Crisis Management: Planning for What May Not Happen

A crisis is a disruption that has a material impact on the entire system of an organization, and it threatens the fundamental assumptions on which the system is based. Therefore, the existence of a crisis has certain conditions: the entire system within the organization must be subjected to such severe impact that its units become completely disrupted. Additionally, the assumptions and beliefs held by the members of the organization must be threatened to the extent that they perceive these assumptions as invalid, or they may resort to defensive mechanisms in response to them.