A ready reckoner for crisis scenario planners

A range of organisational crises are explored to discover how people react during a crisis and why, with a view to planning strategic actions based on those reactions. We conclude that people react, not just according to how they feel but also, less obviously, that their behaviour can be predicted using a clear understanding of those feelings. This article narrows the field of feelings, or emotions, to six categories and provides a reliable spectrum along which these emotions operate. Using this spectrum we propose a taxonomy or ‘ready reckoner ’ of actions which individuals and organisations can take in response to these emotional reactions.