Learning from Crises: A Lost Opportunity?

All crises create a distressing, uncertain and worrisome situation, which endangers property as well as people and influences established business and life flows. The extent of the crisis is simultaneously reflected in several areas, making it a complex or multidimensional phenomenon, affecting the economic, social, traditional, psychological and legal aspect. On the other hand, a crisis also initiates and directs the renewal of the company. In view of the complexity of the management of a company undergoing serious difficulties, crisis management is therefore denoted as a “composite” discipline, because a multi-disciplinary approach to problem solving is required in order to achieve the objectives of managing a company undergoing a crisis. However, empirical evidence from the author’s research has shown that companies in acute crisis extremely rarely present changes to the business model that would replace previous ineffective business practices that led to the acute crisis and focus mostly on the consequences of their crisis and the measures of short-term financial disburdening, which provides no guarantee to the participants that the crisis in these companies will actually be solved even for a mid-term time period.