In Anti-Corruption Report, R&G Insights Lab Explores Human-Centered Crisis Management

In a new article in Anti-Corruption Report, Nitish Upadhyaya, Director of Behavioral Insights, and Michelle DiMartino, Organizational Research and Design Specialist at R&G Insights Lab, examine why traditional crisis management protocols can fail when they come into contact with reality and how companies can design more effective approaches by keeping human behavior in mind.

Nitish and Michelle identify three common challenges that arise under crisis pressure: information bottlenecks, timing dilemmas, and the abandonment of protocols. They explain that these issues often stem from the organizational system exacerbating predictable human tendencies, such uncertainty narrowing attention, stress affecting judgment, and authority bias narrowing the range of perspectives.

The authors offer practical design principles for crisis management protocols that work with human nature rather than against it, emphasizing the importance of managing information flow, building in flexibility, and clearly delineating decision authority.