Enablers and Barriers for Implementing Crisis Preparedness on Local and Regional Levels in Sweden

Abstract

Crisis preparedness planning work can be characterized as complex and challenging being performed in large public organizations requiring communication and cooperation with many people. This paper reports on a bottom-up study investigating the pre-requisites for efficient crisis preparedness work, as well as motivational factors for implementing crisis preparedness decisions, which might be studied and understood in terms of sense-making, communication, and cooperation. As focus was on the crisis preparedness planners’ need to understand their roles, assignments, and authorities in the crisis preparedness planning process, ten semi-structured interviews were conducted with local and regional crisis preparedness planners at a county council in southern Sweden. Enablers and barriers for implementing crisis preparedness were identified and concerned area such as: assuming the role of expert in crisis preparedness planning in one’s organization and understanding what crisis preparedness is about in relation to the organization’s core tasks; power and attaining enough mandate to be able to perform one’s designated work by, e.g. seeking and finding different networks, stakeholders and partners that can legitimate the planner’s work and enable trust and action; communicating demands and benefits of the planners’ tasks realizing that members and working areas in the organization have different needs, cultures, and use different languages; and managing and delivering risk analysis information from the local to the regional level. For a attaining a comprehensive view of enablers and barriers in the crisis preparedness planning processes and implementation, an organizational top-down perspective will also be needed.