Crisis Management in Hindsight: Cognition, Communication, Coordination, and Control
2007/12/01 by Louise K. Comfort · 890 citations
Psychology · Social Sciences · #Business #Cognition #Cognitive psychology #Command and control #Computer science #Context (archaeology) #Control (management) #Crisis management #Disaster Management and Resilience #Economics #Emergency management #Hindsight bias #Knowledge management #Law #Management #Political science #Psychology #Public Relations and Crisis Communication #Public relations #Risk management #Socially distributed cognition #Team Dynamics and Performance
paper · doi:10.1111/j.1540-6210.2007.00827.x
published in Public Administration Review 67(s1), 189-197 (Wiley)
openalex publication_date 2007/12/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/06
Abstract
This article argues that cognition is central to performance in emergency management. Cognition is defined as the capacity to recognize the degree of emerging risk to which a community is exposed and to act on that information. Using the case of Hurricane Katrina to illustrate the collapse of the standard model of emergency management without a clear focus on the role of cognition, the author reframes the concept of intergovernmental crisis management as a complex, adaptive system. That is, the system needs to adjust and adapt its performance to fit the demands of an ever‐changing physical, engineered, and social environment. The terms of cognition, communication, coordination, and control are redefined in ways that fit the reality of practice in extreme events. A reframed intergovernmental crisis management system may be conceived as a dynamic interorganizational system that is characterized by four primary decision points: (1) detection of risk, (2) recognition and interpretation of risk for the immediate context, (3) communication of risk to multiple organizations in a wider region, and (4) self‐organization and mobilization of a collective, community response system to reduce risk and respond to danger.
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