The Purpose of Crisis Management: Normative Directions for a Care-Based Approach

Crisis management has been on the agenda of organization and management scholars for decades, but normative debate on the ethics of crisis management is rare. Most studies implicitly aim for minimal disruption of organizational functioning and a rapid restoration of the status quo, prioritizing values of control and order. In this paper, I offer a normative critique and argue that we must devote more theoretical attention to the purpose of crisis management. To this end, I propose a new purpose for crisis management that is based on the feminist ethics of care. This care-based approach is developed through three normative directions: compassionate caring, responsible intervening, and meaningful restructuring. I provide a framework for how new missions, visions, values, actionable pathways, and aspirational outcomes can advance a care-based approach in organizations, and I discuss the implications for organization theory, empirical research, and practice.