Redundant deliberation about negative consequences: Decision inertia in emergency responders.

Abstract

Major emergencies are high-stakes, ambiguous, dynamic and stressful events. Emergency response commanders rely on their expertise and training to mitigate these factors and implement action. The Critical Decision Method was used to interview n=31 commanders from the Police (n=12), Fire and Rescue (n=15) and Ambulance Services (n=4) in the UK about challenges to decision making. Transcripts were analysed in two ways: (i) using thematic analyses to categorise the challenges to incident command; and (ii) grounded theory to develop a theoretical understanding of how challenges influenced decision processing. There were nine core challenges to incident command, themed into two categories: (i) those relating to the perceived characteristics of the incident itself; and (ii) those relating to uncertainties about (inter)personal dynamics of the team(s) responding. Consideration of challenges featured prominently in decision makers' prospective modelling, especially when thinking about goal accomplishment (i.e., 'What if I deploy now? What if I don't?'). Commanders were motivated to 'save life' (attack/approach goal), yet also sought to 'prevent harm' (defend/avoid goal). Challenges led commanders to redundantly deliberate about what to do; their prospective modelling was related to the anticipation of potential negative consequences that might arise both for acting (attack) and not acting (defend). Commanders identified this difficult trade-off, yet described how experience and their 'responsibility as a commander' gave them confidence to overcome decision inertia. Future research is needed to identify whether decision making training on how to anticipate and overcome difficult cognitive trade-offs would lead to more flexible and expedient commanding. 1

Extreme teams: Toward a greater understanding of multiagency teamwork during major emergencies and disasters.

“…The authors recommended that interventions to reduce Running head: EXTREME TEAMS AND MAJOR EMERGENCIES 9 uncertainty in high-risk environments should specifically target exogenous challenges, which might in turn reduce inherent endogenous challenges. In a second study, the authors used cognitive interviews to explore exogenous challenges in emergency teams and found that uncertainty was related to four sources: trust issues, competition, poor role understanding and communication (Power & Alison, 2017a). Although more research is needed to comprehensively identify the challenges to emergency teamwork, these challenges provide a starting point that will be used in this paper to integrate research on emergency teamwork within the existing team processing framework (e.g., Wilson et al, 2015).…”

“…However, cooperation is uniquely challenged as emergency teams are often temporary and dynamic, meaning that team members rotate and are unfamiliar at an interpersonal level. Related to cooperation, Power and Alison (2017a) identified two challenges to emergency teamwork: (i) trust issues; and (ii) competition between team members. They suggest that these challenges impeded cooperation as they reduced team members' motivation to work together.…”

“…It is possible that emergency contexts are enhanced by specific types of trust. Power and Alison (2017a) found that high levels of affective trust impeded emergency responding, specifically at the command level when trusted advice conflicted with personal judgements on strategic planning. Commanders were conflicted between their own judgement and the conflicting advice of trusted others.…”

“…A second challenge to cooperation in emergency teams is related to competition and conflict between team members who seek to prioritize their own (personal or intra-agency) goals over collective goals. Power and Alison (2017a) identified how cooperation can break down in emergency teams at the intra-team level, when team members pursued personal goals (e.g., to be a 'hero') at the expense of collective goals, and at the inter-team level, when teams competed to take primacy or to prioritize their own agency's goals at the scene. In line with the psychological literature on teamwork, it is suggested that Power and Alison's (2017a) findings reflect intra-team competition, whereby individuals seek to achieve their own goals at the expense of collective goals (Deutsch, 1949), and inter-team conflict, wherein suborganizational team goals collide with one another.…”

Decision Inertia in Critical Incidents

“…With regards to methods this is largely due to the fact that the majority of current methodological approaches are directed at measuring the presence of a given behaviour rather than the possible processes underpinning non-behaviour. Unlike decision avoidance, which describes inaction as a result of suspended disengagement with decision processing, decision inertia reflects behavioural inaction despite cognitive processing, and has been observed in the context of critical incidents (e.g., Power & Alison, 2017). Decision inertia is characterised by redundant deliberation; the constant rumination over possible choices in the absence of further useful information.…”