Principles, Fundamentals of and Approaches to Crisis Management (With an Emphasis on Social Crises)

Crisis is an inevitable reality in social life. Crises are inherently a context for threats and opportunities which, depending on the type, severity and extent of crisis environment, can put political systems and leaders in difficult and precarious circumstances. Stressing social crises, this article intends to deal with the principles, fundamentals of and approaches to crisis management. The results reveal that the most important element of crisis management is understanding the principles and causes of crises. In McCarthy’s words, the main purpose of crisis management is to find a reasonable solution to remove the unusual circumstances so that the fundamental values and interests can be maintained.
Given the multiplicity of limitations in crisis conditions (short decision-making and response time, surprise and limited access to information), crisis managers should not mistake mistakes in diagnosing crises and crisis situations and using crisis analysis and understanding the basic elements of the crisis (crisis nature, crisis history, crisis resources, extent of the crisis, etc.), they should establish a correct course of action in order to control and manage the crisis. The four factors of human, culture of the community, structure and strategy are essential in crisis conditions and the more deeply the managers understand these four factors, the more effectively and successfully they can manage and control crisis conditions. To successfully manage crises, a crisis manager needs to follow a systematic approach based on the least damage and the principle of continuous improvement and constantly hunt for the early signs of a potential crisis so that he/she can control crisis with the least damage. Hence, dealing with different principles of and approaches to crisis management is one of the significant issues of the present article.