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A case study of factor influencing role improvisation in crisis response teams

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Abstract

Common characteristics of crisis situations are ambiguous and unplanned for events. The need for improvised roles can therefore be an imperative factor for the success of an operation. The aim of this study is to deepen the understanding of the processes taking place during improvised work “as it happens”. A case study of a crisis management team at work is presented and provides an in-depth analysis of the information and communication flow of persons acting in improvised roles, including contextual factors influencing the task at hand. The analysis suggests that three main factors lay behind decreased performance by the team when some of its members were forced to take on roles for which they lacked professional training; lack of language skills, lack of domain knowledge and insufficient organizational structure of the tasks. Based on the observations from this case study, we suggest three ways of improving a team’s performance and hence resilience when forced to improvise due to lack of personnel in one or more required competence areas. These are training to take on the responsibility for tasks or roles outside ones professional area of specialization, developing formal routines for changes in roles and tasks and developing and using tools and routines for information sharing.

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Notes

  1. More information on CITE Explorer can be found at http://www.vsl.se

  2. Scott is a website where equipment for fire fighters is sold.

  3. All translations are from Swedish to English and are performed by the first author.

  4. Qualcomm is an area in California, according to the scenario one of the evacuation centers was located here.

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Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank Jiri Trnka, FOI, Sweden, for preparing and realising the role-playing exercise and David Mendonça for his valuable comments and suggestion on an early version of this paper. We would also like to thank the participants from the SRT. Funding from the Swedish Civil Contingencies Agency is gratefully acknowledged. We also thank the reviewers of a previous version of the paper for their constructive comments.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Computer and Information Science, Linköping University, 581 83, Linköping, Sweden

    Amy Rankin & Nils Dahlbäck

  2. Department of Science and Technology, Linköping University, 581 83, Linköping, Sweden

    Jonas Lundberg

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  1. Amy Rankin
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  2. Nils Dahlbäck
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  3. Jonas Lundberg
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Correspondence to Amy Rankin.

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Rankin, A., Dahlbäck, N. & Lundberg, J. A case study of factor influencing role improvisation in crisis response teams. Cogn Tech Work 15, 79–93 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10111-011-0186-3

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