Causes of Crises

Introduction

This is one approach in categorising the cause of the crisis. The five broad Causes of Crises are:

• External Economic Attack.
• External Information Attack.
• Breakdowns.
• Psychopathology.
• Human Resource Factors

External Economic Attack

This refers to exogenous offensives that directly threaten the organisation’s economic and financial well-being. Examples are extortion, bribery, boycotts and hostile takeovers of the organisation.

External Information Attack

This comprises all those attacks on an organisation that emanate mainly from outside the organisation and target its proprietary and confidential information. Such attacks would include theft of confidential information and damaging rumours.

Breakdowns

It can be a breakdown in plants, essential equipment and facilities. For human operators, it implies the stress, human error and security breaches, et cetera.

Psychopathology

This consists of criminal activities such as sabotage, product tampering, executive kidnapping and sexual harassment.

Human Resource Factors

These are concerned with the poor morale of employees, executive succession and occupational hazards.

Reference

Goh, M. H. (2015). A Manager's Guide to Implementing Your IT Crisis Communication Plan. Business Continuity Management Specialist Series. Singapore: GMH Pte Ltd.

Extracted from "Appendix 1: Causes of Crises"

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