Covid‐19 and Our Understanding of Risk, Emergencies, and Crises

• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/joms.12649
• Author: Mark Rond,Linda Rouleau,Markus Hällgren
• Date: 01 January 2021
• Published date: 01 January 2021

© 2020 Society for the Advancement of Management Studies and John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Covid-19 and Our Understanding of Risk,

Emergencies, and Crises

Linda Rouleaua, Markus Hällgrenb and Mark de Rondc

aHEC Montréal; bUmeå University; cUniversity of Cambridge

Keywords: Covid-19, extreme context, emergencies, crises, risk

It seems that 2020 is the year that keeps on giving. On 1 January, the world woke up to

fresh updates on Australia’s Black Summer and its tragic consequences for wildlife and

local communities. This crisis was the first in a series to also include political protests in

Hong Kong, and Belarus, an explosion in Beirut’s port, an oil spill in Mauritius, an out-

break of Ebola and measles in the DRC and, of course, the killing of George Floyd, giv-

ing fresh impetus to Black Lives Matters protests within, and beyond, America’s borders.

All this and more in a year in which an estimated 168 million people would have needed

humanitarian assistance – and that is without the elephant in the room.

But, of course, the pandemic has not affected everyone in the same way or to the

same extent – that is to say, it is not universally ‘extreme’. If anything, the pandemic has

stripped away a facade that hitherto largely obscured structural cracks in society – or

particular vulnerabilities to extreme contexts by BAME or people with disabilities or

those (particularly women) having to home school their children. Then there are those

running businesses and facing unprecedented organizational challenges: problems with

supply chains, shortages of personal protection equipment, staff or paying customers.

Finally, there are others who have found themselves at the sharpest end of the pandemic,

having lost someone they cared about. It is these varied groups then that find themselves

at the coal face. The pandemic may not be an extreme context for all – but it is for them.

It is curious that we should have been surprised by Covid-19 and its devasting impact.

After all, the idea of a future global pandemic has been around for some time (WHO,

2017). In the recent past, we have experienced Ebola, the 2009 H1N1 pandemic, and

SARS and, more universally, the 1918 Spanish flu which infected a third of the world’s

Journal of Man agement Studi es 58:1 January 2021

doi:10. 1111/jo ms .126 49

Address for reprints: Linda Rouleau, HEC Montréal, 3000 Chemin de la Côte Ste-Catherine, Montréal, H3T

2A7 (linda.rouleau@hec.ca).