Int. J. Emergency Management, Vol. 9, No. 1, 2013
Developing a research framework for complex multi-team coordination in emergency management Christine Owen* Faculty of Education, University of Tasmania, Sandy Bay Campus, Private Bag 66, Hobart, Tasmania, Australia Email:
[email protected] *Corresponding author
Christopher Bearman CFSR, University of South Australia, City East Campus, Adelaide, Australia and Appleton Institute, Central Queensland University, 44 Greenhill Road, Adelaide, SA, Australia Email:
[email protected]
Benjamin Brooks National Centre for Ports and Shipping, Australian Maritime College, Locked Bag 1397, Launceston, Tasmania, Australia Email:
[email protected]
Janine Chapman Centre for Work + Life, University of South Australia, GPO Box 2471, Adelaide SA, Australia Email:
[email protected]
Douglas Paton School of Psychology, University of Tasmania, Newnham Campus, Locked Bag 1342, Launceston, Tasmania, Australia Email:
[email protected] Copyright © 2013 Inderscience Enterprises Ltd.
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Liaquat Hossain Faculty of Engineering and IT, The University of Sydney, J05 - Civil Engineering, Sydney, NSW, Australia Email:
[email protected] Abstract: This conceptual paper addresses previous calls for the development of new theoretical frameworks to better account for the multi-agency emergency management coordination required in complex events. It uses, as a departure point, a teamwork model that includes four phases: situation assessment; plan formulation, plan execution and team learning. The thesis put forward here is that we need to move the focus of analysis beyond the team to one of multi-layered multiple team and multiple organisation systems. To further develop this research framework indicators from multi-organisational literature are added to those found in the individual and teamwork literature to develop a more comprehensive account of multi-team multi-organisational coordination. The paper identifies key anchor points for future use in data collection. Keywords: teamwork; multi-team coordination; multi-agency coordination; inter-organisational coordination; emergency management; command and control; shared mental models; distributed situation awareness; plan formulation; plan execution; team learning. Reference to this paper should be made as follows: Owen, C., Bearman, C., Brooks, B., Chapman, J., Paton, D. and Hossain, L. (2013) ‘Developing a research framework for complex multi-team coordination in emergency management’, Int. J. Emergency Management, Vol. 9, No. 1, pp.1–17. Biographical notes: Christine Owen is a researcher with a focus on organisational behaviour and learning. She has extensive experience in researching and consulting in a number of high reliability domains, including the aviation field, in emergency medicine and more recently in the fire and emergency services industry. She has been involved in the Australian Bushfire Co-operative Research Centre since 2006 in a variety of ways: primarily as Program Leader for Education and Training and as leader of a project team examining teamwork and organisational effectiveness. Currently, she leads a multi-disciplinary team continuing and extending this work with the Bushfire CRC, examining coordination effectiveness at regional, state and national levels of emergency management. Chris Bearman is currently a Senior Research Fellow at the Appleton Institute of Central Queensland University and a Program Director at the University of South Australia. His research is broadly in the field of applied cognitive psychology and human factors. This research involves conducting industryfocused studies in laboratory and field settings with the aim of creating results that have both a strong theoretical underpinning and a robust application to industry. This involves working closely with industry partners and government organisations around the world. He is also the Program Director for the Masters of Human Factors and the Masters of Occupational Health and Safety and supervises numerous PhD, Masters and Honours students.
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Benjamin Brooks is a human factors researcher and Senior Research Fellow in the National Centre for Ports and Shipping at the Australian Maritime College. He has been a researcher and safety management system consultant for 15 years, and currently works on research in areas such as advanced training and safety systems, safety information systems and builds tools for the evaluation of safety management systems to support individual and team cognition. He works with a range of non-maritime and maritime industry stakeholders including regulators, private companies, pilotage organisations and port authorities. Janine Chapman is a research fellow at the Centre for Work + Life, University of South Australia. Her background is in psychology with expertise in both psychological and sociological perspectives of cognition and behaviour change. She has a keen interest in a range of worker safety, health and well-being issues, in addition to workplace policy and politics. She is currently project manager for a large multi-method project investigating the intersection of work and sustainable living in Australia. Douglas Paton is a Professor in the School of Psychology, University of Tasmania. His research focuses on developing and testing models of community resilience and emergency team response and decision making. An all-hazards (covering seismic, volcanic, tsunami, flooding, and bushfire hazards) and cross cultural (work being undertaken in Australia, New Zealand, Japan, Taiwan, and Portugal) approach is adopted. He recently worked with the General Accounting Office (US), the US National Centre for Disaster Psychology and Terrorism, the Defence Science and Technology Organisation and UNESCO developing cross cultural frameworks to facilitate natural hazard preparedness in people, communities and organisations. Liaquat Hossain is Associate Dean Postgraduate Coursework for the Faculty of Engineering & IT at The University of Sydney. He is interested in understanding the formation and adaptation of hierarchical, non-hierarchical, emerging and self-organised structures in social, biological, environmental, living and organisational systems. His research focuses on the functioning and robustness of hierarchical structures and potential problems leading to disruption or delay in the adaptation of behaviours for optimal functioning. He is fascinated by the complexity of interactions of different macro and micro structures which could lead to positive, negative or improved outcome in different types of systems and sub systems.
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Introduction
In a recent paper of this journal Hamilton and Toh (2010) called for the development of new theoretical frameworks to better understand the complexity of multi-organisational emergency management. They identified that there is a military heritage in organisational command and control that can be contrasted with different ways of organising what may reach beyond the traditional command and control as an emergency management paradigm. One of the challenges faced by the fire and emergency services agencies today is how to effectively organise for large scale, complex and often evolving emergencies in which demands can exceed the available resources and involve multiple stakeholders. In such
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emergencies a range of personnel and agencies needs to come together quickly to manage an incident that may be both ambiguous and dynamic. Comfort and Kapucu (2006) have noted that: “The need for integration intensifies as the number of organizations engaged in response operations increases and the range of problems they confront widens. Since all organizations in the damaged area are affected, private and non-profit actors, as well as public organizations, become participants in the response system” (p.310).
Furthermore, organisations rarely interact with one another under normal circumstances and when they do need to interact in an emergency they face the additional challenge of doing so under high demand and high stress conditions. Under these circumstances it is not surprising that when emergencies are large in complexity and/or magnitude one of the first points of coordination breakdown occurs in the communication mechanisms needed to adequately understand an often complex situation. In large events coordination breakdowns are both common and always problematic. Subsequent reviews of the Hurricane Katrina disaster identified that emergency management was significantly hampered by a lack of information from the ground and that ‘the lack of communications and situation awareness paralyzed, command and control’ (Wise, 2006, p.304). As Wise noted ‘this inability to connect multiple communications plans and architectures clearly impeded coordination and communication at the federal, state and local levels’ (p.304). The same situation has been reported in the conclusions of the Victorian Bushfires Royal Commission Final Report (Teague et al., 2010). The purpose of this conceptual paper is to outline a programme of research aimed at investigating issues surrounding the difficulties (and successes) of interacting in complex teams to suggest ways to make such interaction more effective. This research is part of a three year multidisciplinary project entitled Organising for Effective Emergency Management funded through the Australian Bushfire Co-operative Research Centre. At the heart of the study are a number of questions, which include: •
How do we unpack the complexity of inter organisational coordination in emergent response ‘organisations’ that can be regarded, relative to normal operations, as super-ordinate organisations?
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How do we understand the mental models operators need to share and what happens when there are breakdowns in coordination?
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How do we model the formal and informal communications networks that are in use so that we may learn why informal networks are needed as well as how formalised processes of coordination can be encoded and strengthened?
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How do we ensure that the appropriate interpretive mechanisms and competencies can be developed prior to the occurrence of an emergency?
There has already been considerable research in this area examining the problems of multi-agency emergency management coordination (see for example Drabek and McEntire, 2002; Comfort and Kapucu, 2006; Lutz and Lindell, 2008). However, there has been limited research that examines in detail the ways in which shared mental models enable or constrain successful information flow between layers in the emergency management system. The primary focus of the research programme then is to better understand what enables and constrains successful performance at strategic regional and state levels of emergency management. The rest of the paper will outline what is known about the
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issues facing emergency management response organisations in addressing multi-agency coordination and details how the research programme unpacks that coordination complexity, with a particular focus on teamwork and information flow.
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The problem of emergency management organisation
Regional and state level emergency management requires the formation of complex teams that engage in hierarchical interactions within the organisation and lateral interactions with related organisations. In addition to the organisations with jurisdictional control of the event, such as the police, urban and rural fire services, a range of other organisations and stakeholders (e.g. public service; non-government organisations; businesses and community groups) will be involved in the management of the emergency. These complex teams are more likely to be making strategic decisions related to consequence management than local incident management teams. The dilemma of coordination in such emergency management settings is that on the one hand there is a need for tight structuring, formal command and control and hierarchical decision making to ensure a clear division of responsibilities, but on the other hand is the need for emergent and informal co-operative relationships to address emerging problems. Hence, such organisations paradoxically emphasise both formal and improvised coordination mechanisms (e.g. Weick and Roberts, 1993; Brown and Eisenhardt, 1997; Bigley and Roberts, 2001). Prompt decision processes and timely action are also required but become more complex due to evolving events (e.g. loss of communications, inability to change deployment patterns, dealing with sudden changes in meteorological conditions) as well as uncertainty of the information and decision management context. Brizon and Wybo (2009), for example, discussed the challenges of attending to and addressing the implications of weak signals. They point out that correct interpretation of weak signals is a difficult task and that human and technological tools are needed to enhance understanding and detection. These may include a variety of decision-making models (see for example Nja and Rake 2009; Van Santen et al., 2009), though what is critical is the need to ensure these understandings are shared through effective teamwork.
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The central focus of teamwork
Wilson et al. (2007) propose that successful teamwork in complex, time pressured situations requires: •
effective communication consisting of accurate and timely information exchange, correct phraseology and closed-loop communication techniques;
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coordinated behaviour based on shared knowledge, performance monitoring, backup and adaptability; and
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a co-operative team orientation, efficacy, trust and cohesion.
In complex work environments successful teams develop effective shared mental models which enable them to adapt their coordination process to the requirements of different task situations (see for example Salas et al., 2007; Vogus and Sutcliffe, 2007; Guise and
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Segel, 2008; Mathieu et al., 2008). A shared mental model is a multi-dimensional construct that ‘enables team members to have more accurate expectations and a compatible approach for task performance’ (Salas and Cannon-Bowers, 2001, p.87). In particular, the concept of shared mental models is useful for explaining how similar and compatible knowledge structures among team members may be used to promote collective understanding and mitigate breakdowns in the flow of information.
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From teamwork to multi-team systems
In emergency management, teamwork is a problem of multi-team and multiorganisational coordination, particularly in large-scale complex events. The challenge then is to understand how a team coordinates within teams responsible for managing the emergency as well as how this understanding may be shared between teams involved in various aspects of emergency management. Table 1 provides some examples of the kinds of teams and organisations that need to coordinate. These multi-agency teams are the focus of the research programme. Table 1
Multi-team, multi-organisational coordination
Within teams Between teams
Within organisations
Between organisations
Regional Control Team (RCT) State Control Team (SCT)
State Emergency Management Team (SEMT)
Incident Management Team (IMT)-RCT-SCT
Emergency Services Liaison Officers (ESLOs)
In Australia, managing an incident at a local level is undertaken by the Incident Management Team (IMT). When there are multiple events and/or when there is sufficient complexity there will be regional and state levels of coordination within the organisation jurisdictionally responsible for managing the emergency. The policy framework employed to guide emergency management – the Australasian Inter-service Incident Management System, or AIIMS, based on the US model of NIMS (AFAC, 2005) – is clear on how local incidents are managed although it is currently less clear on the roles and responsibilities of those involved at strategic (regional and state) levels. This lack of clarity of the roles and responsibilities at regional and state levels can lead to situations where there is duplication of roles held in the local IMT teams. At best such duplication is a waste of resources, at worst it can be a serious bureaucratic impediment to effective coordination. An important part of managing an emergency is managing the consequences of that emergency. Such management requires co-operation between different organisations, some of whom may not operate within a command and control mode. It is clear then, that there are different coordination needs within and between teams both within those organisations responsible for the jurisdictional control of the event as well as between those organisations and others. Current models of teamwork (for a comprehensive review see Paris et al., 2000) are not designed to encapsulate such complexity and we argue that revised frameworks of teamwork are needed to accommodate multi-organisational emergency coordination. This is in part because there is a need to examine the emergency management response as a whole (Hamilton and Toh, 2010) and to recognise that frequently, coordination failure is not based solely on problems of within team performance per se, but rather on the fact that the interfaces between teams were not well
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aligned (Dechurch and Zaccaro, 2010). In discussing the complexity of multiple team systems, Dechurch and Zaccaro (2010, p.329), for example, argue that there is a need to expand the focus of analysis from team to system level because in large scale coordination of events such as Hurricane Katrina, ‘the systems did not fail because teams failed; they failed because teams were not externally aligned with one another’.
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Conceptualising multi-team, multi-organisational coordination
To understand the functioning of coordination both within and between teams and between different organisations it is necessary to develop an orienting theory or framework. A review of the literature on teamwork and coordination by Chapman and Bearman (2011) (conducted as part of this research programme) proposed a model of adaptive teamwork by Burke et al. (2006) that is suitable for trying to understand complex teams. Burke et al.’s model approaches team adaption and the emergent nature of adaptive team performance from a multilevel, theoretical standpoint, bringing together insights from cognitive, human factors and industrial-organisational psychology literature. From this perspective, team adaption is defined as ‘a change in team performance in response to a salient cue or cue stream, which leads to a functional outcome for the entire team’ (Burke et al., 2006, p.1190). This can be usefully applied to dynamic, time pressured, safety-critical teams who are required to effectively monitor and act upon dangerous, unstable and unpredictable events. The model describes an input-process-output cycle of phases unfolding over time that constitute the core processes and emergent states underlying adaptive team performance and contributing to team adaptation. The four phases explaining effective and adaptive team functioning are: (a) situation assessment, (b) plan formation, (c) plan execution, and (d) team learning. These are outlined below with the indicators typically used to identify these activities as they occur within teams (the basis of the original model). To expand the framework to one of multi-team multi-organisational coordination, additional indicators will be needed. Table 2 includes the key phases and data collection anchor points identified in the original model and included in the literature review by Chapman and Bearman (2011), together with key anchor points identified through an additional literature review on multi-organisational coordination conducted as part of this research programme by Owen (2011). Table 2
Framework for inter-team inter-organisational coordination
Phase
Situation Assessment
Within teams
Between teams
Anchor points
Information gathering, individuals scan the environment to identify cues
Boundary spanning
Within teams: incident briefings; handovers
Individual and Team Situation Awareness
Distributed Situation Awareness Social networks
Between teams: EMT briefings; situation reports; emergency services liaison officers
Sense-making
Organisational culture
Information flows through texting, emails, data retrieval
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Table 2
Framework for inter-team inter-organisational coordination (continued)
Phase
Plan Formulation
Plan Execution
Team Learning
Within teams
Between teams
Anchor points
Meaning making
Shared beliefs
Regional and state level team membership
Setting goals, clarifying roles, prioritising tasks
Centraliseddecentralised decisionmaking authority
Decision-structures analysis
Psychological safety
Distributed cognition
C2 teleconferences; EMT meetings
Team trust and cohesion
Social networks
Regional and state level team membership
Communication
Relational coordination
Observations of teamwork
Explicit and implicit coordination
Cultural-historical activity theory
Temporal and culturalstructural boundary points
Leadership
Boundary spanning
C2 teleconferences; EMT meetings
Psychological safety
Analysis of organisational tensions and contradictions
Within teams: immediate debriefs
Opportunities for reflection and perspective-taking
Organisational learning (post response)
Between teams: multiagency after action reviews; development of knowledge networks
Cross-checking/ monitoring/backup behaviour
5.1 Situation assessment The initial phase in the model is situation assessment, which concerns the individual and team gathering information based on a scan of cues in the environment. Within teams, individuals scan the environment and use existing experience and knowledge to identify cues that signal a need for change or adaptation. Table 2 shows the key indicators of the activities within teams and the organisational processes in use to share understanding between teams. This includes boundary spanning across teams. The table also includes some key data collection anchor points where activities associated with situation assessment may be identified. Individual situation awareness is shared with the group and a shared mental model of the situation is developed by the group members (team situation awareness). A similar process occurs between teams (who may also be representing different organisations); except that individual and team situation awareness needs to be distributed between the teams and a shared model of the situation must be formed. Teams that have mental models that accurately share important operational concepts are able to coordinate their activities more effectively and make decisions with fewer misunderstandings (Mathieu et al., 2000; Edwards et al., 2006; Kozlowski and Ilgen, 2006).
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However, it is important to point out that some information will be shared and some information will not be shared with other members of the team, so that team members will not have a fully overlapping shared mental model (Cronin and Weingart, 2007). It is also the case that each individual in a team will have their own version of the operational concepts that are shared with other members of the team and it is likely that each individual’s version will not be exactly the same as other members (Salmon et al., 2008). Therefore, while awareness can be compatible across teams at times, different teams will use and view the same information very differently (Salmon et al., 2010). However, within- and between-team shared situation awareness can be disrupted when the teams develop different interpretation of information or information is not appropriately shared (Bearman et al., 2010). One issue that complicates between-team coordination is that critical cues that signal a need for the team to change its situation awareness are likely to be different depending on the team. This is because different teams have different functional purposes and will have different interests in these cues. The implication here is that awareness may be compatible rather than fully shared and that different teams will use and view the same information in different ways. For example, an incident management team will use information about the direction of the fire and its spread to inform how they will operationally manage their suppression activities. An emergency management team will use this information to consider the health-related impacts on members of a nearby community that may need to be advised to take particular precautions. For the purposes of this research programme, examining the boundaries between teams and organisations and the strategies taken to traverse them becomes an important focal point. Between-team coordination can occur in a range of ways including using boundary spanners (work roles) or boundary objects (e.g. technologies) to inform distributed situation awareness. Between-team boundary spanners (such as emergency management liaison officers) play a key role in interpreting and reframing critical cues to create a bridge between the mental models of different teams (Druskat and Wheeler, 2003). Effective intergroup relations may be particularly enhanced by boundary spanners who are able to identify with wider organisational level structures as well as local teams, supporting a dual identity model of between-team coordination (van Knippenberg, 2003; Richter et al., 2006).
5.2 Plan formulation The second phase of Burke et al.’s model is plan formulation. The key indicators of interest are presented in Table 2 and these include the ways in which teams make meaning of the situation and the actions needed: setting goals, clarifying member roles and responsibilities, discussing relevant environmental characteristics and constraints, prioritising tasks, clarifying performance expectations, and sharing information related to task requirements. The importance of planning is that it creates the context of meaning for the information requests made during plan execution. Within teams many of these activities occur dynamically within pre-determined team structures and will be guided by communication. Burke et al. (2006) assert that this process is fed back into the shared mental model structure of the team, facilitating revised shared cognition and promoting flexibility. An additional factor that is important for effective plan formation is the degree of psychological safety that exists within a team. When a team member feels psychologically safe, they feel able to speak up and raise concerns with other team
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members or team leaders (Nembhard and Edmondson, 2006; Lewis et al., 2011). A related construct is team trust. While similar to team trust (which is about trusting other team members), psychological safety is associated more with team communications and enabling members to raise concerns. In relation to between-team and/or betweenorganisational coordination, processes guiding plan formulation for prioritising tasks will have been established in inter-organisational agreements. At issue is the degree to which these organisational processes support centralised or decentralised decisionmaking (upon which plan formulation is contingent) and the usability of processes in place to resolve structural conflicts or address contingencies as the need arises (e.g. decision-structures analysis). The ways in which technologies bridge (or impede) boundaries between teams and organisations is also important in aiding the distributed cognition necessary to support distributed problem formulation. Understanding the constraints and competing demands of others will also be gleaned in a variety of ways, through informal social networks that rely on informal trust and cohesion. A number of researchers have pointed to the importance of emergent networks as a means of overcoming the inertia that frequently occurs when bureaucracies become overloaded in large-scale emergencies (Comfort and Kapucu, 2006). Social network analysis (Chung and Hossain, 2009) can yield important insights about lateral relationships and informal co-operative frameworks that make multi-organisational coordination possible. At issue is why using informal networks become more functional under certain circumstances than existing formalised processes, which can then be used so extensively that they actually undermine the formal coordination system. Developing an understanding of informal social networks and their functionality will be important as we attempt to build more organic and flexible frameworks that integrate the strengths of formal processes and the adaptive capacity of emergent networking.
5.3 Plan execution The third phase of Burke et al.’s model is plan execution. As shown in Table 2, plan execution involves processes that are enacted dynamically and form the basis of team action. At an individual level, members of a team engage in a number of activities (such as mutual performance monitoring, back-up behaviour, communication and leadership) that facilitate effective team coordination in the execution of plans. Within teams, mutual performance monitoring is a cognitive action and teamwork behaviour in which team members observe the actions of others, enabling the perception of cues that indicate that they may need assistance. Performance monitoring is closely related to perceptions of mutual trust, as it allows individuals to give and receive feedback without fear of judgment (Wilson et al., 2007). Back-up behaviour relates to the ability to identify and know when to intervene to help other team members resolve problems due to specific requests, or problems with workload. Communication is a common thread throughout the execution of plans and plays a crucial role in effective monitoring, back-up behaviour and updating shared knowledge structures. Similarly, leadership influences the other activities in this phase of team functioning. Good leaders are valuable for their role in team coordination, decision making, and positive influence over other members of the team.
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Between-team and between-organisation coordination of plan execution is much more complex than within-team coordination of plan execution. Organisational contingency theory (Gittell, 2008; Carmeli and Gittell, 2009) states that when conditions are more unpredictable there will be a need for greater connectivity which will require more explicit coordination strategies between teams. According to Gittell and Weiss (2004) between-team relational coordination occurs when there are structures in place to support cross-functional connecting (boundary spanners); between-team conflict resolution and a culture of openness where cross-team monitoring is encouraged. Relational coordination provides a context in which beliefs can be challenged and alternatives considered. Relational coordination in which trust and a learning culture is encouraged facilitate the development of organisational resilience. Emergency response involves members of agencies whose organisational cultures influence their thoughts and actions. This organisational culture represents the context in which challenging experiences are made sense of using mental models whose nature derives from patterns of interaction with colleagues, senior officers, and organisational procedures over time (Paton et al., 1999; Paton and Violanti, 2007; Weick and Sutcliffe, 2007; Paton et al., 2011). A useful approach to analysing between-team and between-organisational coordination is that of cultural historical activity theory (Engestrom, 1999; Engestrom, 2000). For activity theory, individual actions are embedded within the goals of larger (socially constructed) activity systems. Activity systems then, mediate between the individual and the social context. The principles of activity theory (Blanton et al., 2001) state that human activity: •
is social in origin;
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is mediated through tools;
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involves communication; and
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occurs through a process of objectification
According to activity theory, broader (humanly created) social systems comprised of artefacts, institutional rules and divisions of labour and historically developed communities of practice, mediate between the individual and the social. In many ways, this approach has similarities with other systemic attempts at understanding human factors such as that, for example, proposed by Reason (2008), where influences are distinguished between those that are ‘active’ (i.e. directly occurring at the hands of the actors) and those that are ‘latent’ (e.g. organisational policies such as recruitment or training). Activity theory, however, differs from these approaches in the way that it draws attention to some aspects not featured in other systemic analysis and in the way it draws on systemic tensions and contradictions as driving forces for change. By attempting to draw attention to contradictions and tensions, the emphasis is on identifying points of heterogeneity and multi-voicedness. It also focuses on the historical trajectories of the development of the work. In activity theory, the analysis of context is found within a history of practice and in emerging contradictions that characterise changing social relationships and persons acting within institutions. According to Cole et al. (1997):
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Engestrom characterises an activity system as one that has a coherence between the object-oriented activity for the acting subjects in their use of their tools (which include cognitive resources such as shared mental models) and technologies and their ways of organising (though divisions of labour, rules employed and their community (of interests, practice, or culture). Using the activity system as the unit of analysis enables investigation of the relation between a person’s acting and settings that include structural elements as well as attention to discourses, developed historically through collectively developed practice. By highlighting the historical and contradictory elements within an activity system, the theory enables an analysis of those contradictions to be used to trace disruptions and to point to new opportunities for development. The linkages between these contextual elements and the ways in which they mediate different acting subjects in multi-agency emergency management coordination are depicted in Figure 1. Figure 1
Interactions between acting subjects and mediated through their activity systems Tools:
Tools:
Outcome:
Object 2 Object 2 Object 1
Object 1
Subject
Subject
Object 3 Rules
Community
Division of Labour
Division of Labour
Community
Rules
Source: Adapted from Engestrom (2000)
From this perspective, multi-organisational emergency management coordination is reframed as a problem of interdependent actors operating at the interfaces between their respective activity systems. These work organisations (activity systems) have a particular object, which might be, for example, different forms of fire-fighting agencies (urban, volunteer-based rural fire services), Emergency Medical Services and Police. For example, in Australia, while fire services agencies directly involved in fighting a fire might have an overall shared object of managing and mitigating fire, their approaches and interests will be governed by different priorities influenced by their own (historically developed) activity systems. For example, a public land management agency (e.g. a state or national park authority) will recognise the ecological value of fire in the landscape. It may wish to intervene only if there are cultural assets threatened or if the fire looks like escaping containment outside the park. In contrast, a rural fire service, made up typically of fire-fighting volunteers with farms adjoining that park, might be motivated to cut a
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clearing through the ecological assets in order to secure containment. In addition to possible tensions between these differing communities of practice, there may be tensions between different divisions of labour. For example, some fire agencies comprise personnel who are paid to be on the fire-ground and others comprise volunteers. In some organisations where personnel are paid, they are under different industrial agreements that influence the length of a shift which creates tensions in organising shifts. Different organisations have created different tools and technologies to resolve problems. In terms of executing plans of action these may be difficult to manage if personnel are part of a multi-agency team and located in a centre that uses unfamiliar technology or procedures. Structural tensions such as these create friction and in organisational development terms these contradictions – inherent in all forms of work organisation – must be resolved. The resolution of contradictions then becomes the driving force for organisational change. Contradictions are therefore important because it is through highlighting these differences and the different perspectives that we can identify the opportunities for organisational development, and change through collective learning.
5.4 Team learning The final phase of adaptive team functioning is team learning, which facilitates the development of knowledge and collective understanding, further assisting the ability of the team to predict future situations based on prior experience. It should be noted that learning occurs in exercises and drills that are undertaken in preparedness for response (Perry and Lindell, 2007); however in this context team learning is part of a critically reflective component of team adaptation in response. The capacity for team learning will also be influenced by psychological safety. According to Burke’s model, where psychological safety is low, it is predicted that there will be less likelihood of team learning from coordinated plan execution because the opportunity for quality discussion, feedback and reflection will be reduced (Burke et al., 2006). In terms of between-team and/or between-organisation coordination, learning post response can only occur if it is captured and codified into knowledge networks. Researchers have highlighted the ways in which organisational structures for information acquisition, dissemination, storage and interpretation can help organisations to rapidly learn and adapt to shifting conditions in their environments (Engestrom and Middleton, 1996). To enhance adaptive capacity to deal with complex bushfire events, organisations must learn from past failures and learn to think ‘outside the square’ (Paton, 1994; Paton and Jackson, 2002; Berkes et al., 2003). Not only must the organisation learn to live with risk, it must develop a culture appropriate for a contemporary operating environment within which large scale bushfires are a fact of life and one whose implicit characteristics create novel and challenging management issues. Recognition of the importance of institutional learning thus becomes an important precursor of cultural change. According to Berkes et al. (2003) organisational learning involves, first, ensuring that the memory of prior bushfire events and the lessons learnt (positive or negative) are incorporated into institutional memory and accepted as an enduring fact of emergency organisational life. Second, realistic risk estimates should be derived from comprehensive reviews of potential events and realistic audits of competence (Jackson et al., 2003). These risk estimates must form the basis for future personnel and
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organisational development. Finally, recognition of the risk posed by fire events and the importance of learning from them must be consolidated into a culture that espouses the policies, procedures, practices and attitudes required to facilitate a capacity for adaptive response to an uncertain future (Paton and Jackson, 2002; Berkes et al., 2003). At a broader level, organisations must confront the assumptions derived from a long history of effective response to routine emergencies and question whether large scale bushfires present them with a changed operating reality. Bureaucratic inertia, vested political interests, and centralised power and authority conspire to block organisational learning and change. Organisational learning and change can also be thwarted by managerial expectations regarding operating conditions and outcomes that have become entrenched and insulated from environmental change (Paton and Violanti, 2007). Under these circumstances, emergency organisations may underestimate or overlook threats or initiate inadequate actions, reducing their ability to match their capabilities to a changing bushfire hazardscape.
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Conclusion
The capability to develop shared understanding both within teams and between teams/ organisations cannot be taken for granted. In order to understand regional and state levels of emergency management in large-scale events, it is critically important that we know how to strengthen individual and shared mental models within teams, as well as the processes needed to ensure these mental models appropriately support coordination between teams and organisations. This research has proposed an expanded model of adaptive team coordination that can be used for this purpose. A helpful comment made by one of the reviewers of this paper was to question whether the various concepts discussed (e.g. psychological safety, leadership), play the roles assumed within the various phases or at other times. It will be interesting to further examine these within the empirical analysis to be conducted. At the team level, it is necessary for emergency service personnel to have well defined and appropriately shared mental models to manage emergencies. Without these elements, it is difficult to gain an adequate grasp of the developing situation; to understand what is and what is not critical information; to anticipate own and other’s needs; to decide when to receive and transmit information to others; or ultimately to identify when individual, team or organisational performance is degraded. Given the need to understand the interface between teams in a multi-organisational context, organisational and socio-cultural frameworks provide useful tools to analyse the ways in which systems and organisational processes influence teamwork within particular contexts. These conceptual frameworks provide guidelines for future analysis and theorybuilding. It is critically important that emergency management is underpinned by strong theoretical frameworks to support evidence-based practices of within- and between-team communication and coordination in emergencies. Understanding the within- and between-team communication and coordination challenges will be essential to face the anticipated complexity of large-scale future events.
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Acknowledgement This work was supported by the Australian Bushfire Co-operative Research Centre.
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