Chaos, Strategy, and Action: How Not to Fiddle While

PICMET 2009 Proceedings, August 2-6, Portland, Oregon USA © 2009 PICMET

Chaos, Strategy, and Action: How not to Fiddle While Rome Burns Fred Phillips Alliant International University, San Diego, California - USA Maastricht School of Management, the Netherlands Abstract--The US financial meltdown has changed companies’ situations not just fundamentally but pervasively. Institutions and channels of supply and communication have disappeared or become unreliable; we are literally managing in chaos, and traditional notions of strategy, planning, and implementation must be (temporarily, it is to be hoped) discarded. This presentation draws on classic management theory and newer ideas, to outline principles for managing for survival in times of chaos. It introduces new management cycles as alternatives to Fayol’s classic management cycle, and a corresponding taxonomy of organizational situations, including Stable, Chaos, Edge of Chaos, and Disaster.

modify the plans as needed, with occasional reference back to the strategy.

I. AIMS OF THE PAPER

Figure 1. The classic management cycle applies in stable times.

After reviewing applicable ideas from the literature (both the scholarly literature and some less orthodox), the paper lays out a taxonomy of organizational situations: Stable; Chaos; Edge of Chaos; and Disaster. It advances the thesis that different types of management cycles are called for in each situational type. A following section details these cycles, elaborating some from the literature and proposing a new one. Though several of these ideas have appeared elsewhere, this paper achieves a critical synthesis and advances the idea of the chaotic management cycle. Using Continental Airlines as a minicase, it argues that organizations must link all the cycles operationally, to deal with the exigencies of today’s business and technological climate. Explicit links to technology management and strategy are highlighted.

 

Strategy Plan

Evaluate

Act

Though stability is rara avis in the turbulent first decade of the 21st century, it may yet return to larger segments of the economy. We are, at least in the US, returning to an era of greater government regulation and a resurgence of Keynesian ideas. Fayol did not emphasize strategy in our modern sense of “a plan for making plans.” However, the inclusion of strategy in Fig. 1 will facilitate the development of the present paper’s ideas. By the same token, modern researchers understand that the classical management cycle gives rise to individual and organizational learning, Fig. 2.  

Strategy Plan

Experience/ Learning

II. STABILITY Krugman [1] reminds us that in “the generation following World War II,” large corporations benefited from stability and were instruments of stability. Indeed, those were the years when business matters were stable enough – “mostly linear in nature” [2] – to be analyzed by the mathematical methods of management science, Keynesian economics, and statistical forecasting. Now, such stability can be found only in specialized niches. An Avon saleswoman [3] says, “There are two things women are never going to go without, and that would be moisturizer and lipstick” – as, one would guess, is the case also with men and beer. Nonetheless, all businesses strive for stability, by engaging in risk management, currency hedging, options markets, and the like. Fayol’s [4] management cycle, Fig. 1, is suited for a stable business environment. Strategy drives plans. Plans are implemented, monitored, and evaluated. Managers then

Evaluate

Act

Figure 2. The classic cycle results in individual and organizational learning.

III. CHAOS Ran, which means “chaos” in Japanese, is the title of master filmmaker Akira Kurosawa’s 1985 capstone effort.1 In this film – a Japanese treatment of Shakespeare’s King Lear – the warlord father of three sons deals with his impending death by attempting to divide his domain among them. In the resulting power vacuum, Lord Ichimonji realizes the “madness caused by his thirst for power.” In the context of the current world financial crisis, Ran could be seen as a parable of a corporate giant who, by over-reaching, becomes both the cause and the victim of chaos. 1

125

http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0089881/

PICMET 2009 Proceedings, August 2-6, Portland, Oregon USA © 2009 PICMET Like Ichimonji, today’s “masters of the universe” (novelist Tom Wolfe’s term) made bad decisions. Once the consequences of those decisions began to flow, these executives had to choose whether to remain passive or take initiative. Japanese martial art has a term randori (乱取り), “seizing chaos.” Randori is practiced in a fast, unstructured, multiple-attacker situation. In randori, there is no time for deliberate technique and considered decisions; all one’s training must evidence itself spontaneously and instantly. Fellman and Lanteigne [5] take a naïve view of randori, emphasizing only the mind-body connection. Their work does foreshadow a theme of the present paper, namely, that effective response to chaos is a whole-person affair, with strategy and task-level skills so internalized and wellpracticed as to appear seamless in execution. Sybase vice president Kathleen Schaub [6] practices the Japanese art of aikido. She writes about randori: Business complexity often arises from a similar spirited interaction of many players with independent motives. One avoids overconfidence, anger, and fear. Like many people, my natural instinct was to react first to the nearest danger. I call this the LIFO (last-in, first-out) reaction to complexity. LIFO people react to stress by abandoning important objectives for whatever threat lands in their lap next. However, this reaction allows opponents to dictate the situation. In randori, a LIFO reaction gets you blown hither and yon, frustrating you and accomplishing little. Picking a logical entry point for action (The highest priority? The task with the longest lead time? The player with the most influence?) puts you in control. For Schaub, trained in randori, passivity is out of the question. She goes on, “Even when things are extremely uncertain, you must see the larger situation and act. You must constantly move forward, proactively seeking a better position of power. Randori requires you to reach out to the world with gusto.” Schaub’s sensei notes that in randori, “your objective is not to die.” You cannot hope to understand or analyze randori, only to survive it and perhaps move closer to a goal. In physical confrontation, the goal may be to reach the end of the alley; in business, perhaps to stabilize a supply chain that has become uncoordinated. Objectives and goals are components of strategy (and objectives are subordinate to goals). Management of chaos is meaningful only in the context of a manager’s purpose [7, 8]. The complexity of chaos provides ample distractions; succumb to them and you become part of the chaos. The management advice of diverse researchers is very much in line with randori skills. Wojick ([2]; see also [9]) gives due emphasis to the idea of attention, and makes a pertinent distinction between attention and thought. “Attention, or what people think about, can be managed. Thought, the mysterious and creative product of that attention, cannot be managed. So

attention is the most precious manageable resource the cognitive enterprise has.” Baum and Hassinger [10] recommend: - Practice basic skills until they become second nature. - Develop judgment, matching response to events in appropriate way. - Develop ability to sustain chaos leadership for extended periods of time, as this may be necessary. According to Heimar and Nilsson [11], when the business environment is paradoxical and of fastchanging and chaotic nature, successful corporate strategies are shaped by strategic flexibility founded in high innovation rates, networks and alliances, and organisational elasticity and adaptiveness. To a large extent, our conclusions coincide with those of other researchers.2 Forming multidimensional networks and alliances coloured by voluntary initiatives and full attention seem to be an extremely important contribution to survival in turbulent contexts. This leads us to the Chaos Management Cycle of Fig. 3.

Stable Times

Chaotic Times Strategy

Plan

*

Experience/ Learning

Evaluate

Action

*Feedback is tacit only.

Figure 3. Chaos Management Cycle

In the Chaos Management Cycle, there is no time for formal evaluation, or for planning. Fig. 3 portrays a thick wall between planning and evaluation on the one side (grayed out, to emphasize that these are not part of the Chaos Management Cycle) and action on the other. All action springs forth from experience and learning, and feedback (evaluation) is done only tacitly (see [13]).3 There is no line pointing back to strategy, again because there is no time for formal reference to strategy. For a manager to succeed in a chaotic environment, the organization’s strategy must already have thoroughly permeated his or her learning. In randori, there is no guarantee that an individual or company will survive, nor, a fortiori, get closer to a goal [14].

2 including Rashid and Zabid [12], who conclude that “networked” organizations are the most likely to be innovative. 3 At least insofar as that is legal. Regulations and legislation, e.g., the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, may make formal reporting mandatory even in the most pressing conditions of chaos.

126

PICMET 2009 Proceedings, August 2-6, Portland, Oregon USA © 2009 PICMET Strategic Direction magazine [15] states that most managers in the 1980s “still believed that chaos was something to be avoided at all costs.” We now know that if chaos can be avoided at all, it is due to luck, not to cost. The magazine goes on to note that Tom Peter's 1988 book Thriving on Chaos [16] caused more than a bit of cognitive dissonance among its targeted audience. In explaining chaos management, we have not had to appeal to the mathematical theory of chaos (e.g., [17]). The common Western meaning of chaos, combined with a similar concept from the Japanese samurai tradition (and one modern concept from knowledge management that is due, perhaps not coincidentally, to the Japanese scholar Nonaka), suffices to build a meaningful and useful management cycle for chaotic times. The thousand-plus years of Japanese martial thought, amply tested in life-or-death situations and passed down through chains of accredited teachers, should be accorded a weight of evidence at least equal to that of the recent scholarly publications of university researchers. IV. EDGE OF CHAOS In contrast, business writers concerned with the “edge of chaos” almost invariably make reference to the mathematical theory. Reasoning by analogy is always suspect, and in the case of the edge of chaos, specific correspondences between the mathematical theory and the business situations are entirely lacking. The translation of Chaos Theory into management practice is, at best, a loose analogy that has been built upon generalizations of three scientific concepts: Chaos, Complexity Theory, and Complex Adaptive Systems. It has always been somewhat problematic to apply a scientific theory – one that was intended to explain natural phenomena – to explain the affairs of human organizational systems. [18] For this reason, while the second sentence in the blurb on Wheatley’s [19] 2000 book is now unarguable, the first sentence is quite wrong: Leadership and the New Science launched a revolution by demonstrating that ideas drawn from quantum physics, chaos theory, and molecular biology could improve organizational performance. Margaret Wheatley called for free-flowing information, individual empowerment, relationship networks, and organizational change that evolves organically – ideas that have become commonplace. For much the same reason, Amazon.com reader feedback on Brown and Eisenhardt’s Competing on the Edge: Strategy as Structured Chaos [20] is polar, evenly split between readers who found inspiration between its covers and those who found nonsense. All this is a shame, because the analogy between business management in 2009 and the mathematical notion of edge-of-

chaos, if it were presented honestly as a very loose metaphor, would be a very good metaphor, especially in the high-tech world. Lashinsky’s [21] story illustrates: Sheryl Sandberg, a 37-year-old vice president, recently committed an error that cost Google several million dollars — “Bad decision, moved too quickly, no controls in place, wasted some money,” is all she’ll say about it — and when she realized the magnitude of her mistake, she walked across the street to inform Larry Page, Google’s co-founder and unofficial thought leader. “God, I feel really bad about this,” Sandberg told Page, who accepted her apology. But as she turned to leave, Page said something that surprised her. “I’m so glad you made this mistake,” he said. “Because I want to run a company where we are moving too quickly and doing too much, not being too cautious and doing too little. If we don’t have any of these mistakes, we’re just not taking enough risk.” Lashinsky notes that “Google can be seen to be making significant changes to adapt based on market conditions and the results of their experiments and experiences (emphasis mine).”4 Complex adaptive systems (CASs) are complex, in that their overall behavior is not predictable from the behavior of their parts. They are adaptive because they change according to experience and environment, and their trajectories fall neither into a chaotic regime, which would destroy them (especially if they are not trained in randori), nor into a stable linear regime, which would render them unable to adapt. CASs live on the edge of chaos. These statements follow the Santa Fé Institute’s definitions of CASs. Note that chaos and linearity have specific mathematical definitions; complexity and CASs do not – although there are of course mathematical measures of complexity and adaptation in physical and engineering systems. In these senses, Google and many other technologyoriented business corporations try earnestly to emulate complex adaptive systems (see [22]). They wish to live on the edge of chaos. This seems necessary but not sufficient for business viability; many Silicon Valley start-ups with strong CAS cultures have gone belly-up. Mainly because of their decentralization and extreme empowerment of knowledge workers, edge-of-chaos organizations use a management cycle very much like, but not identical to, the Chaos Management Cycle. Employees are thoroughly imbued with the corporate strategy and trusted with it, and not all initiatives are closely monitored or frequently evaluated. However, these organizations do not experience the total time and attention pressure of the chaotic regime, and so are able to regroup periodically for program reviews and strategy checks.

4 In 2003, Google hired the Brown of Brown and Eisenhardt [20] as senior vice president for business operations.

127

PICMET 2009 Proceedings, August 2-6, Portland, Oregon USA © 2009 PICMET

V. DISASTER Largely in agreement with Khan et al. [24], Ishak [25], Messer [26] and Warfield [27], Phillips [23] defines disaster as a destructive or highly disruptive incident that: • Is caused by nature, by individuals, or by public or private institutions – or a combination, • Makes a large impact, either in a brief period of time, or continually, and • Affects significant populations. Disasters fitting this definition are low-probability events individually, although collectively, such disasters are quite probable. Recent examples include the Indian Ocean tsunami, hurricanes Katrina and Ike, the Exxon Valdez oil spill, 9/11 in the US and 3/11 in Spain, the AIDS crisis, global warming, and the current financial meltdown. In the first month of 2009 alone, we experienced the Kentucky freeze and the Australian fires. Technologies involved in disaster response include construction, financial engineering, shipbuilding, climate modeling, alternative fuels, therapies, search-and-rescue, logistics, transportation, and training games and simulations Disasters are thus distinct from crises, and disaster management differs from crisis management. Crises often involve a single company, e.g., Johnson & Johnson in the Tylenol poisonings case, and crisis management is a relatively straightforward matter of communicating with customers, law enforcement, and the press (see e.g. [28]) – and, in the Tylenol case, recalling product and redesigning packaging. Crises are not necessarily simple, but appear so when contrasted with disasters. Multiple organizations, often from different sectors, may be to blame for a disaster, and/or involved or accountable for remediation. Crises may occur within disasters, as for example with Citibank’s need to explain its actions during the mortgage meltdown to the public and to Congress. Many publications feature the diagram of Fig. 4, a management cycle oriented to minimizing the effects of disaster.

Figure 4. The disaster management cycle. Source:[25]; see also [27].

Mitigation activities are aimed at reducing the probability, or the likely consequences, of disasters. New building codes and zoning, and public education are examples of mitigation measures. Preparedness involves planning for disaster response, and emplacing response systems. The latter include “strategic reserves of food, equipment, water, medicines and other essentials… emergency exercises/training [and] warning systems” [27]. Response. Emergency response capability aims to provide immediate medical assistance, search and rescue, food, shelter, transport, moral support, and other humanitarian relief to those in the affected area and to refugees. It also includes efforts to head off secondary hazards created by the disaster. Recovery. Immediate response may shade imperceptibly into recovery. As the community returns to normal, the surviving victims have benefited from temporary housing, grants, and medical care, and may themselves take over the tasks of further restoring the structure of daily life. Sustainable Development. The strategy underpinning the disaster management cycle is sustainable development, “the promotion of sustainable livelihoods and their protection and recovery during disasters and emergencies” [27]. The drive toward long-term protection and self-help ability pervades all elements of the management cycle. Mitigation and development strategy, including technology strategy, must lead to activities for assessing hazards, vulnerability, capacity, and risk [24]. The disaster management cycle’s HVCR, which may be pronounced ‘have a care,’ is in some ways parallel to the SWOT analysis associated with the classic corporate planning cycle. These ideas are depicted in Fig. 5.

128

PICMET 2009 Proceedings, August 2-6, Portland, Oregon USA © 2009 PICMET

HVCR “Have a Care” Analysis

Strategy Figure 5. Augmented disaster management cycle, showing connection to traditional strategic planning

community leaders were making about evacuation routes, transportation, and other city and county services, and help the airline know what to tell customers and employees about its timeline for winding down and reinstating operations. Central to Continental’s emergency plan is an underground bunker in Conroe, Texas, roughly 50 miles from Houston. This emergency control center allows Continental to safely conduct airline operations in any regions where airports are operational. On Friday, September 12, Houston’s International Airport closed, and when Ike was 100 miles from Houston, Continental made the call to move its headquarters staff to the bunker and evacuate planes from Houston to Abilene, El Paso, and other cities. The airline succeeded in operating globally throughout the storm and had an 89 percent on-time rate for flights operating that weekend [30].7

VI. LINKING THE CYCLES: CONTINENTAL AIRLINE Continental Airline’s beginnings trace back to operations with a single-engine Lockheed aircraft on July 15, 1934. In 1982, Continental merged with Texas International and moved its headquarters to Houston.5 Thus from entrepreneurial beginnings, Continental grew to enjoy a stable business regime prior to the Airline Deregulation Act of 1978, and a turbulent environment following deregulation. It has since experienced crisis and disaster. Sale of Continental stock to Northwest Airlines by a Continental board member gave Northwest leverage which it used to attempt to keep Continental from merging with Delta Air Lines in 2001. This resulted in a Justice Department lawsuit charging antitrust infractions. These proceedings ate so much cash – much of it going into the pockets of top executives and board members, some of whom unloaded Continental stock at $43 – that Continental “failed to make required payments on two debt issues” [29]. The stock fell to $13.95. The World Trade Center attack was soon to come, harming the business of all airlines. Continental bounced back; despite an overall decline in customer satisfaction with airlines in 2008, J.D. Power ranked Continental highest in its industry segment for a third consecutive year.6 Continental showed admirable disaster preparation and recovery during the period of Hurricane Ike in September, 2008 [30], using a plan it developed in 2006, just after Hurricane Rita. During Ike, Continental had a representative at the [Houston] TranStar Building’s emergency operations center every day so he could keep tabs on the decisions that 5

http://www.continental.com/web/en-US/content/company/history/ default.aspx 6 http://www.jdpower.com/corporate/news/releases/pressrelease.aspx?ID= 2008069

On June 5, 2008, Continental Airlines cut 3,000 jobs and reduced capacity by 11 percent, “citing record fuel costs that have pushed the industry into its worst crisis since 9/11.”8 Then a Continental Denver-Houston flight slipped from the Denver runway and crashed on December 28, 2008; Continental’s public relations actions following the crash were clumsy [32]. It is doubtful that Continental ever behaved in the edgeof-chaos manner that is much admired at Southwest Airlines. However, over seventy years Continental has experienced entrepreneurial uncertainty, stability, crisis, and the disaster and chaos of 9/11 and the current meltdown. It is clear that Continental – or at least parts of it – moves back and forth 7 Bargmann [31] describes a similar level of disaster planning and response, protection of employees, and “business continuity,” on the part of Wells Fargo Bank, the HEB grocery chain, and ConocoPhillips in the face of Hurricane Ike. 8 http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,363418,00.html

129

PICMET 2009 Proceedings, August 2-6, Portland, Oregon USA © 2009 PICMET among all three of the management styles described in this paper. As technology companies become ever more global, they will encounter unexpected competition and new markets, and face exposure to a wider range of crises and disasters. It can be expected that they will draw on not just one management process, but all three of the cycles shown as interlinked in Fig. 6.

Stable Cycle

companies.” They describe an Eastern European company that is facing just such chaos. The chaotic management cycle is not yet widely appreciated, and is a promising subject of training for firms. The details of operationalizing the linked cycles of Fig. 6 are left for future research. Likewise the specification and integration of the entrepreneurial cycle, which fundraising phases are as prominent as managing-the-company phases, and in which strategy may temporarily be abandoned in favor of opportunism. REFERENCES [1] [2]

Chaos Cycle

Disaster Cycle

[3] [4]

Figure 6. Technology-dependent companies will use all three management cycles – sometimes sequentially and sometimes simultaneously.

[5]

VII. DISCUSSION Stable times are suited for Fayol’s plan-do-evaluate cycle. In contrast, chaos leaves no time for planning or evaluation; survival demands a tight and most likely non-verbal feedback cycle between well-trained action and environmental alertness. Managing on the edge of chaos is similar, but demands – and affords time for – occasional regrouping and evaluation.9 The disaster management cycle allows evaluation only after a rare event that planners hope does not happen. All are strategy-driven, and all may generate crises. The financial meltdown is chaos and disaster – and generates crises. Governments react to the financial crisis by protecting domestic markets, leading to temporary stability. Large companies finance intrapreneurial ventures and spin out entrepreneurial start-ups. More companies learn to dance on the edge of chaos. Companies will come to transition from one management cycle to another as easily as segueing from a salsa to a meringue. Edström et al. [34] remark, “The challenges in going from a system of planned economy to a free market system are without a doubt enormous both for countries and individual

[6] [7] [8] [9] [10] [11] [12] [13] [14] [15]

[16] 9

Ansoffian strategy [33] is much concerned with turbulent environments, though Ansoff did not use the jargon of chaos. His “discontinuous” and “surprising” environment types [33, p.63] correspond roughly to chaos, edge of chaos, and disaster, while his “repetitive,” “expanding,” and “changing” types are closer to what the present paper has called “stable,” with “stable” implying either a static or predictably changing market. Ansoff and McDonnell [33, pp.308-313] do address management cycles, incuding the entrepreneurial cycle, but their diagrams are complex. The present paper aims to follow Fayol in presenting management cycle concepts simple enough to be used as rules of thumb.

[17] [18] [19] [20]

130

Krugman, P.; “Greed is bad,” New York Times, February 7, 2009. http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9804E5D8103AF937A 35755C0A9649C8B63&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=1 Wojick, D.E.; “Chaos Management and the Dynamics of Information: A new way to manage people in action,” http://www.bydesign.com/powervision/Mathematics_ Philosophy_Science/Chaosman.html Babin, J.; “Avon's calling for more sales reps,” American Public Media. February 3, 2009. http://marketplace.publicradio.org/display/web/2009/02/03/pm_avon/ Fayol, H.; “Administration industrielle et générale,” Bulletin de la Société de l’Industrie Minerale, 1916. Fellman, P.V. and N. Lanteigne; “The randori principles,” 7th International Conference on Complex Systems, Quincy, MA: 2007. (Last edited on 2008/03/06 18:34:19 US/Mountain) http://knowledgetoday.org/wiki/index.php/ICCS07 Schaub, K.; “Aikido offers exercise in meeting challenges,” Forbes.com. December 20, 2007, 6:30 PM ET. Phillips, F.; The Conscious Manager: Zen for Decision Makers, Beaverton: General Informatics LLC, 2003. Phillips, F.; “The conscious manager: Zen for decision makers,” Effective Executive, vol. 11, No. 5, pp. 40-49, May 2008. Whitelaw, G. and B. Wetzig; Move to Greatness: Focusing the Four Essential Energies of a Whole and Balanced Leader, Nicholas Brealey Publishing, 2008. Baum, D.H. and J. Hassinger; The Randori Principles, Kaplan Publishing, 2002. Heimar, M. and D. Nilsson; Survival in Chaos: A Study of Strategy Formation in a Turbulent Business Environment, University essay from Linköpings universitet/Ekonomiska institutionen, 2002. Rashid, A. and M. Zabid; “The influence of organizational culture on attitudes towards organizational change,” The Leadership and Organization Development Journal, Vol. 25 No. 2, pp. 161-179, 2003. Nonaka, I.; “The knowledge-creating company,” in Harvard Business Review on Knowledge Management. Boston MA: Harvard Business School Publishing, pp. 21-46, 1998. Phillips, F. and N. Kim; "Implications of chaos research for new product forecasting," Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Vol. 53, No. 3, pp. 239-261, 1996. Strategic Direction (no byline); “Googling out of control: Can Google's chaos management style ensure continuing success?” Strategic Direction, Vol. 23, No. 8, pp. 25-27, ISSN: 0258-0543 Emerald Group Publishing Limited, 2007. Peters, T.; Thriving on Chaos: Handbook for a Management Revolution, Harper Paperbacks, 1988. Stewart, I.; Does God Play Dice? The Mathematics of Chaos, Blackwell, 1989. Hillon, M.; “What is chaos and complexity?” (undated) http://www.horsesenseatwork.com/psl/pages/chaosdefined.html Wheatley, M.J.; Leadership and the New Science: Discovering Order in a Chaotic World, 2nd Edition, revised. Berrett-Koehler Publishers, 2000. Brown, S.L. and K.M. Eisenhardt; Competing on the Edge: Strategy as Structured Chaos, Harvard Business School Press, 1998.

PICMET 2009 Proceedings, August 2-6, Portland, Oregon USA © 2009 PICMET [21] Lashinsky, A.; “Chaos by design.” October 2, 2006: http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/2006/10/02/8 387489/index.htm?postversion=2006092009 [22] Kamo, J. and F. Phillips; “The evolutionary organization as a complex adaptive system,” PICMET ‘97, Proceedings of the Portland International Conference on Management of Engineering and Technology, Portland: July, 1997. [23] F. Phillips; “Inter-institutional relationships in a shrinking world,” Maastricht School of Management Partners' Conference, Maastricht: 2008. [24] Khan, H., L.G. Vasilescu and A. Khan; “Disaster management cycle: A theoretical approach,” http://mnmk.ro/documents/2008-6.pdf, (2008) accessed February 7, 2009. [25] Ishak, R.; “Special report: Disaster planning and management,” NCD Malaysia , Vol. 3, No.2, pp. 47-51, 2004. http://www.dph.gov.my/ncd/Bulletin/April_Jun04/10.Special%20Repo rt.pdf accessed February 7, 2009. [26] Warfield, C.; “The disaster management cycle,” 2008. http://www.gdrc.org/uem/disasters/1-dm_cycle.html accessed February 7, 2009. [27] Messer, N.M.; “The role of local institutions and their interaction in disaster risk mitigation: A literature review,” United Nations Food and

[28] [29]

[30] [31] [32]

[33] [34]

131

Agriculture Organization (FAO). September 2003. http://www.fao.org/docrep/006/ad710e/ad710e00.HTM. Bernstein, J. (Ed.); Keeping the Wolves at Bay: A Media Training Manual. 3rd edition, Bernstein Crisis Management LLC, 2007. Norris, F.; “Continental: Risky Deals and Insider Sales Precede Crisis,” New York Times, September 21, 2001. http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res= 9C03E4DA113BF932A1575AC0A9679C8B63 Harrington, G.; “Bunker mentality: Business continuity,” Continental magazine, p. 64, December, 2008. Bargmann, J.; “In control,” Continental magazine. December, 2008, 63-65. Bernstein, J.; “Continental airlines makes classic blunder.” Bernstein Crisis Management blog, December 20, 2008. http://bernsteincrisismanagement.blogspot.com/2008/12/continentalairlines-makes-classic.html Ansoff, H.I. and E.J. McDonnell; Implanting Strategic Management, 2nd Edition, revised, Prentice Hall, 1990. Edström, T., D. Haimo and T. Larnefeldt; When plan becomes market: A successful company’s change. The case of Krenholm, Estonia, University essay from Linköpings Universitet/Ekonomiska Institutionen, 2003.