Crisis Decision Making and Management

Crisis management studies is a research area that analyzes how public and private actors respond to events that threaten individuals and society. There are many organizational and societal processes that enter this empirical space, and several social science disciplines have contributed to the development of this research area, such as sociology, political science, psychology, public administration, and international relations. A core question when studying the management of crises will always be: What characterizes high-stakes decisions made under pressing circumstances? When starting to answer this question, we need an understanding of both psychological and institutional forces that surround the situation in order to see the individual decision maker in context.