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25 - The Paris Initiative, “Anthrax and Beyond”: Transnational Collaboration Among Interdependent Critical Networks

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 July 2009

Patrick Lagadec
Affiliation:
Founding Member European Crisis Management Academy
Erwann O. Michel-Kerjan
Affiliation:
Managing Director of the Center for Risk Management and Decision Processes The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania
Philip E. Auerswald
Affiliation:
George Mason University, Virginia
Lewis M. Branscomb
Affiliation:
Harvard University, Massachusetts
Todd M. La Porte
Affiliation:
George Mason University, Virginia
Erwann O. Michel-Kerjan
Affiliation:
University of Pennsylvania
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Summary

It has been rather misleading and unfortunate that the academic study of crisis management was initiated chiefly by the Cuba missile crisis in 1962…. It appeared to approximate to the form of a “two-person game”…. The episode really did look rather like a diplomatic chess game…. If there is a “game” model for crisis, it [is] certainly not chess, but poker for five or six hands in the traditional Wild West saloon, with the participants all wearing guns, and quickness on the draw rather than the fall of the diplomatic cards tending to determine who eventually acquire the jackpot.

- Coral Bell, Decisionmaking by Governments in Crisis Situations, 1978

As previous chapters of this book highlight, organizations face a new web of challenges made of “unconventional” events. They reflect more than mere local incidents and stationary trends in the occurrence of untoward events. Rather, global turbulences, real-time large-scale risks, and out-of-scale domino effects in an increasingly interdependent world demonstrate that the actions of one organization can have a direct or indirect impact on others thousands of miles away. In an editorial we published in the autumn of 2005, we argued that these untoward events frame “a whole new ball game.”

Most people can deal with well-known risks that could cause local damage. As a result, most crisis management tools developed over the past 20 years are based on the outdated assumption that risks are always formatted – that is, that it is possible to list all untoward events that could happen, determine their probability based on past experience, and measure the costs and benefits of specific mitigation measures.

Type
Chapter
Information
Seeds of Disaster, Roots of Response
How Private Action Can Reduce Public Vulnerability
, pp. 457 - 480
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2006

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