Modern day crises demand organizations to collaborate and adapt to new roles, functions and structures. In such situations, lack of collaborative behaviour and openness between organizations can result in reduced adaptive ability.Therefore, it is important to facilitate collaboration between organizations.We have studied the extent to which crisis managers are prepared to work with personnel and resources from organizations other than their own when responding to crises. An experiment was designed with four different organizations in Sweden, which involved decision making concerning whether the participants systematically favoured their own organization over others. Findings indicate that increasing familiarity and expectation of future cooperation with other organizations increased the likelihood that decision makers would be prepared to work with other organizations in joint crisis management.
PurposeTwenty-first century crises reaffirm the need of faster mobilization of resources during crises. Without interorganizational collaboration and resource mobilization, organizing efficient response is not possible. Resource mobilization is an essential aspect of response. It ensures a faster and better response. Collaboration between teams of emergency responders may include commonly known boundary spanning activities such as resource sharing, information sharing and communication. The purpose of this paper is to contribute our knowledge of how to organize a better crisis response through collaboration. More precisely, what strategies work as drivers for emergency responder teams during collaboration in crisis scenarios.Design/methodology/approachThrough design of experiments, using tabletop exercises and online surveys, this study investigates the drivers of collaboration during a crisis scenario. Participants of this study are decision makers and emergency responders from various public actors in crisis management from Sweden.FindingsCollaboration is essential to manage cross-functional services in normal times, as well as meet the growing needs during crises. In absence of collaboration, boundary spanning activities such as sharing resources or information to provide any kind of service will not be possible. For teams to survive in fast-changing environment, they must be able to adapt to the changing demands accordingly. This paper demonstrates which factors are drivers for emergency responders to mobilize resources, especially during crises. It captures the tension between individual and collective goals in crisis response and highlights the drivers that affect decision-making during crises.Originality/valueThe novelty of the paper lies in its methodology using tabletop exercises, design of experiments as part of Six Sigma toolbox and online surveys in combination with weightage of agreements and disagreements and free text answers. Although scientific research so far has demonstrated the need for collaboration during crises, however, which factors act as drivers for emergency responders to collaborate, is lacking scientific evidence. Incentives for collaboration have not been studied enough. These can tell us which strategies can improve collaboration during crises. This research paper is a scientific contribution in that direction.
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