Professionalism: defining the Emergency Manager, Response Manager and Recovery Manager

Emergency management and the people who undertake the roles encompassed by this term are undergoing a process of professionalisation in Australia. To support the process of professionalisation, research has found that the term ‘emergency manager’ is undefined, conflated and confused in its current use across literature, emergency event inquiry reports and when used to recruit, train and deploy staff. This paper proposes the separation of the undefined ‘emergency manager’ into 3 new roles of Emergency Manager, Response Manager and Recovery Manager. This paper proposes a definition for each defined role. Comparison of the new roles is provided to support the broad understanding and implementation of the terms and their roles. A series of actions to support the implementation into practice of the newly defined terms is proposed across academic and practitioner environments. The definitions underpin further outcomes from this current research to be presented in forthcoming papers.