After successfully completing this course, students should be able to:
Understand the nature and types of Organisational crises;
Discuss the possible outcomes of Organisational crises;
Recognize how individual, social/Organisational/cultural, and technological factors have contributed to the emergence of Organisational crises;
Explain which factors help in preventing, containing, and resolving Organisational crises;
Appreciate the role of individual/group decision-making, communication, and leadership in the crisis management process.

The aim of this course is to provide you with an understanding of the phenomenon crisis, its attributes, and to discuss ideas on what can help us to avoid and handle a crisis intelligently. An enormous amount of articles have been written on how to solve crises situations. Often these solutions are presented in easy to use -to do- lists. Unfortunately, solving Organisational crises is not that simple. This course presents a clear framework that may help you to understand how Organisational crises arise, and aims to give you more insight in the complexity of crisis management. The course consists of three main parts. In the first part, we discuss the psychological, social-cultural and technological-structural causes of an Organisational crisis. In the second part, we examine to what extent Organisations can prevent or plan for crises. In the last part, we study how Organisations can cope with a crisis once it has hit, thereby focusing on crisis communication, leadership and Organisational learning.

The literature in this course is of an advanced level as it draws from frontline scientific journals that often can be challenging. Furthermore, you are required to apply the literature to real life crisis situations (e.g., BP oil spill, Chernobyl).

An advanced level of English