Learning from past crises - Do iconic cases help or hinder?

Studying past crises is accepted as important for managerial and organizational learning, yet experience suggests there has been little improvement over time in overall crisis response. This paper considers the reasons for this failure and revisits some iconic organizational crises (including Tylenol and Exxon Valdez) to question if they merit the attention they receive. The paper also explores the way in which misleading or inappropriate lessons can easily be drawn from such cases and asks how relevant they are today. Moreover, does a persistent focus on a very limited number of historic cases help or hinder improving management best practice and should we instead identify and analyze 'new icons' from more recent experience.

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