Understanding Crisis Decision Making.

Abstract

Abstract : Crises continue to confront the United States and her leaders, threatening a deliberate national strategy. An examination of both strategy and crisis finds a striking but balanced contrast; they are parallel in definition but opposed in outcome. Crisis therefore represents a breakdown of strategy, and decision makers focus on strategic ways in crises. Impediments to rational decision making occur in routine situations, but leaders must know if these constraints are intensified or mitigated in crises. Organizational process and governmental politics are two impediments that should be reduced in crisis as the threatened loss of high-value goals pushes aside personal differences, organizational parochialism and political bargaining. The reduction of these impediments in crisis remains more illusion than reality. Having relied on these two influences in deliberate planning and routine decisions, decision makers appear to reflectively use these in crisis as well. Belief systems serve as a foundation for an individual's perception of reality and prejudice rational decision making in both routine situations and crises. Crises shape and reinforce beliefs systems, subsequently swaying selection of courses of action in future crises. Crisis decision makers must understand these three deterrents to rationality and overcome them to successfully reach the envisioned strategic end.