Swans, Swine, and Swindlers: Coping with the Growing Threat of Mega-Crises and Mega-Messes

Swans, Swine, and Swindlers addresses a core, contemporary question: What steps can we take to better anticipate and manage mega-crises, such as Haiti, Katrina, and 9/11?

This book explores the concept of messes. A mess is a web of complex and dynamically interacting, ill-defined, and/or wicked problems; their solutions; and our conscious and unconscious assumptions, beliefs, emotions, and values. The roots of messes can be classified as Swans (the inability to surface and test false assumptions and mistaken beliefs), Swine (the inability to confront and manage greed, hubris, arrogance, and narcissism), and Swindlers (the inability to confront, detect, and stop unethical and corrupt behavior). Working systematically with this concept and these classifications, authors Can M. Alpaslan and Ian I. Mitroff reveal that all crises are messes; one must learn to understand and manage them as such.

They then provide tools and frameworks that readers can use to more effectively deal with the crises of today and tomorrow. Drawing on ideas from research areas as diverse as human development, philosophy, rhetoric, psychology, and high reliability organizations, this book aims to be the definitive guide for a new era in crisis management. Therefore, it is a must-have for practitioners, scholars, and students who study and deal in real-life crises.

Author: Ian Mitroff, Can Alpaslan
Publisher: Stanford Business Books
Published: 07/05/2011
Pages: 232
Binding Type: Hardcover
Weight: 1.01lbs
Size: 9.34h x 6.32w x 0.76d
ISBN: 9780804771375

Review Citation(s):
Reference and Research Bk News 10/01/2011 pg. 71

About the Author
Can M. Alpaslan is Associate Professor in the College of Business and Economics at California State University, Northridge. Ian I. Mitroff is widely regarded as one of the fathers of modern Crisis Management. He is Professor Emeritus from the Annenberg School for Communication and the Marshall School of Business, University of Southern California. He is University Professor at the Marshall Goldsmith School of Management, Alliant International University; Adjunct Professor in the College of Environmental Design, University of California at Berkeley; Senior Research Associate at The Center for Catastrophic Risk Management, University of California at Berkeley; and Adjunct Professor in The School of Public Health, St. Louis University.