KEEPING AN AIRPORT RUNNING: EMERGENCY RESPONSE
by Alan (Avi) Kirschenbaum, Carmit Rapaport and Sharon Lubasz O
ne of the most vexing situations that airport managers can find themselves in is when a security threat or actual
terrorism incident forces a decision to shut down the airport, close sections of it or try to maintain operations despite disruptions; all this while simultaneously trying to manage the emergency. The worst case would be a complete shut down, and as every company director knows, bottom line survival depends on keeping production and services going. What is surprising is that while applied
research is being accomplished in the area of business and organisational continuity, little spill over of the generic results has flowed into the area of maintaining airport continuity. Until now, such research has primarily focused on "plans" and "do lists" with little empirical evidence to show that such plans and lists actually enhance the ability of organisations undergoing a crisis to both survive and recover. Most would think of a terrorist inside the airport or someone hijacking an aircraft as the prime cause for disruption. But, as with other service oriented organisations, airports are extremely sensitive to both internal and external disruptions. For example, disruption in the supply chain for fuel, electric power, replacement parts, ground transportation or food for catering would also have grave consequences for maintaining operations.
Organisational Continuity To shed light on what airport managers should keep in mind when thinking about maintaining operations despite emergencies, we would like to refer to a recent large scale research project on organisational continuity performed in Israel. While the study did not specifically focus on airports, it did examine the performance behaviour of employees and managers during and after incessant and actual threats against their work place. The objective was to understand who played key roles in helping maintain work place continuity and what social organisational processes supported organisational survival and recovery. The study in Israel 1
was based on interview
and questionnaire data of a sample of 420 employees and managers of 24 organisations that were under bombardment for over a month. The organisations examined included private and public manufacturing and service providers of various sizes, all located in areas which put them at extreme risk. Importantly, what was measured were the overall performance levels of the organisations before, during and after the attack.
What
appeared was that the initial sharp decline in output was quickly made up by the time the emergency was over. This was a clear indication that something happened during the interim that fostered recovery.
48
www.arinc.com/secure
From the analysis of the data, the findings clearly demonstrate that innovative behaviour of managers and employees in organisations during a crisis was critical in determining the level of production and service maintenance and operational continuity. The weight of the evidence pointed toward the employees as the main contributors as they, unlike the managers, were closer to the actual situation and adapted their behaviour accordingly. For example, employees activated informal social networks
through friends and
acquaintances to make sure alternative sources of supplies (and manpower) were available; they arranged for shifts to be reorganised along with car pools; families' safety needs were provided for and direct lines of communications were set up between management and workers to facilitate making quick decisions. Managers, on the other hand, were constrained by administrative regulations, had a less clear picture of the effects of the disruption and were less adaptive in their decision making capacities.
Managers vs. Employees In addition, it was found that the response for both managers and employees to an emergency emerged from within a social (and not bureaucratic) framework that was characterised by innovative behavioural adaptation to changing and threatening conditions. The adaptive behaviour that emergency situations evoke, makes evident that the normal routine – while valuable in providing guidelines – will have difficulty in facing up to the realities of an emergency. Interestingly enough, the most important determinants included levels of emergent and pro-social behaviours and social network densities. In simpler terms, this meant that social interaction between and among the employees increased to such an extent that leaders emerged naturally rather than by official sanction; helping and assisting your colleagues became the norm and social network links to other employees outside your usual framework extended dramatically. At this point let us take these results and mesh them with additional empirical evidence concerning the social basis of security decision making behaviour of employees in airports.
Innovative Security Decisions An ongoing EU project found some astonishing results in ethnographic, interview and survey data that was collected across European airports, aimed at providing a behavioural science model of airport security2. It was found that a large proportion of security employees will bend or even break the rules when the situation calls for it! It was also clear that during emergencies, when an
Download your FREE ASI "iPad/iPhone APP" NOW
airport is under actual threat of disruption, there is likely to be a modification (and even disregard) for the routine rules and procedures in favour of innovative and pro- social behaviours. Apparently this type of behaviour is very similar to the Israeli case where managers and especially employees generated actions to maintain continuity of operations. But where does this type of innovative and pro-social behaviour, that so much favours continuity, emerge from in an organisational structure that is built around keeping rules and regulations?
Potential Solutions We can only conclude that to maintain airport operations during an emergency requires that resources should be allocated to invest in training employees to act outside the normal administrative structure as well as a system of rewards to encourage taking responsibility and initiative. This will prevent precious loss of "down time" and set in motion continuity behaviours. Training employees should go hand-in- hand with a similar briefing for managers of the best way to circumvent the usual administrative-bureaucratic system for issuing directives. In this way employees will be able to update managers in real time and thus avoid a misreading of the situation. What the evidence also suggests is that even in times of normal security concerns, both employees and managers should always have up their sleeves a repertoire of alternative behaviours that go beyond the usual rules and procedures to be able to tackle the "unexpected". These recommendations reflect only a small part of the 'evidence based' results that can be implemented within airport organisational structures that will substantially increase the ability to not only survive a major disruption, but the tools to allow both employees and managers to maintain continuity of operations and, if necessary, speed up recovery
Alan (Avi) Kirschenbaum is Professor of Organisational Sociology at the Technion - Israel Institute of Technology and Initiator and Coordinator at BEMOSA (Behaviour Modelling for Security in Airports), a European-wide research project. Carmit Rapaport is a Post-Doctoral Fellow at the Universtiy of Haifa. Sharon Lubazs is a PhD Candidate and Senior Researcher at the Tachnion - Israel Institute of Technology.
1) For more detailed information about this study see, Rapaport, C. and A. Kirschenbaum, (2008) 'Business Continuity as an Adaptive Social Process'. Journal of Emergency Management 5(3-4) pp 338-347.
2) BEMOSA; Behavioral Science Model of Security in Airports, a FP7 European Union funded project. See
http://www.bemosa.eu/
December 2011 Aviationsecurityinternational
THE FINAL WORD
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52