Psychological Preparedness And Crisis Management: Theory And Practice

Abstract

Doepel, D.G., 1993. Psychological preparedness and crisis management: theory and practice. Industrial & Environmental Crisis Quarterly, 7:4, 279-292. In "Crisis management: the psychological dimension" (Doepel, 1991) and in "Trauma, crisis intervention and psychological debriefing" (Hodgkinson and Stewart, 1993) it has been proposed that corporate crisis management would be more effective if strategies were developed to deal with the stress of man agement and employees in the aftermath of traumatic events. This paper expands this proposal and describes a model of crisis management and crisis preparedness that includes insights about stress during crisis situations in all phases: crisis response plan design, training, and evaluation of crisis plans during simulation exercises. This article also reports upon the implementa tion of this model in a national telecommunications company's "Crisis Preparedness Program".