Influencia de los programas de políticas sociales que coadyuven a fortalecer

Planning crisis processes and having crisis infrastructure in place is not a guarantee for successful crisis preparedness, as without training of vital personnel and practicing through crisis simulations the crisis organization will most likely fail in practice. As Pearson and Clair argue: ‘executives and managers can develop too much faith (and a false sense of security) in their abilities to successfully prevent dangers when some level of crisis management preparation is adopted’ (Pearson & Clair 1998: 74). Without crisis training and simulations the confidence of executives and managers in the crisis

preparedness of an organization will be fallacious. Moreover, it should be a requirement for a spaceflight organization to describe how the needed knowledge and competences are kept being up to date through exercises and simulations of crisis events. As is stated in the British Standard for Crisis Management:

‘Once the crisis management roles have been identified and specified, a training needs analysis should be carried out to confirm what crisis-specific training is required for all staff involved in implementing the organization’s crisis management arrangements. The results may be included in job specifications and performance agreements’ (British Standard 2014: 25).

It is argued that the roles and responsibilities of an individual within an

Laere 2013). This is confirmed by experiences of crisis managers, the structure of decision-making within the crisis management organization should not differ much from the structure of regular decision-making. This because decision-making will better and more efficient if the persons involved in the crisis organization are already used to the position within the crisis organization they are ought to have during crisis (Muller et al. 2009: 966). This has implications for who to select for a certain role and give them proper training. If a person normal role and responsibilities do not differ that much of the requirements of a certain role during crisis, this person should get that role.

Further, the theoretical framework of crisis management that this thesis uses teaches us that there should be separate crisis training and exercises on the strategic, tactical and operational level. Strategic level crisis management is more about

recognizing organization-wide impacts of the crisis at hand and taking decisions to address those consequences. Tactical and operational crisis management is more about responding to and containing emergency situations on the ground. Crisis training and simulations should be adapted to the level within the organisation. From practice, it can be seen that roles within the crisis organization often are filled by people that do not have enough knowledge of the necessary competences for performing that role. This is why it is so important to formulate in advance what the qualifications of those involved in the crisis organization should have for their positions (Muller et al 2009: 962). Managing a crisis asks for basic managerial competences that managers already should posses for performing day-to-day managerial tasks, but it is wrong to think that this makes them prepared for managing an organization in crisis. If the crisis preparation of an organization consists of just putting a couple of managers without crisis training together in a room and calling them a crisis team, it is asking for problems (Zanders 2012: 211). Managing a crisis asks for specific managerial competences that managers do not necessarily obtain from day-to-day work.

However, defining these necessary crisis-managing competences has proven to be a challenge. Research shows that the definition of a person having certain

competences differs a lot geographically and per field of work (Van der Klink & Boon 2003). Often HRM-managers use top-down standardised description of necessary qualifications for a certain position. This is however often a too generic description of a qualification, it cannot be guaranteed that a person having this competence will perform well in every crisis situation (Muller et al 2009: 401). Thus just mentioning the

necessary qualifications that a person should get from crisis training for a certain position within the crisis organization is not enough for that person to be adequately prepared for a crisis. The British Standard for crisis management mentions a set of necessary crisis management skills that should be obtained through crisis training:

‘a) creating and maintaining shared situational awareness, with the underpinning skills in information management and analysis;

b) analysing issues to appreciate their potential wider impacts;

c) deconstructing problems, in order to assess their scale, potential duration, impacts, interdependencies and various dimensions;

d) identifying and communicating effectively with stakeholders, the media and the public;

e) identifying and countering threats (actual and emerging) to the organization’s integrity, brand, values and reputation;

f) determining, articulating and reviewing strategy, aims and objectives, and maintaining strategic focus without being drawn into the operational detail; g) demonstrating visible leadership and decision-making, and providing clear, unambiguous direction to teams and people working in stressful situations; and h) using tools provided to assist in the performance of crisis management roles’ (British Standard 2014: 26).

This list is already a good indication for the qualifications that a good crisis manager should have in order to properly managing a crisis. However, because every crisis situation is different, only trying to train managers in these generic skills is not

sufficient. A list of these skills focuses too much on the person and not on the situation where the skills are needed. Crisis training should therefore be adapted to the type of crisis. This asks for a bottom-up approach of determining the necessary skills for crisis managers, these skills should be derived from deductive obtained knowledge (Muller et al. 2009: 425). Thus experience from real situations should determine which set of skills a crisis manager should posses. Because crisis situations do not occur often (hopefully), gaining crisis management experience through simulations of crises is crucial. Real crisis situations involving commercial spacecrafts have been scarce until now, so for private spaceflight organization, simulations of these crises would be even more important.

Therefore training in space crisis management should be tightly coupled to crisis simulations and the necessary skills should constantly be adapted through simulation experiences. By implementing feedback from evaluations of crisis simulations into crisis

training, this training will be improved and the next time crisis teams will perform better during the simulation. Simulations therefore should be focussed on the testing of the skills of a certain crisis team or part of the crisis organisation and not only the crisis organisation as a whole (Zanders 2012: 220). Every spaceflight organization should have an extensive crisis training and crisis simulation program that is constantly being evaluated and adapted through crisis management experiences. Specific competences profiles for each position should be created and updated through experience.

Concluding, a regulatory framework for crisis preparedness should contain requirements for the creation of an extensive crisis training and crisis simulation

program by private spaceflight organisations. This also should include the description of a specific set of skills for each role in the crisis organization, while refraining from using a list of generic managerial competences as a standard.