Leadership in Routine Emergencies and Crises: The Deepwater Horizon Incident

Leadership in emergencies is a crucial element of becoming a high-performing Coast Guard officer. In this article, Howitt; Leonard and Giles argue that emergency leadership is not a single skill or uniform set of organizational competences. Instead, they identify a spectrum of emergency situations, ranging from what they call "routing emergencies" through "crises," differentiated by increasing degrees of novelty in the emergency challenge. Leaders and their organizations must develop capacities for managing in both types of situations.