After successfully completing this course, students should be able to:
• understand the nature and types of organizational crises;
• discuss the possible outcomes of organizational crises;
• recognize how individual, social/organizational/cultural, and technological factors have contributed to the emergence of organizational crises;
• explain which factors help in preventing organizational crises;
• explain which factors help in containing and resolving organizational crises;
• appreciate the role of individual/group decision-making, communication, and leadership in the crisis management process.

Organizations increasingly face diverse types of crises, such as natural disasters, accidents, scandals, employee discrimination, or cyber-attacks, which have implications for organizations’ life. Crises threaten the core values and goals of an organization, the survival of an organization, and people’s safety. Crises have negative, long-term consequences for organizations’ functioning, profitability, legal system, reputation, and human resource management systems. Nevertheless, organizational crises are also an opportunity for organizational learning. Managing organizational crises is, therefore, complicated and challenging, as it is difficult for organizations, leaders, and individuals to perform under urgent, ambiguous, stressful, and emotional situations. This course aims to offer you a clear framework that helps you understand how organizational crises arise and give you more insight into the complexity of crisis management. The course consists of two main parts: (1) conditions that affect the vulnerability to an organizational crisis; and (2) crisis management. The first part concentrates on the factors that make an organization crisis-prone. We focus on human, social-cultural, and organizational-technological causes. The second part discusses crisis management. We discuss what organizations can do to prevent crises and how to contain and resolve organizational crises.

The course literature draws from frontline scientific journals in the social sciences.

An advanced level of English.