Suchergebnisse

"Machinery will go on developing, with the purpose of saving men labour, till the mass of the people attain real leisure enough to be able to appreciate the pleasures of life; till, in fact, they have attained such mastery over Nature that they no longer fear starvation as a penalty for not working more than enough…. They would soon find out that the less work they did, the more desirable a dwelling place the earth would be."

The COVID‐19 crisis is a stark reminder that modern society is vulnerable to a special species of trouble: the creeping crisis. The creeping crisis poses a deep challenge to both academics and practitioners. In the crisis literature, it remains ill‐defined and understudied. It is even harder to manage. As a threat, it carries a potential for societal disruption—but that potential is not fully understood. An accumulation of these creeping crises can erode public trust in institutions. This paper proposes a definition of a creeping crisis, formulates research questions, and identifies the most relevant theoretical approaches. It provides the building blocks for the systematic study of creeping crises.

AbstractSingle‐use plastics (SUPs) are increasingly polluting terrestrial, coastal, and marine habits, contributing to the creeping "plastic crisis." The COVID‐19 pandemic provided a window of opportunity for decision makers to change the degree of urgency and responsiveness to this crisis and for policy entrepreneurs and industry who are against reducing plastic consumption to influence decision makers to change their position on various plastic‐related issues. Hygiene/health concerns have been used as a justification by governments and industry to increase the use of SUPs resulting in a reversal in, or a reprioritization of, policy decisions. Through the Multiple Streams Framework (MSF), I examine how creeping crises become secondary to urgent crises through agenda setting that is influenced and leveraged by policy entrepreneurs. I explore examples of such plastic policy decisions finding that they have been politically driven and influenced by entrepreneurs and industry rather than being primarily based on health concerns.Related ArticlesDiaz‐Kope, Luisa, and John C. Morris. 2022. "Why Collaborate? Exploring the Role of Organizational Motivations in Cross‐sector Watershed Collaboration." Politics & Policy 50(3): 516–39. https://doi.org/10.1111/polp.12470.Gerlach, John David, Laron K. Williams, and Colleen E. Forcina. 2013. "The Science‐Natural Resource Policy Relationship: How Aspects of Diffusion Theory Explain Data Selection for Making Biodiversity Management Decisions." Politics & Policy 41(3): 326–54. https://doi.org/10.1111/polp.12017.Neill, Katharine A., and John C. Morris. 2012. "A Tangled Web of Principals and Agents: Examining the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill through a Principal–Agent Lens." Politics & Policy 40(4): 629–56. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1747‐1346.2012.00371.x.

AbstractIn March 2020, the municipality of Oslo's Nursing Home Agency was hit by Norway's first COVID‐19 outbreak. Being responsible for a very vulnerable group, they had to deal with a situation never before encountered and of which they had very limited knowledge. In this study, we explored how situational awareness (SA) changed from a creeping to an urgent crisis. We undertook a case study of the Nursing Home Agency's top management during the initial period of the COVID‐19 pandemic (December 2019 through late March 2020). We conducted individual interviews with the management in charge of decisions. Thematic analysis yielded four main categories affecting SA: perception of event development, perception of available time, information, and cooperation and trust. We found that subjective experience of the geographical proximity of the crisis and subjective experience of time were essential in shaping SA. Perception of time was essential to the understanding of urgency, which was an important factor in reacting properly. Further, the perception of space was necessary for the crisis to be interpreted as critical. Time and space are objective factors but are perceived subjectively. Our model showed that the crisis must be perceived as urgent for proper actions to be decided upon.

AbstractThe concepts of communication and trust play a central role in crisis management. There is a complex nexus between communication and trust building in crisis management, as different activities and processes result in communication and trust building in crisis management. This article argues that communication and trust are two sides of the same crisis management coin: each complements the other. To this end, we reflected on how crisis communication and trust factors could be a tool to amplify or attenuate the level of attention given to creeping crises and how such factors could influence creeping crisis management difficulties. We then proposed a crisis management typology to aid crisis managers in managing the difficulties associated with creeping crises.