The blind spots of crisis management: How should policymakers concretely behave when faced with unexpected crises?

This paper deals with unexpected crises, which put decision-makers in the need to act under conditions of time pressure and high uncertainty. Regarding such situations, the existing multidisciplinary literature on crisis management leaves some 'blind spots'. In this paper, the following 'blind spots' are brought into focus. Preparedness plans: are they really useful for unpredictable events? It has been theorized that the management of an unexpected crisis should be a mix of something 'prepared in advance' and something 'impromptu'; furthermore, from a policy perspective, robustness has been defined as a property that allows to be prepared for unexpected events. But what, exactly, should be prepared in advance or left to improvisation? And what does robustness in the face of unexpected means? The challenge of 'signal recognition’. Many authors underline the importance of being able to pick up early warning signals. But policy makers are overloaded with data. How can they select the right ones? Some authors praise the 'intuition' of the decision-maker or expert in extracting useful information from the plethora of data and signals. But is intuition then something fortuitous, or is it a skill that can be trained? The role of experts. There is unanimous agreement that policy makers should seek advice from experts. But experts often have divergent positions; science usually does not give unambiguous answers. How to select the 'right' experts? Is it better to have a single expert or a plurality of advisors? Deciding in the ‘fog of uncertainty’. There is no consensus on the 'rationality principle' that policymakers should adopt when they have to provide urgent answers under conditions of deep uncertainty. How should the wise and 'rational' decision maker act? Some recommend avoiding the worst-case scenario. Other authors suggest a 'mimetic' strategy: not fully understanding the problem, emulate what others do under the same conditions. Other authors suggest a 'pragmatist approach', which proceeds by trial and error, avoiding irreversible decisions. These strategies - but there may be others - are different and incompatible: which one to follow? The pros and cons of centralisation. A large part of the literature on crisis management takes it for granted that it is preferable to manage crises with a single decision-making centre and a military-type hierarchical structure. However, there are also authors who point out the limits of centralization and call, on the contrary, for decentralization of decision-making, sensemaking, signal detection, and coproduction. Faced with a crisis, is it therefore better to centralize or decentralize? This paper will discuss the various dimensions of the blind spots listed above, drawing on different strands of literature from organization studies, public policy theories and crisis management studies. The main aim of the paper is to shed light on these blind spots in order to better understand them and enable policymakers to deal with them more effectively.