Causes of Crisis

Introduction

This is one approach in categorizing the cause of a crisis. The five broad causes of the crisis are:

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

External Economic Attack

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

External Information Attack

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

Breakdowns

This is what the name implies: a breakdown in plants, essential equipment, and facilities, in human operators themselves through stress or human error and security breaches.

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.

Goh, M. H. (2016). A Manager’s Guide to Implement Your Crisis Management Plan. Business Continuity Management Specialist Series (1st ed., p. 192). Singapore: GMH Pte Ltd.

Extracted from Appendix 1: Causes of Crisis

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