CCPR and PERI Study Finds Many U.S. Government, Business, and Nonprofit Organizations Ill-Prepared for Crisis
Source: New York University’s Center for Catastrophe Preparedness and Response and The Public Entity Risk Institute

New York University’s (NYU) Center for Catastrophe Preparedness and Response (CCPR) and The Public Entity Risk Institute (PERI), a nonprofit research institute focused on risk management training and education, have completed a study on the level of crisis readiness among government, business, and nonprofit organizations across the United States. The findings reveal a large number of organizations lack effective preparedness programs to respond to and recover from a crisis despite estimates that crises to come may be more frequent and complex.

In the report, Predicting Organizational Crisis Readiness: Perspectives and Practices toward a Pathway to Preparedness, author Paul C. Light, the Paulette Goddard Professor for Public Service at NYU’s Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service and the principal investigator of The Project on Organizational and Community Preparedness at CCPR, points to a broadly held belief that there is direct relationship between population and hazards such that as population increases, the number of hazards proportionately increases.

“Consequently,” writes Dr. Light, “the crises ahead are increasing both in complexity and frequency; yet, levels of crises readiness among organizations remains low and poorly understood.”

In the report, Dr. Light, author of a new book on government reform titled, A Government Ill Executed (Harvard University Press) examines characteristics that better position organizations and government to recover after a crisis, identifying those that serve as significant predictors of crisis readiness. He also presents recommendations for enhancing organizational preparedness. The report includes the results of a survey of opinion leaders from government, for-profit, and non-profit sectors comparing crisis characteristics of organizations.

+ Full Report (PDF; 12.9 MB)

This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 26th, 2008 at 6:06 pm and is filed under Business and economics, Government and politics, National security, Nonprofits, Safety. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.