Multi-contextual approaches to safety and security and the role of cultural norms


Gabriele Jacobs, Endowed Professor of Organisational Behaviour and Culture at Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University (RSM) and ERIM Member will deliver her inaugural address <link research events detail _blank>Organisational Behaviour and Culture - Insights from and for Public Safety Management on Friday 9 March 2018. She will argue that factors such as understanding diversity, embracing complexity and building new alliances are key for the development of inclusive security solutions with multiple stakeholder groups and within diverse cultural contexts.

Threats to public safety are typically multi-level problems, with roots and impact on people and communities, both on an organisational, national and multi-lateral level. Properly addressing such grand societal challenges is crucial for immediate damage control, as well as to sustain trust in the effectiveness of private and public governance. For sustainable solutions to public safety challenges, specific approaches are required. According to Prof. Jacobs, these approaches will only succeed by involving not only established national and international crime and crisis response organisations, but also central and local government organisations, local members of affected communities, and private institutions.

Inaugural address
Professor Gabriele Jacobs’ inaugural address is open to the public, and will take place on Friday, 9 March 2018. The ceremony will start at 16:00 in the Auditorium of the Erasmus Building on Woudestein campus, Burgemeester Oudlaan 50 in Rotterdam. A reception will take place at 17:00 at Erasmus Paviljoen.

Symposium
Professor Gabriele Jacobs’ address will be preceded by an international symposium on security narratives aimed at contributing to a common understanding by addressing security challenges from multiple perspectives. Local and international academics and practitioners from different fields such as management, information technology and criminology, will exchange their perspectives and experiences through ’security narratives’. The symposium will consist of keynote speeches, co-creation workshops and a panel discussion.

About Gabriele Jacobs
Gabriele Jacobs
is Professor of Organisational Behaviour and Culture in the Department of Organisation & Personnel Management at RSM. Her research interests include organisational change, justice and identity, leadership, international management, civic engagement, co-creation, and methodology.

Prof. Jacobs is the co-founder and co-director of the Centre of Excellence on Public Safety Management (CESAM). She received her PhD from University of Münster, Germany in 1998 within a multidisciplinary PhD programme of the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG). She worked as researcher and assistant professor at the University of Cologne, and has been visiting professor at HEC Paris. Prof. Jacobs presents her work at international conferences, and publishes in a wide range of academic journals in organisational behaviour, marketing management, and applied focus.

Currently she co-ordinates the Erasmus+ Knowledge Alliance on "International Security Management", which aims at creating sustainable and concrete resources and structures to foster international security collaborations. Its consortium consists of nine partners from six European partner institutions. Between 2010 and 2014 she co-ordinated Comparative Police Studies in the EU (COMPOSITE), a FP7 EU project in the field of security which looked into small and large scale change processes in police forces across Europe.

Prof. Jacobs is involved in several EU-projects in the field of safety and security. Next to this she co-ordinates and conducts national research projects focusing e.g. on the Dutch police reform and changes in the law system.