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There is an ancient wisdom etched into the vocabulary of the Chinese. The written character for the terms `threat" and "opportunity" are identical Crisis itself may be either threat or opportunity, but is more soundly viewed as two sides of the same coin.
Introduction `Zeus who guided man to think has laid it down that wisdom comes about through suffering" [1].
Perhaps it was decided for mankind that long ago. Crisis must first occur before people become aware of the need to confront their problems. This reality has been found time and again in the crisis management literature. "It took a crisis." Although more and more organizations now engage in crisis preparation to some extent, there is still a human disinclination to delve very deeply into the crisis scenario until it has arrived [21].
Once a crisis has occurred, the tendency is to equate it with threat This common underlying attitude toward crisis must be rethought The purpose of this paper is to develop an alternative approach to crisis, what might be called a "wisdom of paradox" view. The essence of this perspective is ancient like Zeus. Opportunity and threat are viewed as but two sides of the same crisis coin. However, although opportunity may be found within crisis, it does not follow that opportunity is found. This paper explores this paradox in depth with the intent that it may be found useful in crisis thinking and response.
Crisis Defined and Described
When a crisis occurs, it usually arrives as a barrage of urgent, unexpected and unpleasant events, allowing little time to organize or plan appropriate responses. A crisis is a low probability, high consequence event that is capable of threatening organizational legitimacy, profitability and viability [251. Crisis is also "an unstable time or state of affairs in which a decisive change is impending - either one with the distinct possibility of a highly undesirable outcome, or one with the distinct possibility of a highly desirable and extremely positive outcome" [5]. In other words, crisis is a turning point for which results are not necessarily bad.
The term crisis has frequently been used interchangeably with the notion of threat. By applying the two terms threat and crisis synonymously, however, crisis' full potential lies...