Crisis management as a public administration question: A comparison of Turkey and the USA

Rapidly changing global conditions and various types of crises frequency of which is ever growing has been forcing not only private entities but also public sector to develop their own crisis management systems. Increasing expectations of citizens from their governments and public institutions makes it necessary for them to deal with crises more effectively so that the quality of their services would not decline. In this context human factor as the supplier of public services and the reciever as well bears critical importance. In this study, necessity of effective and realistic crisis management systems for public sector institutions is underlined and within these systems importance of human factor is revisited. As many crisis cases have previously shown, the performance of governments and related institutions in terms of managing them effects the citizens? trust in their government. However, it is also clear that especially in catastrophic cases with large impact, governments inevitably fall short in terms of crisis response and mitigation. Therefore integration of ordinary citizens in national crisis management systems during both pre-crisis and post-crisis phases seems to be a practical solution for both sides.