Training for Crisis Situations: A Panoramic View of Theory and Practice Around the World

Introduction

High-impact and low-probability situations, or “crises” pose a genuine and serious threat to society by inflicting harm, spreading illness, or killing people (Daoudi, Chebil, Tranvouez, Chaari & Espinasse, 2017). Crises can emerge from environmental, and natural causalities, technological and human failures, malevolence, political tensions, organizational misdeeds, etc. As globalization is an element of everyday lives, so are crises becoming more global as evidenced by the worldwide effects of COVID-19 (Bhaduri, 2019) and the current Russia-Ukraine conflict (World Health Organisation, 2022). Therefore, businesses and organizations find themselves operating in a time of great uncertainty, as do individuals fighting for their own or other people’s lives.

In order to prevent, de-escalate, and recover from deadly situations, crisis management training should be provided not only for first responders but also for professionals in general, especially when assuming leadership roles.

This chapter focuses on the practices of crisis management training in several fields, focusing on the addressed competencies as well as training methods. Hence, we aim to grasp an idea of how people around the world are being trained to deal with crisis situations and disasters, specifically regarding:

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  What kind of competencies do these trainings seem to focus on the most? Which professional area is focusing on which competencies and skills?

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  How are crisis trainings conducted in respect to types of delivery, content, and training strategies?

This chapter starts with basic definitions of crises, disasters, emergencies, and crisis management, explores the concepts of competences, competencies, and skills and presents basic concepts of training and development. Then an explanation of the methodology used for this chapter and main results are presented. Finally, a discussion is conducted both on the training design and competencies, while drawing comparisons to further crisis training literature and deriving recommendations for practice as well as research. Finally, an overall conclusion is drawn, providing an outlook for future research.

Background

Crises, Disasters, Emergencies

The expression “crisis” stems from the Greek word “krisis”, which can be translated to “decision” or “choice” (Paraskevas, 2006). Although scholars seem to have offered a variety of differing definitions for the term, crises refer to high-impact, low-probability, and disruptive events that come with uncertainty and risk, whereby decisions and choices must be made under time pressure (Gregory, 2005).

The expression is often used in combination with or as a replacement for the word disaster and emergency. Al-Dahash, Thayaparan and Kulatunga (2016) point out that, although they all share a sudden nature and represent the root cause for subsequent damage, they should not be understood as the same concepts. According to their analysis, many similarities could be found between crises and disasters, while emergencies did not share as many commonalities with the two, although, both could lead to disasters in cases of mismanagement or neglect. The relationship between the three is highly interdependent, interconnected, and complex, as illustrated in Figure 1.

Figure 1.

Similarities and differences between crises, disasters, and emergencies

Source: Al-Dahash et al., 2016, pp.1197

Considering the work in this chapter applies to the three circumstances, from here on we use the term “crises” as a representative of the three concepts, for simplicity.