**Abstract**

A crisis is a situation approaching a dangerous phase, which requires urgent intervention to avoid harmful effects on the body of an organization in order to return to normal situation. It is a decisive and critical time for the organization, where the wrong decision can even cost its viability. This situation can shape political, legal, economic, and governmental impact on its activities. From different definitions of crisis, we seek to underscore key elements of a crisis that may threat a public organization and, also, to highlight both the elements of management responsiveness resulting in the loss of control in the organization, regarding the short time demand for decision-making. The key purpose of this chapter is to illustrate the basis available in the international literature, upon which public risk mechanisms can be reviewed and chosen in public sector organizations under the scope of their applicability.

**Keywords:** public sector management, crisis management, organizations' management

### **1. Introduction**

In the everyday life, the concept of crisis can encompass the whole range of activities and relationships, at an individual, social, and political level. But its interpretation varies, depending on the perspective of the crisis, regarding personality, experience, and professional level. In the context of organizations and systems, the crisis and its response have become particularly important nowadays, due to the unforeseen forms in which it can occur, the degree of damage it can cause to their structures and operations, the dimensions that it can realize in a short time, the modern environment of globalization, and the fast dissemination of information through enhanced communication networks. The crisis may manifest itself on the horizon as a result of a wrong decision, or it may occur without warning, anywhere, anytime. It can affect all sectors of society, businesses, government, and nongovernmental organizations. In order to safeguard the viability of organisms in critical situations, there is a need for constant monitoring and analysis and an academically sound approach to documentation of actions needed.

Therefore, managing the crisis by public bodies and governments is a prerequisite for their smooth operation and survival. According to Porter's theory of resources and capabilities, the main mechanism for the survival of the organisms in the environment in which they operate is the dimension of competitive advantage,

in which organizations must face threats and seize opportunities, given their adopted strategies, occasional choices, and actions they decided to take, regarding the limited resources available (see also **Figure 1**).

And while organizations are taking precautionary measures to deal with exceptional critical events, the degree of achievement of the intended results remains low.

But how can we define crisis? According to the Greek language [1], the term crisis refers to the mental process of the human being to reason deeply and to arrive at sensible conclusions and judgments, by choice, but also to disturb the smooth course of a process, malfunctioning or improperly challenging structures, values, and institutions. In Chinese, judgment is pronounced gei-zi and is a compound word that denotes "danger" and "opportunity" at the same time. In the context of organizations, a crisis is a low-probability event with major implications, which threatens the viability of an organization and is characterized by unclear causes and effects and ways of finding a solution as well as the belief that decisions must be made within a short time. According to Robert [2], the crisis is an incident that threatens to be harming the people's safety, the environment, the reputation of an organization, and its stakeholders involved.
