Author: Majid Abdul Mahdi Al-Musaada
Summary of the Book: Crisis Management
Arabic libraries lack significant literature on one of the most crucial topics in modern management, "Crisis Management." The success of institutions and communities fundamentally relies on their ability to keep pace with scientific and practical developments, which pose a serious challenge by requiring them to demonstrate their capacity to adapt, fulfill their duties in a rapidly changing world, and embrace continuous innovations in communication, transportation, industry, production, and services.
Modern life is complex and intertwined due to today's world complexities in various fields. These complexities naturally lead to crises in daily life, affecting individuals, institutions, local communities, and the international community. Humans are central to crises as they often cause, escalate, and address them. These crises vary in nature, intricacy, severity, and impact.
Crises typically arise and evolve cyclically. When a person faces a crisis, they often deal with multiple crises simultaneously. Crises do not occur in isolation. Since crises do not follow a specific order, it is challenging to pinpoint when one crisis ends and another begins.
The book "Crisis Management" explains that managing crises quickly and wisely no longer solely depends on emergency plans and regulations but involves precise administrative strategies. These strategies include early crisis prediction, protecting the entity and its employees, and managing crises to minimize material and moral losses.
The book identifies three categories of factors that can hinder an institution's ability to detect warning signals indicating an impending crisis:
- Withholding crucial information from those who need it, preventing the identification of weaknesses and receipt of warning signals.
- Holding incorrect beliefs about the institution's immunity to crises or its ability to detect warning signals.
- Lacking the capability to respond appropriately to specific dangers.
"Crisis Management" emphasizes that accurate problem prediction requires a realistic approach, planning to assess the potential crisis's impact, and understanding its possible outcomes. A thoughtful approach to facing the problem is essential.
The book notes that crises have become a common feature rather than an exception in today's societies and at various levels. Crises reveal leaders' true capabilities and their exceptional ability to manage different institutions. In traditional institutions, managers primarily focus on administrative tasks and daily operations, limiting their role to implementing instructions. In contrast, leader-managers are seen as visionaries who set goals, plan to achieve them, and work collaboratively as a team, requiring them to master various administrative skills.
"Crisis Management" highlights that crises are both old and new. From the beginning of creation, humans have faced continuous crises and disasters. Despite technological advancements, humans still encounter crises. The concept of crises has intensified in today's interconnected world, where no administrative entity is immune to global events' impacts. Any crisis anywhere exerts pressure on all administrative entities, with varying degrees of severity from one country to another.
The book points out that the importance of crisis and disaster management only gained attention in modern times due to the frequency of crises and the urgent calls for immediate actions to address their destructive impacts. Researchers have often neglected this field because it deals with hypothetical events with uncertain timing, location, and destructive magnitude. B.B. Clary asserts that it is politically safer to adopt an optimistic assumption that a disaster will not occur soon, avoiding the allocation of funds for preparation. As a result, disaster-related programs are given low priority by politicians, especially legislators who prefer to address urgent societal problems. This optimistic assumption carries a risk as it assumes disasters are unlikely in the near future.
What is the Relationship Between the DocSuite HR System and the Book "Crisis Management: Approaches – Concepts – Processes"?
The DocSuite HR system aims to organize data and processes related to employees within an organization, including contracts, performance, salaries, recruitment, and more. Meanwhile, the book "Crisis Management" focuses on handling emergencies and crises that may confront the organization, whether financial, security-related, or natural.
The relationship between them lies in the role of the DocSuite HR system in crisis management by directing and coordinating the human response to crises. It helps identify available human resources, direct and coordinate them effectively to manage the crisis. By effectively utilizing the DocSuite HR system, organizations can enhance their ability to handle crises more efficiently.
You can download the book "Crisis Management: Approaches – Concepts – Processes" directly from [here].