The Politics of Incident Management
The past decade has seen the emergency response community place a tremendous emphasis on incident management and the incident command system (ICS). Numerous articles, textbooks, and training programs have emphasized the need for improved management structure for safely and effectively managing problems and resources in an emergency situation. As a result, emergencies today appear to be managed much better than they were 10 years ago.
Field experience has shown that there are two parallel sides to incident management—technical and political. Technical issues include the establishment of command, the creation of operational sectors, and the like, while the political aspects primarily pertain to the interpersonal and organizational dynamics of incident management. In most situations, we do a pretty good job managing the technical issues associated with the emergency but often tend to neglect or downplay the “political” aspects of incident management.
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