Was the COVID-19 pandemic a predictable surprise? A crisis management perspective.

Abstract

In their seminal work, Watkins and Bazerman (2003) defined a predictable surprise as "an event or set of events that take an individual or group by surprise, despite prior awareness of the information required to anticipate the events and their consequences". The authors argued that predictable surprises are predominantly a failure of (i) recognitionthe inability of an individual or group to spot red-flags, gaps and weaknesses in a system before they escalate to major disruptions (ii) prioritisation -failure to manage identified threats with the level of importance and urgency they require, and (iii) mobilisation -failure to organise and coordinate key resources in response to a potential or ongoing disaster. The authors subsequently developed a recognition-prioritisation-mobilisation (RPM) framework, which they proposed as a useful tool to gauge and/or ascertain the predictability of a crisis in hindsight.