Publication
From Crisis to Inquiry: A Framework for Designing and Assessing Crisis Inquiries from a Learning Perspective
In this article, Wout Broekema, Wouter Jong, and Sara Perlstein explore the design and assessment of crisis inquiries from a learning perspective. They develop a framework to evaluate how effectively these inquiries contribute to organisational and societal learning in the aftermath of crises.
- Author
- Wout Broekema, Wouter Jong, Sara Perlstein
- Date
- 27 February 2025
- Links
- Read the full article here
The authors argue that learning after crises is crucial for restoring trust in government, improving crisis management, and preventing future crises. However, they note that little attention has been paid to how crisis inquiries are conducted and whether they are actually conducive to learning. The article addresses this gap by exploring how crisis inquiries and their reports differ, and how these differences affect the learning process.
Broekema, Jong, and Perlstein develop a crisis inquiry framework outlining 16 key processes, following four stages: initiating the inquiry, collecting data, conducting the analysis, and communicating the findings. This framework provides guidance for officials setting up crisis inquiries and for scholars assessing and interpreting inquiry reports, helping to ensure that lessons are effectively learned and applied. They argue that choices made during the inquiry process profoundly affect its ability to facilitate learning and that awareness of these choices can reduce the risk of reports becoming subject to misuse in post-crisis blame games.