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Thr a Course E Charting ough Crisis by Daniel Laufer very type of organization must be prepared to manage a crisis. For a corporation, the crisis might revolve around the global recall of defective products, as was the recent case for Toyota, or an environmental nightmare, such as BP's oil spill in the the Gulf of Mexico. For a government, the disaster might spring from a terrorist attack or the effects of a hurri- cane or earthquake. For a nonprofit organization, the trouble might relate to financial improprieties committed by senior execu- tives, as the United Way dis- covered a few years ago. The question companies should ask themselves is not whether a crisis will occur, but when—and how they plan to deal with it. When an organization's survival is at stake, the executive team's crisis management skills can determine whether or not it pulls through. Unfortunately, business schools have been slow to offer courses that will teach upcoming managers how to respond in times of trouble. I've taught crisis management courses at the executive and MBA levels, and I believe there's great potential in offering them at the undergraduate level as well. After all, it's certain that our students will someday find themselves in the midst of a crisis, whether at a company they work for or one that they own. How well they emerge from it may depend on how much they learned about cri- sis management during their business school educations. 46 BizEd SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2010 Calamity can strike any organization at any time. How can business schools prepare students to anticipate, prevent, and handle disasters?