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Welch on Crisis Management
September 14, 2005

Today's Wall Street Journal features an Op-Ed piece by Jack Welch on Hurricane Katrina and "The Five Stages of Crisis Management." In the article, Welch sees Katrina as a case study on the stages of a crisis (Denial, Containment, Shame-mongering, "Blood on the floor," Solution) and how they unfortunately have panned out in New Orleans. Welch compares the events in the Southeastern U.S. to the way that major crises in the business world take shape, even calling how they occurred as having "played out like an old movie." The positive spin here is that in business, Welch says, "organizations may go through several crises, but very rarely do they go through the same type twice." Hopefully that will work the same way across the government agencies involved in Katrina’s aftermath.

The article is available here for WSJ Online subscribers – otherwise, head on out and pick up a print version.

Posted by Michael Kempner at September 14, 2005 05:12 PM