How a bank organization handles robberies - A question of crisis management

Organizations are in today’s business society faced with an increasing number of crises. The knowledge about how to manage a crisis has become an important tool for competitive advantage. The question is no longer if or when an organization will experience a crisis, but rather in what form and how prepared it is when a crisis actually occurs. The many networks of today’s business society make organizations even more vulnerable to the possibility of indirectly being affected by a crisis. This paper focuses on the banking industry as banks form an important part of many business networks. Furthermore, focus is put on the immediate form of a crisis and specifically robberies. The immediate crisis reflects the importance for an organization to be prepared as the immediate crisis by its nature gives little or no warning, following that it is more difficult to prevent these types of crises. The banking industry is often discussed in terms of stability and security whereas the crisis brings instability and uncertainty and challenges the organization’s structure. The purpose of this thesis is to understand how and why crisis management concerning robberies is implemented within a bank organization. This paper looks into the current theories discussed in the literature and the field of crisis management, the authors have chosen a qualitative approach and have performed a number of interviews, both with internal and external parties. Through the research performed the conclusion was drawn that the bank organization is very professional in their handling of crisis management concerning robberies. The bank has identified the importance of having a well prepared plan as a crisis situation such as robbery occur and the policies on crisis management concerning robberies has, for an extensive time period, continuously been processed and developed. The policies developed include all aspects of a crisis, both educational program in the Pre-crisis stage, aspects to consider and how to act when a robbery occurs, and also how the organization responds in the Post-crisis stage. The bank organization has in their approach chosen to a great extent to handle the work with crisis management internally. It was concluded that, since the bank organization has, during an extensive period of time, identified the risk of being robbed as a constantly relevant issue, the policies has been processed and developed repeatedly to cover all aspects of a crisis. The implementation of the policies is in the Pre-crisis and Crisis stage performed without any flexibility as they are explicit in their design and covers every aspect of a crisis. Contrary, the implementation in the Post-crisis stage has a more flexible approach as the Crisis group is working with people that experiences a situation of trauma. It is acknowledged that the bank organization is following the different stages of crisis in their policies, dividing the responsibility of the implementation of crisis management in each and every stage