Strategic integration: A knowledge management approach to crisis management

Every day, businesses are threatened by crises that could have been prevented or their impact lessened if only knowledge of causal and influencing factors were known and better managed. Better knowledge management, we contend, can help firms anticipate these factors and design thoughtful policies to lessen the impact of such events. In this paper we show how alignment of knowledge based strategies with crisis management strategies can lead to better crisis management. Knowledge based strategies are used to determine and locate the kinds of knowledge a firm needs. We demonstrate through case analysis how better alignment of knowledge based strategies with crisis management strategies can help firms become less vulnerable to business crises. Mitroff's crisis management model is employed to help focus on the critical aspects of crisis management and to help identify knowledge appropriate to each stage of Mitroff's model.