Expanding into a VUCA World: Reflecting on Crisis Management in the Aftermath of EU Expansion

As part of a reflexive process on the past twenty years since the expansion of the European Union (EU), this paper outlines elements of crisis management theory as a means of considering a range of issues that the EU and its members might need to consider as it moves into the next phase of its development. The paper uses the UK’s Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE) crisis as an initial means of illustrating the fragility of the food system and focusses on the ways in which crises can become embedded in “normal” activities within organisations. The paper concludes by contextualising the processes around the generation of crises within a VUCA – volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity – driven environment as a means of setting out a provocation for considering some of the challenges facing the food sector and the implications for the EU from further expansion in a VUCA environment.