Commentary

• Date: 01 March 2004
• Author: Lawrence D. Mankin,Ronald W. Perry
• DOI: 10.1177/0734371X03259285
• Published date: 01 March 2004
• Subject Matter: Journal Article

ARTICLES
REVIEW OF PUBLIC PERSONNEL ADMINISTRATION / March 2004
Mankin, Perry / COMMENTARY
OTHER
10.1177/0734371X03259285
Commentary:
Terrorism Challenges for Human Resource Management
LAWRENCE D. MANKIN
RONALD W. PERRY
Arizona State University
“September 11, 2001, changed the world” has been repeated many times. The
U.S. government, too, has changed immensely and will continue to evolve a secu-
rity conscience and response capacity for years to come. This article addresses the
situation from the standpoint of human resource management. We use public
opinion poll data to document the changing opinions of individuals and changes
in the environment in which public organizations operate. The literature on
human response to natural and technological disasters is reviewed to glean infor-
mation on how people respond to extreme levels of stress. This information is sys-
tematized and extrapolated to arrive at a series of behaviors that can be reason-
ably expected from employees exposed to terrorist incidents. Finally, the
discussion closes with an examination of the Employee Assistance Program as
locus of expertise for mitigating problematic employee reactions to terrorist
incidents.
Keywords: terrorism; disaster management; crisis management; employee
assistance programs; stress
TheU.S.nationalgovernmentisre-engineeringitselftoprotectthehome-
land. State and local governments also are taking steps to define and
refine security through law enforcement and emergency response depart-
ments. For the most part, attention has been focused on the physical and
cyber security of organizations and only indirectly on the psychological and
physical security of the workforce (Smithson & Levy, 2000). Certainly,
improving physical and cyber security of organizations should also lend a
greater sense of security to employees. However, should we be paying more
attention specifically to the psychological well-being of employees in the
post–September 11, 2001, world? Fear has a lasting impact, and as Kel er
(2002) noted, “That’s the thing about fear: It gets your attention and then
refuses to give it back” (p. 1). Specifically, fear among employees can have
serious consequences for organizational performance.
Review of Public Personnel Administration, Vol. 24, No. 1 March 2004 3-17
DOI: 10.1177/0734371X03259285
© 2004 Sage Publications
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REVIEW OF PUBLIC PERSONNEL ADMINISTRATION / March 2004
It is not clear that state and local governments are explicitly addressing
the problem. Certainly al governments have been pursuing the protection
of the citizenry (U.S. General Accounting Office, 2003). However, without
some degree of government self-protection, the broader goal of protecting
citizens wil prove elusive. Beginning in the 1970s, the national govern-
ment addressed means of protecting employees and records in response to
nuclear attacks (Perry, 1985). The issue also arose in California during the
1990s (Lindel & Perry, 1998) where it was found that very few organiza-
tions had developed employee protections for natural disasters. The point
of such protection and planning for employees—in addition to hardening
structures—was to keep sufficient personnel, records, and equipment func-
tioning to ensure that government would be able to successfully serve the
citizenry. Of particular interest is the dearth of professional writing regard-
ing employee reactions to terrorist incidents—there were no articles
addressing employee consequences of terrorism published between January
2001 and March 2003 in the major public personnel journals, including
Review of Public Personnel Administration and Public Personnel Manage-
ment. The Public Administration Review devoted a special issue to terrorist
concerns on the first anniversary (2002) of the September 11th, 2001,
attacks, however, employee responses and protections were not covered in
the articles.
Within the context of public employees’ psychological reactions to ter-
rorist threats, this article pursues three goals. First, recent research and poll-
ing regarding the levels of concern and fear of terrorism are examined to
gauge risk perceptions. These data underscore the need to recognize and
begin planning for terrorism as part of workplace management. Second, the
research literature on human response to disasters is reviewed as a means of
empirically describing the likely types of psychologically based problems
that may arise. Because the literature is largely speculative about the psycho-
logical consequences of terrorist incidents (Perry & Lindel , 2003), these
data are the most available source of likely reactions. Finally, a possible role
is proposed for human resource (HR) departments in preparing for
psychological impacts on employees.
LEARNING FROM POLL DATA
Public opinion data track people’s perceptions of the terrorist threat and
provide a means to interpret psychological responses to stressful events. It is
well known that citizens do not think about disasters outside the immediate

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Mankin, Perry / COMMENTARY
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impact time (Tierney, Lindel , & Perry, 2001). Studies published prior to
September 11, 2001, that projected significant HR management issues into
the early 21st century failed to mention terrorism as an area of concern.
Lipiec’s (2001) analysis of nine reports from different countries, in spite of
several terrorist attacks in the past two decades, did not report any impact of
terrorism on organizations and HR operations. Another study asked HR
directors and HR management professors in 1998 to forecast the import of
different issues by 2008 (Hays & Kearney, 2001). Although this question-
ing took place only a few years after the first bomb attack on the World
Trade Towers and the destruction of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building
in Oklahoma City, neither terrorism nor workplace violence were men-
tioned as long-term issues. The point is that even at the end of the 1990s, in
the face of successful terrorist attacks in the United States and other coun-
tries, terrorism as an issue for HR managers was below the radar. Since that
time, the issue has still not found its way into the scholarly literature.
Polling data indicate that the perceptual frameworks of Americans fun-
damentally changed as a result of the September 11, 2001 attack.1 Indeed, it
is very likely that these changes are still occurring and the national mind-set
remains in the process of being remolded. Clearly, however, the impact will
be as great on today’s generations as the Great Depression and the Vietnam
War were on prior generations. Ian Mitroff (2002) argued that “the col apse
of the World Trade Center not only shattered people’s lives, but, even more
profoundly, it also shattered the fundamental assumptions upon which our
lives are premised. We are not safe; we are not in control” (p. 20).
Although there are no equivalents to the 2001 terrorist attack on the
World Trade Centers and the Pentagon, one that comes close was the
Oklahoma City bombing in April 1995. In an insightful assessment of pub-
lic reaction to this act of domestic terrorism, Lewis (2002) found that on a
general level the public expressed concerns about future terrorist acts,
although on an individual level people were not fearful of being victims of
such attacks. Lewis noted that some of the polling data in 1995, 1996, and
1997 indicated that the public had confidence in the government’s capacity
to prevent a domestic terrorist attack and observed that this may partially
account for why individuals did not worry “that they or their family, work-
place, or community wil be victims of terrorism” (Lewis, 2002, p. 205).
She also speculated that people do not want to admit that such fears exist.
In our review of many polls conducted by various organizations between
September 11, 2001, and early November 2002, we found a similar reac-
tion to terrorism with some exceptions (see Note 1). In general, the public
believes that another terrorist attack on the United States will occur. Gov-

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REVIEW OF PUBLIC PERSONNEL ADMINISTRATION / March 2004
ernment statements that it is a matter of when, and not whether, the coun-
try will be attacked can only reinforce this view. A significant minority of
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