Hugo Marynissen

Hugo Marynissen (°1966) is a Belgian expert in crisis management, a senior partner at PM, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Antwerp, and an associate professor at Antwerp Management School. His current research focuses on team dynamics in crisis teams, safety leadership within so-called ‘High-Reliability Organisations,’ normal chaos, and the role of crisis management as a means of anticipating extreme events.

Hugo is a co-founder of the CIP Institute, a non-profit organisation that brings together scholars and practitioners in an inspiring and innovative platform to exchange and develop knowledge about Complex and Interactive Processes (CIP) in the field of crisis management. In November 2020, he was appointed as an expert for the Special Parliamentary Committee investigating Belgium’s COVID-19 response.

Hugo studied change management at Saïd Business School (Green Templeton College, University of Oxford) and HEC Paris, where he earned his master’s degree in 2009. At Cranfield University, School of Management, he obtained his Doctor of Business Administration in 2014 with a dissertation titled “A Constitutive View on Risk Communication in Organisations Managing High-Risk Processes: Towards a Conceptual Framework.”

After graduating, Marynissen was appointed as the Academic Director of the first Executive PhD program in Belgium (Antwerp Management School). In this role, Hugo was responsible for designing and content of the program, selecting faculty, and supporting and monitoring the PhD candidates. During this period (2015-2019), he successfully launched collaborations with Lingnan (University) College, a division of Sun Yat-sen University in China, and with Management Center Innsbruck (MCI) in Austria. Additionally, he was a visiting professor at Katholieke Universiteit Leuven (Belgium), Management Center Innsbruck (Austria), and Lingnan (University) College. He is also the academic director and professor of the “Crisis Communication Module” in the postgraduate disaster management program at Campus Vesta.

As a university lecturer and postdoctoral researcher, Hugo led a four-year study on the future of firefighting (commissioned by the Antwerp Fire Department) and networking in the Port of Antwerp.

Hugo is a senior partner at PM, a Belgian firm specializing in risk and crisis management. Since 2008, he has regularly provided coaching and consultancy services in the field of risk and crisis management. During the terrorist attacks in Brussels (March 22, 2016), he and his team advised the Belgian Prime Minister on crisis communication strategy. Together with his colleague Stijn Pieters, he developed the Crisis Communication Work Process (CCWP), an evidence-based method for crisis communication. The CCWP addresses four challenges that communication teams must overcome. First, they need to claim a mandate; second, they must provide strategic advice based on enriched information; third, they should work with the understanding that crisis communication is only effective if it aligns with the mental patterns or models of those they need to communicate with; and finally, they must approach crisis communication as a distinct discipline with various specializations.