Adjunct Professor Millersville University and Founder and Principal of Crisis and Risk Advisors, LLC., Minnesota, United States
Over the last two decades—and with significant acceleration following COVID-19—the role of emergency management has expanded far beyond its traditional disaster coordination mission. Today's emergency managers increasingly find themselves at the center of problems involving public health, homelessness, severe weather, civil unrest, school violence, infrastructure disruption, community trust, and other complex challenges that cross organizational, jurisdictional, and policy boundaries.
This presentation introduces the Absorptive Governance Model of Emergency Management, a framework that examines why modern governance systems repeatedly turn to emergency management when difficult problems lack clear ownership, authority, or organizational alignment. Building upon scholarship on emergency management evolution and wicked problems, the model argues that emergency management has increasingly become a governance "shock absorber"—an integrative function forced to be capable of coordinating action when formal institutions struggle to determine who is responsible for what - without adequate resources .
Drawing on real-world examples from the Twin Cities metropolitan region, the session explores how complex public problems are routinely routed toward the Emergency Manager, not because their organizations necessarily own the problem, but because they possess or can rapidly build the structures, relationships, and operational credibility needed to make progress when other systems cannot.
Participants will examine the growing gap between expectations and authority, the transfer of risk without corresponding resources, and the implications of treating emergency management as government's "easy solution" to increasingly difficult problems. The presentation also raises a broader question for the profession itself: if emergency management continues to absorb responsibilities that span public safety, public health, infrastructure, governance, and community resilience, is it enough to define emergency management solely as an enterprise, or is it time that we finally clearly define the Emergency Manager as a distinct professional with unique competencies, responsibilities, and standing within that enterprise?
The presentation challenges attendees to consider whether emergency management's expanding role represents mission creep, structural necessity, professional evolution—or something more fundamental about how modern governance functions under stress. And we will examine the role of the professional, and the meaning of the title - if, indeed there is one.
