Swedish crisis preparedness planners' understanding and sense-making of preparedness work in a public organisation: Implications for future development

Abstract

The sometimes rapid development of (new) threats and extraordinary events calls for a robust, flexible, and well-equipped civil crisis preparedness system to respond and limit the damage of crisis events. To achieve this, Swedish municipalities and regions are required by law to regularly perform and report risk and vulnerability analysis ‘bottom up’ to governmental agencies. When performed in large and complex public organisations, crisis preparedness planning activities require negotiation, coordination, and cooperation among large numbers of people. Crisis preparedness planners facilitate and produce this proactive crisis preparedness work. However, research has revealed that preparedness planners face organisational and practical challenges when performing their work.

This study aims at increasing the knowledge of crisis preparedness planners' understandings and sense-making of their work in one Swedish region when fulfilling the requirements set by the Swedish national regulations. The objectives of this paper are to present findings on (1) how the preparedness planners understand and make sense of their crisis preparedness work; (2) which major enablers and barriers that affect their work; and, based on the results, (3) forward possibilities for improvement.

Semi-structured interviews were conducted with the 10 crisis preparedness planners. A narrative stepwise analysis approach was applied. The analysis results revealed challenges in the crisis preparedness work due to uncommitted managers, unclear goalsetting, and the planners' sometimes limited skills in crisis preparedness work. It also report on managers' autonomy and varying focus on crisis preparedness, planners' unclear individual work space, and many different and sometimes strong voices about the work performance and content. This raises the question whose interest that in practice sets the agenda for crisis preparedness planning in the organisation.

The study demonstrates needs for increased organisational sense-making on the concept of crisis preparedness and how it should be performed, and for conceptual and technical skills to perform the preparedness work. To increase sense-making and strengthen generic subjectivity on crisis preparedness work, further discussions are needed about enablers and barriers in preparedness work and an increased joint focus on possible internal and external threats. There are also needs for increased manager-coworker-planner cooperation when developing the preparedness work, and strategic changes in the organisational development involving goalsetting for crisis preparedness ‘top-down’ as well as ‘bottom-up’.