From in-depth studies of industrial crises, six factors emerge which are com mon to the general context of man-made, organizationally induced crises. An analysis of a particular crisis, the Hinsdale communications outage that af fected more than 500,000 customers and businesses in the Chicago area, dem onstrates the importance of these six factors.
The paper argues that current efforts in crisis management are primarily re active and focus on treating symptoms. A proactive strategy for crisis manage ment is proposed. This strategy not only follows directly from the six-factor model proposed in the paper but is formulated explicitly to reduce the general context that pervades all crises.
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