Challenging Accepted Thinking in Emergency Management

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Abstract

Drawing on reflection of lessons learnt from the COVID19 Pandemic, this paper digs into the theories and thinking underlying emergency management and response. Challenging ideas of incident command, the paper shows how attempts to build alternative approaches amidst earlier global crises framed as management approaches, rather than command approaches have more merit today than ever before. The paper excavates and sources the roots of the thinking behind emergency management and response. Further the paper engaged the debates surrounding how emergency response and the ideas of emergency are operationalized within federalism through comparative reflection on the US and Canada in relation to the United Kingdom. Domestic approaches are then exposed to the approaches and thinking at the international organization level, largely embodied in the UN and the Red Cross movement. Ultimately, the paper concludes that theory in this area requires serious revision as the praxis has dominated in many ways lacking a mooring in theory that has met sufficient critique in many years.

Author

• Matthew LeRiche, Ohio University