Bibliographic record
Abstract
The purpose of this study was to examine crisis management in business enterprises. The study had four objectives: 1) to integrate theories of crisis behaviour into a conceptual model of crisis management providing a basis for empirical research; 2) to test specific hypotheses concerning crisis behaviour, susceptibility to crises, and coping abilities; 3) to develop managerial tools for diagnosing organizational strengths and vulnerabilities in coping with crises; 4) to develop prescriptions for improving abilities to cope with crises and for preventing crises. A conceptual model was developed that provided a framework for studying decision-making and implementation processes during crises. Data on environmental, organizational, and managerial characteristics were collected from senior executives in 94 firms in Canada and the U.S. by means of a structured questionnaire. Thirty hypotheses derived from the crisis model were tested. Environmental predictability and a managerial style reflecting process rather than task orientation were two factors associated with lower than average susceptibility to crisis. A general dimension of coping abilities was identified. Firms that have a high ability to cope with one type of crisis tend to have high abilities to cope with other kinds of crises. In addition to the general dimension the study discovered a specialized dimension of coping abilities. Firms that develop high abilities to deal with continuous threats tend to have poor abilities to deal with discontinuous threats if the general dimension of coping abilities is kept constant. High levels of organizational slack and a decentralized decision-making structure were identified as two major factors relating to the ability to cope with market failures. Diagnostic functions were constructed that predicted vulnerabilities to crisis on the basis of executive and organizational attributes. Discriminant Analysis was used to derive the predictive functions for different types of threatening situations (discontinuous threats and opportunities, market stagnation, declining markets, and cyclical markets). The powers of discrimination for these functions generally were high. Prescriptions were developed for improving crisis coping abilities and for preventing crises. To help reduce crisis susceptibility, for example, improved scanning and monitoring techniques were prescribed to temper the impact of an uncertain environment. Dual organizational structures, one for routine decision-making and one for crisis decision-making were prescribed to improve performance in crises. Other prescriptions were of a type that generally would improve management capabilities, for example, expanding the repertoire of standard operating procedures, increasing the motivation of operating departments, and making procedural modifications in decision-making processes. The dissertation concludes by reviewing the successes and weaknesses of the empirical study, and proposals are made for future research.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.003 | 0.010 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.002 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".