The failure of foresight in crisis management: A secondary analysis of the Mari disaster

Abstract

Foresight the ability to plan and think systematically about future scenarios in order to inform decision-making in the present has been applied extensively by corporations and governments alike in crisis management. Foresight can be complicated because dispersed groups have diverse, non-overlapping pieces of information that affects an organization's ability to detect, mitigate, and recover from failures. This paper explores the failure of foresight in crisis management by drawing on data on events that preceded and followed the Mari disaster in a naval base in Cyprus in July 2011, where a large explosion killed 13 people and injured 62 others, while completely destroying the major power plant of the island. The paper examines how foresight into crisis management decisions was compromised because of a conscious effort by high ranking decision-makers to minimize emergent danger and avoid responsibility for the crisis, in joint with red tape, bureaucracy, and poor coordination and information flows. The paper explores the notion of operational and political responsibility of individual decision-makers and discusses an alternative approach to foresight in crisis management, one that is built on multiple layers of decision-making.