What and how to train for strategic crisis management: A systematic literature review

Abstract

This article provides a systematic literature review of existing strategic crisis management training research. The review explores practices on which strategic crisis management skills to prioritize and how to train these skills to be prepared when a crisis strikes. Our research question was: How is strategic crisis management trained, and is there a best practice? In all, we identified 538 articles from 3 databases and read the abstracts. From this, we selected 41 articles based on the defined inclusion criteria and read them as a whole. In the end, eight articles were a part of this analysis. A thematic analysis based on the categorization of repetitions of concepts was used to analyse the data. The analysis resulted in two main categories: what to train, which focuses on the outcome and skills, and how to train, which focuses on the process and pedagogy. The outcome (what to train) categories were (1) related to working together, (2) related to understanding the situation, (3) related to making adequate decisions in complex contexts, and (4) related to practicalities. The process (how to train) categories were (1) training methods and (2) learning theories. A model considering three main strategic crisis management training approaches, outcome-focused training, process-focused training, and learning-focused training, was developed. The latter was concluded to be the desired option, as it is a balanced approach of both outcome and process focus.