ABSTRACT
Since the 9/11 attacks, preparedness has become the dominant way of thinking about domestic security in the United States. It is also being diffused internationally, through sectors such as disaster management. Similarly, it has increasingly been capturing ideas and practices in the world of global health emergency management, since the late 1990s. This evolution accelerated significantly after the 2009 A(H1N1) influenza pandemic and the 2014 Ebola outbreak in West Africa, whose international management was widely assessed as succeeding failures. During both episodes, the World Health Organization was subject to harsh and widespread criticism for its perceived inability to uphold its role in leading the international response, during both crises, as the UN organization in charge of public health. This sequence of events pushed the organization to develop its preparedness organizational models, procedures and techniques. This chapter intends to shed light on this process of organizational transformation, by assessing the interactions between a consolidating perception of the future as being deeply uncertain, the increasing dominance of preparedness as the preferred approach to the management of risks and uncertainties, and real-life crises.
