Bulletin

Issue: April 2006

News

To combat terrorism, our leaders need to respond to the terrorist challenge

The leaders of our emergency response forces must respond immediately and appropriately to a terrorist attack. To do this with maximum efficiency, they must cooperate closely using their understanding of the strategies and tactics of potential terrorists.

In the world battle against terrorism, La Trobe University researchers are making a significant contribution to provide this understanding. Basically, they have set out to become efficiency experts in countering terrorism attacks.

Professor of Management at La Trobe, David Brown, and two PhD students, Mr Michael Arcella and Mr Zoran Endekov, are working with police and other services in both Australia and overseas to come up with appropriate answers.

They will present results of their research at the 6th Annual Hawaii International Conference on Business to be held from May 25–28 in Honolulu.

They will chair a panel discussing the subject: Leadership Capabilities in Response to Terrorist Attacks, to delegates from a number of countries.

Professor Brown says that while there is a significant body of research in the field of leadership, there is almost no empirical research examining relationships between leadership capability and performance outcomes involving a unified, multi-agency response to terrorist-evoked critical incidents.

‘Due to the multi-agency response necessity, terrorist-evoked critical incidents present unique leadership challenges for emergency management,’ Professor Brown said.

‘Emergency agencies have over a relatively long period developed detailed and complex disaster plans designed to address impacts created by floods and wild fires.

‘Agencies have developed responses to these natural disasters at the strategic, tactical, and operational levels of emergency management. However, unlike natural disasters, terrorist attacks have purpose and intent. Terrorists plan their attacks with the purpose and intention of creating the utmost political, social, and economic impacts.

‘Natural disasters are seen to entail a well understood and highly structured response from specific emergency agencies. Terrorist-evoked actions are targeted to create critical incidents that have an ill defined structure.

‘Such critical incidents maximise risk and create a multi-emergency situation forcing a unified inter-agency response. A difficulty is that the orientations of emergency services tend toward formal organisational structures and cultures that do not facilitate inter-agency co-operation to address critical incidents with an ill-defined structure,’ Professor Brown said.

proach to leadership research, he has over the previous 18 months spent time in the UK at a number of organisations concerned with response to terrorism attack. They include the London Home Office, the Anti-Terrorist and Armed Response branches of New Scotland Yard, London Fire Brigade and the National Police Leadership Centre.

From these he has collated data relating to leadership characteristics, organisational structures, and performance factors associated with emergency agency responses to terrorist-evoked attacks. The panel discussion at the Hawaii Conference is one of a number of events Professor Brown has participated in or organised to discuss response to terrorism attack.

In November 2005, he organised an invitation-only seminar at La Trobe University presenting his work in conjunction with Chief Superintendent Alan Webb, a counter-terrorism exercise director from New Scotland Yard. Most of the senior officers involved in counter-terrorism in Victoria attended.

Professor Brown said his research was an extension of previous work related to critical incident response performance conducted with Dr Andrea Kirk of Monash University and previously published in the Journal of Applied Psychology.

His research on leadership and critical incident response performance involves Victoria Police and other Australian police forces.