Crisis management is an area of activity which has been propelled to the forefront of the management agenda as a consequence of a number of recent incidents. Increasingly, the responsibility for taking command in an emergency is being placed on senior managers in charge, not only of well-known high-risk sites such as oil rigs and chemicals plants, but also of places where the public have a right to expect to be safe. The bombings of the World Trade Center in New York and of Manchester city centre, and the Hillsborough disaster ? each called on the skills and courage of people in a suddenly high-risk and high-profile situation. These are internationally memorable incidents ? but every day there are non-routine critical incidents which call on the skills, and test the training, of emergency professionals and "ordinary" managers alike. How are they prepared for the task? How are they trained? How are they monitored? Increasingly, the responsibility of individuals who are required to take command in emergencies is no longer simply the domain of the military, police, and fire service commanders. Sitting in The Hot Seat examines the selection, training and assessment of individuals who are required to take the command role in an emergency. It presents latest developments from the emergency services, miltary and industrial experts. The emphasis of the book is on the individual manager ? or commander ? and his/her relationship with the team. Case studies, expert commentary and psychological research complete a comprehensive picture of the issues in public, and private organizations, the military, and the industrial sector. The Police, the Fire service, the Ambulance service, the Coastguard service, the Armed Forces, the Merchant Navy, commercial airlines, mining, chemical and petro-chemical industries, offshore oil companies, the nuclear and power industries, football clubs, major entertainment venues, hotels ? safety professionals and senior managers in all these organizations will find Sitting in The Hot Seat a rich source of knowledge and techniques.

Sitting in the Hot Seat Rhona Flin Aberdeen Business School, The Robert Gordon University, Aberdeen, Scotland Life-endangering emergencies occur everyday. The plans made to cope with them swing into action -- the incident teams carry them out -- and we move on. But stop for a moment to think what this actually means. How is this planning done? How do the teams know what to do? Who leads them? Think of a recent major emergency; think about the people you see on your TV screens or in the newspaper; think about their tactical decision making under stress. How are those leading the emergency teams selected, trained, supervised, monitored and assessed? Particularly the individual required to undertake the role of on-scene "commander." Much has been written about the wider organizational issues -- crisis management, emergency planning -- or about the organizational and public service response, rather than focusing on the individual leading the on-scene response: the person in the hot seat. Rhona Flin's book -- Sitting in The Hot Seat -- focuses on the need to assess managerial competence for emergency response. As an applied psychologist she has had unparalleled access to the training of incident commanders in Europe and the USA. Her work, in terms of the depth and breadth of her research, makes her uniquely qualified to write this book. For those responsible for people's safety Sitting in The Hot Seat addresses the need to develop robust procedures to overcome the unexpected. For without adequate measures in place, and without appropriately trained incident commanders, emergencies can become disasters. The public and those responsible for their protection could pay a heavy price for the lack of preparation.

Crisis management is an area of activity which has been propelled to the forefront of the management agenda as a consequence of a number of recent incidents. Increasingly, the responsibility for taking command in an emergency is being placed on senior managers in charge, not only of well-known high-risk sites such as oil rigs and chemicals plants, but also of places where the public have a right to expect to be safe. The bombings of the World Trade Center in New York and of Manchester city centre, and the Hillsborough disaster each called on the skills and courage of people in a suddenly high-risk and high-profile situation. These are internationally memorable incidents but every day there are non-routine critical incidents which call on the skills, and test the training, of emergency professionals and "ordinary" managers alike. How are they prepared for the task? How are they trained? How are they monitored? Increasingly, the responsibility of individuals who are required to take command in emergencies is no longer simply the domain of the military, police, and fire service commanders. Sitting in The Hot Seat examines the selection, training and assessment of individuals who are required to take the command role in an emergency. It presents latest developments from the emergency services, miltary and industrial experts. The emphasis of the book is on the individual manager or commander and his/her relationship with the team. Case studies, expert commentary and psychological research complete a comprehensive picture of the issues in public, and private organizations, the military, and the industrial sector. The Police, the Fire service, the Ambulance service, the Coastguard service, the Armed Forces, the Merchant Navy, commercial airlines, mining, chemical and petro-chemical industries, offshore oil companies, the nuclear and power industries, football clubs, major entertainment venues, hotels safety professionals and senior managers in all these organizations will find Sitting in The Hot Seat a rich source of knowledge and techniques.