Managing a crisis : leadership and organizational elements essential for success

Every organization will face a crisis at some point in its history. How well an organization handles the preparation, response and recovery from a crisis is highly dependent on the strength of its leadership and overall design. This thesis develops a framework of five leadership and seven organizational elements necessary for the evaluation of an organization's response during a crisis. Utilizing this framework, interviews were conducted with senior leaders of businesses that successfully navigated tremendous crisis situations. As a result of these interviews, I determined the leadership elements of a strong foundation of support, realistic analysis and a propensity to act had the greatest impact on the success or failure of a leader during a crisis. The organizational elements of leadership support, a strong shared vision, and the ability to think systemically were also determined essential to the effective handling of a crisis. Organizations should dedicate time and resources to cultivate the robust development of these elements as part of their crisis preparation.

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Engineering and Management Program

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2016

Author dc:creator

• Rowe, Andy (Andy Harold)

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Peter Kurzina.

• Engineering and Management Program.
• System Design and Management Program.
• Engineering Systems Division.

Statement dc:rights

• MIT theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed, downloaded, or printed from this source but further reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/107363

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/107363