ABSTRACT
Command decision making continues to be a crucial topic for any organisation concerned with managing major incidents. Crises (natural or man-made), civil turbulences or terrorist actions, according to Rosenthal and Pijnenburg (1991), can be characterised by "un-ness - unexpected, unscheduled, unplanned, unprecedented, and definitely unpleasant" (p. 1). For those called upon to manage the crisis, such circumstances normally engender a change in management style from consultative to 'command and control'. While there is a voluminous literature on military command (see Larken, Keeling, this volume) and crisis management at a political (Stern, 1999) or strategic level (Rosenthal, Comfort & Boin, in press), relatively little has been written on the skills required for emergency management at the tactical or operational level, in a non-military setting. In 202the last decade, a number of on-scene commanders (both civilian and military) have been found to have made decision errors at demanding, high risk incidents - e.g. Hillsborough (Taylor, 1990), Piper Alpha (Cullen, 1990), and the US Vincennes (Fogarty, 1988). As a result of a series of high-profile failures in command decision making, both military and industrial psychologists (Flin, 1996; McCann & Pigeau, 2000) have begun to examine the skills required for effective incident command.
