Leadership Exercise: Boston Marathon Bombings Analysis On April 15, 2013, Tamerlan Tsarnaev and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev two Kyrgyz-American brothers, detonated two homemade bombs at the annual running of the Boston Marathon, killing three people and injuring another estimated 264 attendees. Although this high-profile domestic terrorism attack claimed a number of casualties, most observers agree that the outcome could have been far more severe had it not been for the preparations and actions taken by law enforcement and first responders prior to and immediately after the incident. The purpose of this paper is to provide a review of the literature to Identify salient issues that relate to issues such as leadership, decision making, organizational culture, communication, politics and power, employee training, teams, and so forth to identify best practices and lessons learned from this horrific incident. Finally, a summary of the research and key findings concerning the security preparations for and responses to the 2013 Boston Marathon bombings are provided in the conclusion.

Review and Analysis

Although Lasky (2014) emphasizes that the 26 miles covered by the Boston Marathon made the provision of security especially difficult, the impact of the terrorist bombings on the event would likely have been far worse had it not been for the extensive prior planning that was involved. Moreover,...

For instance, Lasky (2014) points out that, “One outcome of reviewing the incident discovered that the pre-positioning of medical first responders for the marathon greatly helped in the triage efforts for victims on the scene” (p. 2)
In fact, although this change appears intuitive on its face, it is important to note that previous marathon and other public events were handled far differently and first responders actually waited until law enforcement authorities arrived on the scene before taking action. In this regard, Lasky (2014) reports that, “In the past as a matter of emergency medical services protocols, medical first responders waited for law enforcement to clear arrival before they responded. The pre-staged medical services on the scene may become more standardized for security planning at future public events” (p. 2). Furthermore, the Boston mayor assumed an important leadership role by ensuring that planning for the re-opening of one of the most seriously affected streets was achieved in a timely fashion (After action report for the response to the 2013 Boston Marathon bombings, 2014).

The importance of this key lesson learned from…