will offer a reappraisal of crisis

management models that takes cognisance of both

the reality of the failures of traditional CM

management methodologies in the face of of 21st

century challenges, and theoretical research and

empirical evidence concerning non-traditional

decentralised command systems. In doing so, it will

follow on from the work of other authorities

concerning the need to develop alternative crisis

management and decision-making processes

appropriate to the realities of modern crisis

scenarios.

9/11, Hurricane Katrina, Fukushima, Haiti and similar

incidents in other jurisdictions, have dramatically

shown that any model of crisis management that

claims to offer solutions to the threats that the world

is facing in the 21st century will need to demonstrate

an ability to react and respond in an environment

defined by catastrophic crises and hypercomplexity

(Lagadec, 2007). Crisis management command

systems across the world, but most notable in the US,

are firmly grounded in a centralized, hierarchical

model of command and control. These are often

accepted as the de facto default setting for crisis

management, especially following the development

of the formal Incident Command System (ICS), in

response to what was seen as failures in multi-agency

capabilities during Californian wildfires in the 1970’s

(Irwin, 1989; Smith & Dowell, 2000; Lutz & Lindell,

2008). The DHS-mandated FEMA ICS follows this

model, irrespective of the nature or scale of incident

it is dealing with, a requirement that was maintained

even after the policy changes following Hurricane

Katrina (FEMA, 2007; FEMA, 2011). Such centralised

command systems are based on a military model of

command and control, in which a strictly pyramidal

command structure has unity of command as the

guiding principle (‘t Hart et al 1993:14). However,

there is also an increasingly sophisticated

understanding of how the ICS framework can support

the development of enhanced capabilities able to

respond to the 'ambiguity and turbulence' (Tierney &

Traynor, 2004:164) of what might be called ‘normal

crises’ (Bigley & Roberts, 2001). As such, it is able to

adapt its role to the needs of a coordinated multi-

agency network management approach, rather than

being stuck in a systems-led hierarchical command

system (Moynihan, 2009). However, its

fundamentally hierarchical structure is precisely the

weakness that makes it inherently incapable of

adapting and responding to the rapidly escalating

‘vicious and unmanageable circles’ (Boin et al,

2003:102) that lead to the situational chaos and

uncertainty that is inseparable from a true crisis

situation. It is this attempt to extend the domain of

rationality and bureaucratic organizing to the

uncertainty and often chaotic disaster environment

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(Buck et al, 2006; Boin et al, 2003), that has led to

repeated and systemic failures of crisis response

programmes at exactly the time that they are most

needed .

Although the centralised command system is

considered a rationalistic response to the pressures

created by a crisis situation, in that it allows decision

makers to make fast decisions, decide on specific

response strategies and bypass normal bureaucratic

channels (‘t hart et t al, 1993), the concentration of

power within a small group of homogeneous

(Comfort, 2007) senior managers can create an

environment where issues of personal power and

influence override the need to create immediate and

innovative responses (Hermann & Dayton, 2009).

Although it would be nice to presume that the

pressures and potential catastrophic damage

inherent in crisis situations would create an

environment where all actors were cooperating for

the best interests of the wider community, that is

unfortunately not the case (Rosenthal & ‘t Hart,

1991). The choice of who is in and who is out is in

itself a political decision, and often results in a

decision-making cabal comprised of ‘self-selecting

experts’ who set up exclusionary barriers based on

their own bias (Lodge, 2009). Whilst such small-group

thinking creates pressure on its members to

compromise on hard decisions in order to maintain

group cohesion (‘t Hart, Rosenthal & Kouzmin, 1993),

overly prioritizing group cohesion can also lead to

faulty decision making (Janis, 1972; Garnett &

Kouzmin, 2007). Even in the heat of crisis

management, the over-riding law of the

organizational jungle may well remain that the

‘fundamental and identity-defining’ competition for

power and influence will often trump the need to

support others within that circle (Lagadec 2005;

Jarman & Kouzmin, 1990).

Although it is the unique nature of each crisis that

underpins the failure to respond and manage them

appropriately or effectively, the operational reasons

for failures are often both simple and predictable

(Lagadec, 2005; Comfort, 2007). It is notable that

once an incident goes beyond normal operational

status and escalates into a 'unique and unfamiliar'

problem (Munns & Bjeirmi, 1996:81), the subsequent

breakdown in response capability is almost inevitably

identified as being due not to the nature or scale of

the outside event, but rather to a breakdown in what

should be fundamental incident management

functionality (Dynes, 1970; Quarantelli, 1988). Official

reviews into major CM failures (eg Hurricane Katrina

(2007), Fukushima (2012) and the Anders Breivik

massacre (Norway, 2012) repeatedly identify the

same five fundamental organizational weaknesses:

lack of understanding of the nature of the crisis; lack

of realistic modeling of required responses; lack of

leadership; lack of effective communication; lack of

inter-agency capability (See also Mintzberg, 1980).

These are in line with Quarantelli’s findings in his

review of crisis disaster management that there were

likely to be critical problems concerning

communication and information flow, authority and

decision-making, and failures to manage increased

coordination and a loosening of the command

structure (Quarantelli, 1988:375). As the 9/11 report

unequivocally stated, aside from the specific

operational issues, the underlying fault-lines in the

government’s failure to develop an effective crisis

management capability was founded on its’ ‘broader

inability to adapt how it manages problems to the

challenges of the twenty-first century’ (9/11

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Commission Report: 353).

Topology of Crises

The generic use of the phrases ‘Crisis’ and ‘Crisis

Management’ in the literature covers a wide range of

scenarios, though often with little clear relevance to

genuine crisis situations. Although there are

seemingly as many definitions as there are academic

articles, the underlying criteria were set by Hermann

(1963:64), with a three-stage definition taking into

account threat, time pressure and uncertainty.

Despite the fact that many studies presume that both

time pressure (urgency) (Grint, 2008) and uncertainty

(surprise) (Veil, 2001) are prerequisites for crisis,

Hermann & Dayton found in their study of decision

making in transboundary crises that in 50% of the

cases they investigated there was time for

consideration in the run up to the crisis situation,

which were themselves anticipated scenarios, and

only 40% of the situations were considered as

surprises, where the policy makers were caught off-

guard and had no plan of action (Hermann and

Dayton (2009:235).

Lalonde (2007) describes crises including natural

disasters, technological catastrophe, terrorist attack

or management failure; Quarantelli (2008) analyses

‘consensus-type’ crises – natural and technological

disasters, and conflict crises – riots, civil strife;

Pearson and Clair (1998:60) list organizational crises

that comingle potential crisis management problems

(natural disasters, terrorist attack) with normal

operating management procedures (copyright

infringement, bribery); Veil, (2011) analysis corporate

and organizational crises; Roe (2009) analysed the

role of decision making in financial crises; Van Wart &

Kapucu (2011) offer examples of crises developing

from human error, and there is also the study of

crises centring on international disputes (‘t Hart,

Rosenthal & Kouzmin ,1993; Stern, 2000; EPC, 2005).

There is also a hierarchy of urgency and potential

catastrophic consequences running from incidents,

accidents, conflicts, rupture and crises (Pauchant &

Mitroff, 1992) which in turn are classified as normal

crises (Bigley & Roberts, 2001), routine crises

(Moynihan, 2008),through creeping crises (Lalonde,

2007; Hermann & Dayton, 2009), to unthinkable and

inconceivable hypercomplex catastrophic crises

(Lagadec (2007). For the purposes of this paper,

crises are considered to be those extreme ‘landscape

crises’ situations (Howitt & Leonard, 2006b),

characterised by a total breakdown in normal

operating environment, where management and

presumed crisis management responses are either no

longer applicable or are no longer accessible (Roux-

Dufort, 2007). As well as the normal pressures of

urgency and uncertainly they are also situations with

transjurisdictional impacts and potential for

catastrophic damage. If a situation is anticipated,

planned and practiced for, and can be approached

under the terms of Standard Operating Procedures,

then it should more correctly be considered as

‘Routine Emergencies’ (Howitt & Leonard, 2009)

rather than a true crisis situation.

Hierarchical Command Systems: Removing

Uncertainty

The hierarchical control systems that are currently

considered appropriate to manage the response to

complex incidents are directly traceable to a model of

'instructionist management' that was developed at

the start of the Industrial Revolution, and which was

designed to oversee the delivery of a product,

whether a mass-produced artefact or one-off bridges

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or ocean liners (Burns, 1963). It was developed

around a process-driven production-line system

based on standardization, compartmentalization

(division of labour) and a separation between the

individual and the final product, and its ultimate

objective was to remove any form or possibility of

uncertainty from the production process (Pich et al,

2002). The reliability of the operating system was

predicated specifically on the validity of the design

process that created it (Schulman et al, 2004). Within

such a system, the human operator has no more

significance than any other component of the

machine, and it is a requirement of the successful

functioning of the system that their role is limited to

fulfilling their tasks in as unthinking a way as possible

(Burns & Stalker, 1961:103). Such modelling is based

on a belief in the power of mechanistic, rationalistic

linear analysis to arrive at the solution of any

problem. Based itself on Newtonian mechanistic

physics (Rittel and Webber, 1973:156), it accepts as a

given that planners and systems analysts can break

down problems into component parts, individual

sections can be isolated and treated as self-contained

units, and that there is a logical process based on

identification of problem, analysis of needs and

delivery of a ‘correct’ solution, that will lead to final

resolution.

The following description of a basic structure of an

ICS appropriate for large-scale emergencies or

disasters could have been used word-for-word to

describe a 19th century cotton mill:

'The system is highly formalized, characterized by

extensive rules, procedures, policies, and instructions.

Jobs within the system are specialized, are based on

standardized routines, and require particularized

training. Positions are arranged hierarchically and

related to one another on the basis of formal

authority' (Bigley and Roberts, 2001: 1282).

However, the attempt to transfer such a mechanistic

design to the field of crisis planning and management

carries the seeds of failure inbuilt in its DNA. The

’Paradox of Rationality’ (Rittel, 1972:391) is that the

validity of such a mechanistic, rationalistic systems

management approach is predicated on the ability to

use deductive reasoning to anticipate all possible

consequences of a potential action, and thereby to

eliminate those causal pathways that are harmful and

undesirable, and to leave a single causal pathway

that leads inevitably and unavoidably to the desired

optimal outcome. Not only is this impossible in

anything outside of a highly-engineered mechanistic

system, but even systems science texts make it clear

that their models and approaches are not applicable

to ‘real world phenomena such as social or

organizational groups [which]are typically poorly

structured or “messy”’ (Flood & Carson, 1993:11). In

fact, not only are such tightly-defined systems no

longer functional in a loosely structured

environment, but the belief that they are – that you

can set the parameters for how a crisis will develop,

and then set assumptions as to how it will respond

tamely to your own interventions, is not only

dangerous and crisis-creating in itself (Clarke, 1999),

but also enters into the realm of moral responsibility

(Wexler, 2009).

The effectiveness of a centralized command system,

as exemplified in the ICS framework, is predicated on

two limiting criteria, both of which become

inoperable in truly crisis scenarios. The first is that

rather than dealing with truly crisis situations (that is,

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those which significantly exceed an organization’s

capability to adapt and respond), the scenarios that

are used as evidence of ICS value are usually

positioned within what could be described as the

'normal operating environment' of the responding

agencies, involving ‘preplanned organizational

solutions to meet the more predictable aspects of an

evolving incident’ (Bigley & Roberts, 2001:1297;

Howitt & Leonard, 2009). The challenges that they

are facing, and which the hierarchical command

structure would be tasked with managing, are those

that they would have been expected to practice and

prepare for (Lutz and Lindell, 2008). They are also

situations where those utilizing it are official

responders, part of a community developed through

years of training and shared experiences, where the

demands being responded to are routine to them,

and where social and cultural emergence is at a

minimum (Buck et al, 2006). This modeling of crisis

management conceptualizes the crisis as an incident,

one which undoubtedly had a potential for

destructive consequences, but which nevertheless

can be approached in isolation, and which has a

cause which can be solved with the application of the

correct (and known) solution (Lagadec, 2007).

The second criteria for judging ICS effectiveness

involves inter-agency integration. Although the

management of inter-agency coordination is often

cited as the reason for the need for ICS (Moynihan ,

2009:899), case studies are often limited to

operations involving coordination between agencies

of a similar nature, in particular fire departments

with other fire departments (Moynihan 2009:901).

Bigley and Roberts' paper (2001) concerning high-

reliability organizing for complex and volatile task

environments, focuses exclusively on a fire

department responding to fire situations. Other high-

reliability organizations that were said to embody the

principles of a centralized hierarchical ICS include

naval aircraft carriers, nuclear power generation

plants, air traffic control systems, space shuttles and

maritime systems (Bigley and Roberts 2001:1293).

Although these are undoubtedly complex

organisations, they are only complex on an internal

basis, and in fact the development of their

complexity is contingent on a shared ‘sense making’

(Weick, 1988) between all actors that allows

extremely technical issues to be discussed in a highly-

coded and mutually understandable lingua franca.

This is precisely the opposite position from the

challenges of creating interoperability with other

agencies which may not benefit from a common

operational language, basis of crisis cognition, or

shared embodied knowledge (Boin et al, 2003).

Whilst centralised command systems theoretically

offer a framework for managing conglomerations of

agencies that share common values, even under such

tightly defined criteria their effectiveness in

responding to challenges outside strictly normative

conditions can be less than optimal (Howitt and

Leonard, 2005:41). However, it is precisely at the

point that crisis response operations move beyond

the ‘routine emergencies’ (Lutz and Lindell,

2008:122), and where they are required to create

innovative solutions in the midst of a highly volatile

crisis situation, that the weaknesses of hierarchically-

managed command systems become clear. An

instructionist / hierarchical system is predicated on

decisions being made and then disseminated through

the command chain of a ‘relatively small and

homogenous group of actors with similar

backgrounds’ (Moynihan 2009:903), within an

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administrative framework that assume stable

operating conditions (Comfort, 2007). In fact, the

traditional division between strategic and operational

roles, based on the concept that strategists work out

the solutions and operational managers deliver them,

tend to imbue the strategic commanders with an

omniscience on which all decisions will be based

(Burns & Stalker, 1961; Daft & Weick, 1984).

However, it is the very distance from the crisis

location that inhibits the decision-making power of

the strategists. Given the necessity for assimilating

information, developing solutions, and transmitting

them back down the command chain (which in a

highly complex and unstable environment, may itself

be time consuming, dependent on fragile

communications systems and being held hostage to

the possibility (likelihood) that detailed information

will be misheard, mis-transmitted or misunderstood

at some stage in the communications chain (Van

Wart & Kapucu, 2011; Butts et al, 2007; Garnett &

Kouzmin, 2007), the reality is that by the time the

latest strategic decisions have been passed down the

command chain, the situation on the ground will

have changed to such a degree that the local teams

will have already created their own solutions to the

original problem, and are now anyway involved with

managing a different set of problems that have

developed since the initial request for clarification

was sent out.

Studies on the topology of increasingly complex

organizational frameworks (Dynes, 1970) or the

Emergent Multi-Organizational Networks (EMON’s)

that came together in response to 9/11 (Kapucu,

2005) and Katrina (Comfort and Kapucu, 2006;

Comfort 2007; Marcum, Bevc and Butts, 2012),

demonstrate that from both a theoretical and an

empirical perspective, the usefulness of centralized

command systems are strongly bounded by issues of

size and organizational complexity, and are quickly

called into question once the scale and composition

of the response operation moves beyond what might

be considered ‘enhanced normality’ (Wenger et al,

1990). However, it should also be noted that both

Buck et al (2006) and Moynihan (2009) make the

point that questioning of the validity of the

hierarchical, centralised Incident Command System

comes almost exclusively from the academic

community, whilst the response community ‘has

been almost universal in its praise of ICS’ (Buck et al,

2006:3).

The Nature of Hypercomplex Crises

If traditional crisis management modelling saw crises

as little more than large-scale incidents, ‘an event

circumscribed to a specific area, within a global

system that otherwise remained stable’, (Lagadec,

2007:1), the nature of the threats that we now face

are infinitely more complex, with cascading

consequences that are literally incalculable. The

‘hypercomplex’ scenarios examined by Lagadec

(2007), reflect the concerns first circulated in a

seminal paper setting out the parameters for what

were labelled ‘Wicked Problems’ (Rittel & Webber,

1973). Initially focussing on issues of social planning,

wicked problems describe open-ended crisis

environments that are not bounded, and which can

neither be described in traditional mechanistic terms,

nor ‘solved’ through traditional crisis management

approaches. Hurricane Katrina was a classic example

of a wicked problem, in that the original triggering

event soon became relatively unimportant in

describing and prioritising the consequential crises

that it caused. Immediate, and in themselves

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catastrophic, crises dilemmas included the rescue of

thousands of stranded citizens, the housing, feeding

and caring of tens of thousands of homeless people,

the restoration of a city, the preservation of public

safety in light of the impact on critical infrastructure,

the impact on adjacent jurisdictions and, on another

level, the political implications of the perceived

failures of the government, the emergency

management community, the homeland security

agencies and the President himself, who was seen to

embody those failures on the public stage. The 2011

Fukushima earthquake / tsunami is another example

of a situation where the initial ‘triggering point’,

catastrophic as it was in its own terms, soon became

superseded by the impact of a nuclear breakdown,

and the subsequent cascading effects on the food

supply to Tokyo, the threat of a transnational nuclear

cloud, as well as the impact on global supply chains of

the disruption of Japanese component

manufacturing.

In describing such fundamentally undefinable

scenarios, Rittel & Webber’s analysis identified a new

class of crisis that would not only fail to respond to

classical RM methodologies, but had mutated into a

completely different class of event. Similar to a virus

that mutates so much from its original form that it

not only refuses to respond to traditional

approaches, but redefines the parameters of what

the threat is (as was seen in the BSE situation when

the triggering virus jumped the species barrier

(Lagadec, 2005)), so the new threat must be seen in

terms of a completely new and distinct threat

topology, rather than being a sub-set of previously

modeled problems. Unbounded and hypercomplex

events can no longer be seen merely as a higher,

more dynamic form of accidents (Lagadec, 2009).

They are in fact a central reality of the modern world.

If classical risk management was the domain of the

statistician, predicting future possibilities based on an

analysis of an aggregate of the masses, the threat set

by the new paradigm is predicated on the criticality

of the singularity, the outlier – the unknowable and

inconceivable (Lagadec, 2005).

The dilemmas that wicked problems pose to crisis

managers, strategists and planners are twofold.

Firstly, by the nature of their scale, complexity and

non-bounded nature, the choice of any particular

response option can only be made in a context of

ambiguity, information asymmetry and

organizational fragmentation (Lodge, 2009). In other

words, it is often hard to know what exactly the

problem is. It is this ambiguity created by lack of

central locus combined with unbounded limitations

(Howitt & Leonard, 2006b) that distinguishes the true

wicked problem from, for example, the major fire

that Bigley & Roberts use in their critique of ICS

within disaster management scenarios (Bigley &

Roberts, 2003). The second problem that the wicked

problem sets is that there are no ‘classes’ of wicked

problems that can act as a template for possible

responses (Rittel and Weber, 1973; Rittel, 1972). Any

response to a wicked problem is, by definition, going

to be innovative, self-generating and based on ad hoc

meetings of minds between a disparate range of

knowledge-holders, who will develop situationally

responsive solutions based on their own knowledge,

experience and insight (‘t Hart et al, 1993; Howitt &

Leonard, 2006).

The polar opposite of such undefined, unbounded

and ultimately unknowable situations are the tightly-

coupled, inter-dependent systems described by

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Perrow (1999). Such systems, often sitting within the

national critical infrastructure, are characterized by

the potential catastrophic effects of even minor

systems failures, involving both fast escalating

(developing into fully-blown crisis), and rapidly

cascading (affecting multiple levels of society across a

wide geographical spread) consequences. High

Reliability Theory (HRT), is the theoretical modeling

of decision-making which sets as its objective the

understanding of the creation of highly reliable

operation management programmes that are fail-

safe (‘systems that are not only foolproof, but

damned foolproof’, in Schulman et al, 2004:23),

within the context of such highly complex,

interconnected and dependent networks. HRT

depends on granular modeling of systems

dependencies, identifying potential vulnerabilities

and creating safeguards to ensure that the likelihood

of any malfunction is minimised, at the same time

ensuring that any gestating problem will be identified

at the earliest possible stage in order to allow early

(and low-input) intervention.

It has generally been accepted that the highly

interdependent and tightly bounded nature of HRS

precludes the possibility of innovative and creative

solutions to potential or actual problems. However,

even within the systems dependency and tight

coupling of a major power management system, it is

precisely the ability of operators dealing with the

immediate realities of emerging problems to create

innovative solutions using their experience and

improvisational abilities that allows them to deal with

surprises and volatile events (Schulman et al, 2004,

de Bruijne & van Eeten, 2007). In fact, the undirected

actions of self-asserting operators responding to the

contingencies of a crisis situation are seen as critical

in almost every crisis (‘t Hart et al, 1993:33). This

suggests that there may in fact be lessons that can be

drawn for the highly-designed environment of critical

infrastructures that could have value and relevance

within the unformed chaotic milieu of crisis

management.

From ‘Instructionist’ to ‘Innovative’

The model of crisis management that has been

discussed so far follows from the assumption that

correct analysis of a problem, though identification of

critical decision paths, will allow the ‘correct’ solution

to be discovered that will lead to a desired solution.

However, with the growth of the understanding in

concepts such as ‘fuzzy thinking’ in the 1970’s, it

became clear that there were other decision-making

methodologies available besides the centralised

control of increasingly small components of activity.

Although the reductionist, mechanistic models may

have been appropriate to the problems of the

emerging industrial age, they are not applicable to

the ‘messy problems’ (Flood and Carson, 1993)

characteristic of the 21st Century. Whether they are

labelled as wicked problems, hypercomplex or

catastrophic events, it is now recognised that

responses to increasingly complex crisis scenarios are

based on emergent ad hoc interactions between

differentiated groups, each with their own

organisational culture, language and wealth of

embodied experience. The need is to find a way of

creating the space wherein these groups, each with

its own highly-developed but at the same time highly-

focused expertise, are able to develop collaborative

relationships based on trust, communication and a

recognition of the shared values of the other

(Bresnen et al, 2003).

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The fundamental nature of wicked problems was

considered by Rittel to be that the ‘answer’ to wicked

problems do not exist , and although there may be

‘experts’ who have particular specialist insight and

understanding into specific aspects of the crisis, there

are no ‘experts’ who can claim to know how to solve

them (Rittel, 1972). Solutions are not so much

managed, as brought into existence through an

iterative decision making process that is in a constant

state of flux (Bresnan et al, 2003:157; Rittel &

Webber, 1973; Lagadec, 1997; van Bueren, Klijn &

Koppenjan, 2003; Moynihan, 2008). This perspective

assumes that solutions to crisis situations must be

pragmatic and situationally responsive (‘t Hart et al,

1993:35), rather than being predicated on the

management of mechanistic systems-based

solutions. The people who are interacting with the

crisis environment are constantly monitoring and

assessing changing situations, and then creating new

decision-paths, which in turn are monitored, assessed

and adapted (Pich et al, 2002; Weick, 1988). This

process is dependent on the interaction of

experienced practitioners who are the repositories of

specialised knowledge that is in itself tacit, intangible

and context-dependent (Bresnan et al, 2003:160).

Such knowledge, by its very nature, resists attempts

to codify it into universally applicable ‘Guides to

Practice’.

This acknowledgment of the unknowability of the

future state of the project even as it is being initiated

changes the whole crisis management process from

one of mechanistic control of a tightly-managed

production procedure at the end of which there will

appear the finished article (‘The Solution’), to one

where the project itself is seen as inherently

innovative, experimental and ambiguous (Mitzberg,

1994). It is within such a working space that project

management strategies are more likely to be focused

on a ‘probe and learn’ methodology, based on

‘Clumsy Solutions’ (Grint 2008; Verwiej et al, 2006),

or even ‘fuzzy gambling’ (Dror 1989), where the

project itself is seen as a learning, reflective process,

progressing through a series of failures and

improvement (Pich et al, 2003: 1010), and where

managers can do no more than ‘grope along’ in their

move towards organizational goals (Rist, 1994:554).

This stands in contrast to the classical understanding

of strategic decision making, which is focused on

developing ‘deliberate conscious set of guidelines

that determines decisions into the future’

(Mintzberg, 1978:935). In wicked problems, there is

no one correct answer, because there is no way of

testing the outcomes or consequences of any

particular option (Rittel, 1972). The general tone is

one of consultancy between peers holding embodied

knowledge rather than a predetermined response

delivered through a system of hierarchical commands

and instructions (Burns & Stalker 1961). As such, the

role of the central command team is to coordinate

actions and to support them in appropriating

resources and resolving conflict, rather than directing

and commanding (Moynihan, 2009).

The realities of the challenges of responding to either

unthinkable (9/11) or highly-predicted but

nevertheless surprising events (Hurricane Katrina),

led to an understanding of the significance of

Emergent Multi-Organization Networks (EMON’s) as

a critical stage in creating effective solutions within

the context of high-stress, highly unstable and fast

mutating threat environments (Comfort & Kapucu,

2006; Comfort, 2007). Other variants include Planned

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Multi-Organizational Networks (PMON) and Mixed

Multi-Organizational Networks (MMON) (Lutz &

Lindell, 2008:124). Although the criticality of such ad

hoc and often spontaneous MON’s in creating

innovative solutions is offered as an alternative

theoretical model to the tightly controlling

centralized management system that has been the

prevailing orthodoxy in crisis management studies,

it’s fundamental need – and nature – were described

fifty years ago.

'Organismic systems are adapted to unstable

conditions where new and unfamiliar problems and

requirements continually arise which cannot be

broken down and distributed amongst specialist roles

within a hierarchy….. Responsibilities and functions

and even methods and powers have to be constantly

redefined through interactions with others

participating in common tasks or in the solutions to

common problems’ (Burns 1963: 17-20).

However, despite the ad hoc nature of such non-

hierarchical, decentralized, free-forming emergent

groupings, the efficiency of both the individual

components and the inter-connected whole are

nevertheless dependent on the amount of training

and inter-agency practice that the participating

agencies undergo (Lutz & Lindell, 2008). As such,

effective response within the unstable crisis

environments that EMON’s thrive in is still dependent

on pre-event organizational preparation and training,

as well as the capabilities and motivation of critical

individuals (Butts et al, 2007; Schulman et al, 2004;

de Bruijne & van Eeten, 2007).

Given the lack of an epistemological understanding of

how knowledge and insight that is embodied in

experienced practitioners can be encoded and

transferred to organisational frameworks, which in

turn can then be utilised in a range of contexts, it is

no surprise that those that talk of such issues often

sound as though they are searching for the correct

terminology that can capture and convoy exactly

what is required. In acknowledging that such

professional insight is by its very nature unspoken,

intuitive and even indescribable, one is almost

reminded of the opening lines of the Tao Te Ching

‘That Tao which can be described in words is not The

Tao’.

‘In case of process innovation…what is learned is

often tacit, intangible and context-dependent….Such

learning is not only difficult to measure and evaluate,

it is also difficult to capture in explicit forms, in ways

that can be understood and applied in new

contexts…. How is the organisation able to capture

learning and deploy it over the long term, when it is

so embedded in the individual and manifested in their

particular expertise and range of contacts….The

individual embodiment of engineering knowledge and

expertise militated against the transfer of such

knowledge…” (Bresnen et al, 2003:163, 164).

It may seem paradoxical to ask how that which

cannot be talked of can be shared, and that which

cannot be described can be taught, but just as with

any paradox, the answer lies not in confronting

mutually self-negating contradictions, but in

rephrasing the question. As such, the role of the

strategic crisis manager is not so much to directly

facilitate the transfer of explicit knowledge from one

‘knowledge holder’ to another ‘knowledge receiver’,

much less to command and direct, but rather to

create and support a working environment that

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facilitates the development of a truly interactive

community, one which can collectively develop and

explore the innovative solutions that are at the heart

of modern crisis response.

Conclusion

The recognition of the nature of crisis response as a

free-form interaction between a community of

‘knowledge holders’, each with their accumulated

experience, insight and embedded understanding of

potential options, and the ever-changing situation

which they are facing, will set the foundation for the

on-going debate as to how decentralised non-

hierarchical response management systems can be

developed. It is hoped that this paper will contribute

to the search for ‘a more sophisticated , contingent

and empirically grounded theory of crisis

management’ (‘t Hart et al, 1993:12), as well as

acting as a catalyst for further investigation into this

area of crisis management, one which will be crucial

in developing a crisis and disaster response capability

appropriate to the challenges of the 21st century.

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Deltar Training Solutions is a London-based international consultancy specialising in the strategic management of complex crisis events.

Dr David Rubens D.SyRM, CSyP, FSyI, MD Deltar Training Solutions David holds a Professional Doctorate in Security and Risk Management (D.SyRM) from University of Portsmouth, writing his thesis on strategic management and critical decision-making in hyper-complex crisis environments. He holds an MSc in Security and Risk Management (2006) from Leicester University, where he was a Visiting Lecturer and Dissertation Supervisor on their Security, Terrorism and Policing programme (2006-12), and was a Visiting Lecturer on the Strategic Leadership Programme at the Security and Resilience Department, Cranfield University, UK Defence Academy (2009-’10), focusing on terrorism and public policy, and the management of large-scale, complex multi-agency operations.

Dr Rubens is a founding member of the Academic Advisory Group to the London Resilience Gold Command Crisis Management Project.

david.rubens@deltar-ts.com www.deltar-ts.com info@deltar-ts.com