David Denyer is Professor of Organizational Change at Cranfield University, UK

Colin Pilbeam is Senior Research Fellow in Organization Studies at Cranfield University, UK

Big mistakes, misconduct, serious accidents and other disasters are normally followed by investigations which explore what went wrong. However, in many cases the recommendations are very rarely acted upon. This book shows how the conventional 'rules' of change management do not always apply in extreme contexts. It explores other perspectives and approaches, as well as the challenges of implementing change in the aftermath of extreme events.

Part I: The context 1.What's the problem? (David A. Buchanan and David Denyer) Part II: Incident analyses 2.Fatal failures to change? The case of Haringey social care (Dominic Elliott and Allan Macpherson) 3.Mayland, Torrens and Mitcham (David A. Buchanan, David Denyer and Cíara Moore) 4.'A firefighter is a firefighter is a firefighter': the breakdown of sensemaking and leadership at Richley fire station (David Denyer) 5.'Stay or go'? The 2009 Victorian bushfires (Martina K. Linnenluecke and Andrew Griffiths) 6.Wattle Park Hospital - responding to an outbreak of the Norovirus (Clare Kelliher) Part III: Addressing the problems 7.Who to blame: losing sight of the big picture (Colin Pilbeam) 8.No slippage: sustaining control of healthcare acquired infections (Colin Pilbeam and David A. Buchanan) 9.THORP: leading change in extreme contexts (David Denyer) 10.Towards a high reliability organization at CSL (David Denyer and Glenn Sibbick) Part IV: Conclusions 11.Crisis leadership competencies and development by the use of advanced learning simulations (Albert Angehrn and Alexander Fliaster) 12.Approaches to post-crisis change (Colin Pilbeam and David Denyer)