Teaching crisis management before and after the pandemic: Personal reflections
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/01447394221087889 |
| Published date | 01 March 2023 |
| Date | 01 March 2023 |
| Subject Matter | Curriculum Design in Public Administration Education: Challenges and Perspectives |
Curriculum Design in Public Administration Education: Challenges and Perspectives
Teaching Public Administration
2023, Vol. 41(1) 72–81
© The Author(s) 2022
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DOI: 10.1177/01447394221087889
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Teaching crisis management
before and after the pandemic:
Personal reflections
Paul ‘t Hart
Utrecht University, Utrecht, Netherlands
Abstract
This reflective contribution tells the story of a veteran public sector crisis management
(CM) researcher’s 35-year journey with educating students and CM practitioners, It
offers preliminary insights about how the pandemic experience might –and should –
induce a significant rethink of how educators conceptualize the nature of crises and the
challenges governments and public agencies face in coping with them.
Keywords
Crisis leadership, crisis management education, transboundary crises, pandemic, covid
19, public management
Humble beginnings
Ifirst got involved in crisis management education for public servants in the mid-1980s.
Having worked as a research assistant to my professor and future PhD-supervisor Uriel
Rosenthal, I had trawled through the then scant literature –the functioning of govern-
ments and leaders in situations of threat, urgency and uncertainty had been studied
extensively by international relations (IR) scholars (Hermann, 1972;George and Smoke,
1974;Jervis, 1976;Brecher, 1979;Lebow, 1981) but there was next to no systematic
empirical research on how public policymakers and agencies coped with domestic
emergencies, such as economic shocks, natural and major industrial or infrastructural
disasters, riots and terrorism.
Corresponding author:
Paul ‘t Hart, Utrecht School of Governance, Utrecht University, Bijlhouwerstraat 6, 3511ZC Utrecht,
Utrecht 3972EE, Netherlands.
Email: p.thart@uu.nl
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