Negotiating Team
Job Overview Flyer
In the normal course of events in business and society, most management groups are not adequately prepare to effectively deal with crisis situations: fires, natural disasters, bomb threats, or any type of willful acts of destruction. Two recent examples that showed just how underprepared most organizations are were the 9/11 Trade Center attack and Hurricane Katrina; both failures in their own right of the ability to quickly and effectively manage crises situations. This historical event changed the lives of many Americans forever and proved that business communities as well as communities at large and in general are all susceptible to disasters or crisis at any time. These disruptions can also be very costly the economy in general, and have wide ranging consequences for individuals and culture alike. Since 9/11, there have been a preponderance of reports, books, academic tomes, and conferences on the subject of crisis management -- all with the idea of helping managers prepare for a well-thought out, considered plan with which to put into place during a crisis (Mitroff, 2005).
Negotiating Team Positions, Duties and Qualifications There are numerous aspects to crisis management in the contemporary world: natural disasters, technological crises, confrontation crises, crises of malevolence, crisis of misdeeds, and workplace violence. Along with these numerous types of crises there are,...
These include, but are not limited to: the Standard Crisis Management Model, Management Planning, Contingency Planning, Business Continuity Planning, Structural-Functional Systems Theory, Diffusion of Innovation Theory, and the Role of Apologies and Public Relations in Crisis Management (Augustine, 2000).
In general, crisis management focuses on three major activities: 1) What are the most appropriate methods of response to both real and perceived crises?, 2) What models and scenarios need to be defined that constitute a crisis and should engage a necessary and appropriate response?, and 3) What is the communication plan and chain that is necessary to ensure that the emergency phase of crisis management is handled appropriately? (Fink, 2000).
One of the major axioms to crisis management is that managers do not negotiate and negotiators do not manage. The reason for this is simple -- perspective. One needs two different psychological approaches when dealing with a crisis involving negotiation -- macro and micro. The purpose of a team, then, is to provide support for divergent aspects of a crisis; if that crisis is media related, the team supports information and public policy; if hostage negotiation, the negotiator and intelligence and law enforcement; if technical then engineers and solution oriented management. For our…
