The International Emergency Management Society Conference Accepted Talk

Introduction

I am excited to share the accepted abstract I submitted to the International Emergency Management Society Conference. I am in the process of putting together the slides I will share here later and present online in September at the conference.

Abstract

This ongoing theoretical research focuses on uncertainty in emergency management and explores how engaging in intentional explanation can help manage it. The following proceeds from the pivotal stance that uncertainty is a matter of unclear relationships of cause and effect in the emergency manager’s operational context. Unclear causality may manifest as an inability to act and make decisions, difficulty developing strategy, a lack of understanding of what is happening in the world, feelings of strangeness, and trouble explaining for as long as the uncertainty persists. Drawing from the work of Humberto Maturana, explanations are presented as a means for managing uncertainty at the strategic level through purposeful engagement…