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Crises are often studied in international business (IB) research as the external “context” for business strategies, but firms can also be active participants in the unfolding of crises. The study of crises in IB could benefit greatly from studying the role of multinational enterprises (MNEs) as active participants, rather than as mere passive actors, responding to exogenous events. History shows that IB crises typically unfold partially as exogenous processes, and partly as the result of MNE strategies. A multilevel and longitudinal approach to studying crises in IB is clearly necessary. This chapter considers the extent to which smaller events that preceded the present crisis – since 1989 – point to systemic problems in global governance. It also defines five overlapping lenses through which future IB studies can further create relevant insights on how to deal with crises: historic, macro, meso, micro and exogenous. The chapter finally serves as an introduction to the whole Progress in International Business Research volume by indicating the relevance of all parts and chapters that follow.

The author argues that international business carries within itself the seeds of its own destruction. Globalization and attendant international business activities tend to trigger countervailing political forces, resulting in de-globalization. Scholars have documented this pattern for the past, and it will likely repeat itself in the future. International business thus seems to constitute a self-limiting, oscillating system that triggers its own crises. The author reviews and applies theories accounting for the role of international business in (de-)globalization and discusses measures to prevent or at least dampen future oscillations.

The importance of onset speed has been stressed by disaster researchers and inter-governmental bodies for some time, but its meaning and knowledge frontier has not been explored in depth. The purpose of this paper is to contextualise disasters involving slow-onset hazards within the broader literature on disasters, assess the current state of knowledge and identify themes in the literature.

This paper employs a semi-structured review design with the purpose of identifying both scholarship engaging directly with the term and less obvious but related literatures.

The majority of publications that mention slow-onset hazards and their adverse impacts do so only by means of delimitation. The paper finds that there is a great need for empirical and theoretical work on onset and manifestation speed and to test the degree to which existing theories and frameworks of disaster management are also relevant for the study of slow-onset hazard impacts.

The review identifies several gaps in existing research disasters involving slow-onset hazards and proposes research on community, political, policy and practical challenges, including answering the question of how to secure proactive response to emerging slow-onset hazard impacts.

In theory, hazards with a gradual and creeping onset are easier to manage and proactively respond to than that of sudden and unexpected ones. Not only do slow-onset hazards provide more lead time, but also a larger potential for proactive response, which in turn provides ample time to take early action to cushion their impacts. Yet, warnings often go unheard and response is put on hold until impacts become unnecessarily costly to reverse. More research on onset speed and gradual manifestation patterns should therefore be carried out.

Gradually occurring hazards have remained largely absent from the core literature on disasters, including most definitions of the term. This paper represents an initial effort to assess the state-of-the-art on the concept and the phenomenon of disasters involving slow-onset hazards.

The aim of this paper is to study the development of a smoldering crisis over time. The focus is on a nationwide news media and online news communication related to a smoldering crisis running in the Danish healthcare system since 2016: the problematic implementation of a large-scale electronic health record (EHR), technology entitled Sundhedsplatformen (SP), in the hospitals of the capital region of Denmark.

Based on insights from crisis communication theories and in particular rhetorical arena theory (RAT), traces of SP smoldering crisis and patterns of discursive strategies are identified and explained from a longitudinal perspective to explain the communicative complexity that characterizes this smoldering crisis. To build an understanding of how this smoldering crisis is perceived, followed and kept alive, an analysis of (de)legitimation discursive strategies employed strategically by various actors and voices in news articles is conducted in relation to four communicative themes: issue identification, warnings, blame attribution and potential solutions.

It has been found that a legitimacy deficit emerges communicatively through specific (de)legitimation strategies during this smoldering crisis. New insights into RAT (Frandsen and Johansen, 2017) are also provided.

This study is not only of theoretical relevance, but it is also of practical relevance for public relation professionals who aim to identify characteristics of starting smoldering crises as well as to find strategic responses to the ongoing challenges and the developing over time of smoldering crises.

New insights into RAT (Frandsen and Johansen, 2017) are provided.

Being a novel public health crisis, the COVID-19 pandemic presented world leaders with difficult options and some serious dilemmas that must somehow be negotiated. Whilst these leaders had limited knowledge about the coronavirus and how the pandemic would potentially evolve, they were still expected to make high-staked judgements amidst a range of uncertainties. The purpose of this paper is to explore the response strategies used by various world leaders from the perspective of crisis leadership within the public health domain.

Secondary data was collected from research papers, policy reports and credible media outlets to examine the construct of crisis leadership within the context of the global pandemic.

The paper identified three cognitive antecedents to the COVID-19 crisis leadership failures, which helped to explain why certain policy decisions were successful and why others were less so. On this basis, a clear dichotomy was drawn between highly rated leaders and their less successful counterparts in relation to the management and governance of the coronavirus pandemic.

The uniqueness of this paper lies in its psycho-political approach, which offered insights into the cognitive undertones that underpin the three leadership failures that emerged from the distinct approaches used by world leaders to prepare for, respond to and recover from the COVID-19 pandemic. The practical recommendations proposed in this paper are hoped to aid better decision-making for leaders faced with the task of managing future public health crises.

The purpose of this paper is to address some of the media‐handling implications when a company is hit by a crisis that could affect its corporate reputation.

The author categorises some of the types of crisis that can affect an organisation and looks at possible media messages.

The author shows the importance of preparing appropriate messages in advance for relevant groups of stakeholders.

The paper gives cogent reasons as to why effective crisis media training is vital for organizations.