The Government's Role As Stakeholder In Industrial Crises

Industrial crises involving chemical releases into the environment are trans forming the way that government regulates industry in general, and emer gencies and crises of industrial origins in particular. Statistics on the occur ence of accidents over the past decade show numbers of accidents in the thousands, many with severe consequences, indicating a potentially severe problem. The major thesis explored here is that traditional governmental regula tory and financial policies and programs for health and safety are aimed at more frequent and predictable events rather than rare catastrophic ones. Even the antecedents of accidents have not been regarded as predictable or within the purview of most governmental programs. As a result of ap proaching accidents with great uncertainty, government's estimates and al location of organizational, human, and financial resource needs both before and after a crisis, are characterized by a high degree of variation. This creates deficiencies in the management scheme for industrial crises. Gov ernment can partly overcome this problem by drawing on traditional man agement strategies to cope with the uncertainty posed by industrial crises.