The Grenfell Tower fire - a case of proactive and reactive accountability in crisis management

Lakoma, K ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2583-3813, Murphy, P ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8459-4448 and Eckersley, P ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9048-8529, 2025. The Grenfell Tower fire - a case of proactive and reactive accountability in crisis management. In: United Kingdom Association for Public Administration, Ulster University, Belfast, 10-12 September 2025.

Presentation 2495813_Murphy.pptx - Presentation Download (11MB)

Abstract

Studies of accountability tend to focus on highly politicised cases of policy and organisational failure (Romzek and Dubnick 1987). In such contexts, accountability is often framed as a reactive response to failure, where individuals or institutions are expected to be held responsible for their actions. Crises and disasters are examples of situations when events take an unexpected turn for the worse and reveal gaps in accountability arrangements that consequently trigger intense demands for greater accountability (Boin et al. 2010, Ferry et al. 2024).
While much of the literature has focused on post-crisis evaluations, there is a need to examine accountability not only as a reactive tool, but also as a proactive mechanism for crisis prevention and amelioration. To address this, we introduce the concepts of proactive and reactive accountability and illustrate how they play out across the three phases of the crisis management cycle: pre-crisis, crisis, and post-crisis.
In this paper, we examine the case of the Grenfell Tower fire that happened on the 14th of June 2017 in London, drawing on both Phase 1 and Phase 2 of the Grenfell Inquiry reports, to argue that both proactive accountability and reactive accountability are crucial in crisis management, as they serve distinctive, yet complementary roles. Proactive accountability mechanisms can prevent the need for extensive reactive accountability measures, and similarly, reactive accountability measures can help identify inadequacies in proactive accountability mechanisms to improve future responses. We therefore demonstrate that both forms of accountability are intertwined and mutually reinforcing in the crisis management cycle.

Item Type:	Conference contribution
Description:	Slides
Creators:	Lakoma, K., Murphy, P. and Eckersley, P.
Date:	11 September 2025
Identifiers:	Number Type 2495813 Other
Divisions:	Schools > Nottingham Business School
Record created by:	Jeremy Silvester
Date Added:	26 Sep 2025 09:03
Last Modified:	26 Sep 2025 09:03
URI:	https://irep.ntu.ac.uk/id/eprint/54452

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