Extreme Events Decision Making in Transport Networks: A Holistic Approach Using Emergency Scenarios and Decision Making Theory

This paper proposes a novel method to analyse decision-making during extreme events. The method is based on Decision-making Theory and aims at understanding how emergency managers make decisions during disasters. A data collection framework and an analysis method were conceptualized to capture participant’s behaviour, perception and understanding throughout a game-board simulation exercise, which emulates an earthquake disaster scenario affecting transport systems. The method evaluates the participant’s actions in order to identify decision-making patterns, strengths and weaknesses. A set of case studies has shown two typical patterns, namely: a) Support immediate rescue; b) Support lifelines recovery. Good decision-making practices regard to objective-oriented decision making, understanding of conflicting priorities and appropriate resource management. Weaknesses are associated with comprehending relationships between community/environment and projecting future scenarios. Overall, the case study’s results demonstrate the efficiency and robustness of the proposed method to analyse decision making during disasters

What Support Does Information and Communication Technology (ICT) Offer to Organizational Improvisation During Crisis Response ?

While evidence of the exceedingly important role of technology in organizational life is commonplace, academics have not fully captured the influence of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) on crisis response. A substantive body of knowledge on technology and crisis response already exists and keeps developing. Extensive research is on track to highlight how technology helps to prepare to crisis response and develop service recovery plans. However, some aspects of crisis response remain unknown. Among all the facets of crisis response that have been under investigation for some years, improvisation still challenges academics as a core component of crisis response. In spite of numerous insights on improvisation as a cognitive process and an organizational phenomenon, the question of how improvisers do interact together while improvising remains partly unanswered. As a result, literature falls short of details on whether crisis responders can rely on technology to interact when they have to improvise collectively. This dissertation therefore brings into focus ICT support to organizational improvisation in crisis response in two steps: We first address this question from a general standpoint by reviewing literature. We then propose an in depth and contextualized analysis of the use of a restricted set of technologies – emails, faxes, the Internet, phones - during the organizational crisis provoked by the 2003 French heat wave. Our findings offer a nuanced view of ICT support to organizational improvisation in crisis response. Our theoretical investigation suggests that ICTs, in a large sense, allow crisis responders to improvise collectively. It reports ICT properties - graphical representation, modularity, calculation, many-to-many communication, data centralization and virtuality – that promote the settling of appropriate conditions for interaction during organizational improvisation in crisis response. In the empirical work, we provide a more integrative picture of ICT support to organizational improvisation in crisis response by retrospectively observing crisis responders’ interactions during the 2003 French heat wave. Our empirical findings suggest that improvisation enables crisis responders to cope with organizational emptiness that burdens crisis response. However, crisis responders’ participation in organizational improvisation depends on their communicative genres. During the 2003 French heat wave crisis, administrative actors who had developed what we call a “dispassionate” communicative genre in relation to their email use, barely participated in organizational improvisation. Conversely, improvisers mainly communicated in what we call a “fervent” communicative genre. Therefore, our findings reveal that the ICT support to organizational improvisation in crisis response is mediated by the communication practices and strategies that groups of crisis responders develop around ICT tools

Dynamic reference point method with probabilistic linguistic information based on the regret theory for public health emergency decision-making

Group emergency decision-making is an uncertain and dynamic process, in which the decision makers may be bounded rational and have a risk appetite. To depict the vague qualitative assessments, the probabilistic linguistic term sets are employed to express the perceptions of decision makers. First, considering the regret-aversion of the decision makers’ psychological characteristic, the value function and the regret-rejoice function in the regret theory are modified to adapt the probabilistic linguistic information. Second, the definition and aggregation operators of the probabilistic linguistic time variable are proposed to describe and aggregate the dynamic decision information. Third, the probabilistic linguistic models based on the dynamic reference point method and the regret theory are studied to maximise the expectation-levels of alternatives at the relative time point. The proposed method is applied to select the optimal response strategy for the outbreak of COVID-19 in China. Finally, the comparative analysis is designed to verify the applicability and reasonability of the proposed method

Quel apport des technologies de l’information et de la communication (tic) a l’improvisation organisationnelle durant la réponse à la crise ?.

Notre travail doctoral, structuré autour de deux études théoriques et d’une étude empirique, explore l’apport des Technologies de l’Information et de la Communication (TIC) à l’improvisation organisationnelle lors de la réponse à la crise. La première étude confirme la diversité de la littérature sur l’improvisation et révèle que les auteurs adoptent des postures différentes à quatre étapes du processus de recherche. La deuxième étude propose cinq mécanismes organisationnels fondamentaux au développement de l’improvisation organisationnelle. A partir de cette proposition, nous identifions six propriétés des TIC qui soutiennent l’improvisation de crise. Enfin, notre étude rétrospective qualitative du cas de la réponse à la crise provoquée par la canicule de 2003 en Île-de-France montre que le développement de l’improvisation, réponse au vide organisationnel qui pèse sur la réponse à la crise, dépend non seulement des propriétés des TIC mais également des genres de communication développés par les acteurs autour des moyens de communication. Durant la canicule, le genre fervent a facilité l’improvisation parmi les opérationnels. Au contraire, le genre dépassionné, prédominant dans les échanges électroniques, a freiné la participation des acteurs administratifs à l’improvisation. Certains d’entre eux sont tout de même parvenus à participer à l’improvisation en adaptant le genre dépassionné lors de leur utilisation du fax. Si les TIC facilitent certaines interactions, la faculté des acteurs à improviser dépend également de leur capacité à adapter leurs genres de communication.We explore Information and Communication Technology (ICT) support to organizational improvisation during crisis response by completing three studies. The first study confirms diversity in research on improvisation and suggests that author’s perspectives on improvisation diverge with respect to four tasks within the research process. The second study identifies five constituents of organizational improvisation. In addition, it reports six ICT properties that promote the settling of appropriate conditions for interaction during organizational improvisation in crisis response. In the empirical work, we provide a more integrative picture of ICT support to organizational improvisation in crisis response by retrospectively observing crisis responders’ interactions during the 2003 French heat wave. Our empirical findings suggest that improvisation enables crisis responders to cope with organizational emptiness that burdens crisis response. However, crisis responders’ participation in organizational improvisation depends on their communicative genres. During the 2003 French heat wave crisis, administrative actors who had developed what we call a dispassionate communicative genre in relation to their email use, barely participated in organizational improvisation. Conversely, improvisers mainly communicated in what we call a fervent communicative genre. Therefore, our findings reveal that the ICT support to organizational improvisation in crisis response is mediated by the communication practices and strategies that groups of crisis responders develop around ICT tools.Ile-de-France; Gestion de l'information; Vagues de chaleur; Comportement organisationnel; Nouvelles technologies de l'information et de la communication;

Resilience Capacity and Strategic Agility: Prerequisites for Thriving in a Dynamic Environment

organizational resilience, strategic agility, competitive dynamics

Time out : organizational training for improvisation in lifesaving critial teams

textExemplified by fire crews, SWAT teams, and emergency surgical units, critical teams are a subset of action teams whose work is marked by finality, pressure, and potentially fatal outcomes (Ishak & Ballard, 2012). Using communicative and temporal lenses, this study investigates how organizations prime and prepare their embedded critical teams to deal with improvisation. This study explicates how organizations both encourage and discourage improvisation for their embedded critical teams. Throughout the training process, organizations implement a structured yet flexible “roadmap”-type approach to critical team work, an approach that is encapsulated through three training goals. The first goal is to make events routine to members. The second goal is to help members deal with non-routine events. The third goal is to help members understand how to differentiate between what is routine and non-routine. The grounded theory analysis in this study also surfaced three tools that are used within the parameters of the roadmap approach: experience, communicative decision making, and sensemaking. Using Dewey’s (1939, 1958) theory of experience, I introduce a middle-range adapted theory of critical team experience. In this theory, experience and sensemaking are synthesized through communicative decision making to produce decisions, actions, and outcomes in time-limited, specialized, stressful environments. Critical teams have unique temporal patterns that must be considered in any study of their work. Partially based on the nested phase model (Ishak & Ballard, 2012), I also identify three phases of critical team process as critical-interactive, meaning that they are specific to action/critical teams, and they are engaged in by critical teams for the expressed purpose of interaction. These phases are simulation, adaptation, and debriefing. These tools and phases are then placed in the Critical-Action-Response Training Outcomes Grid (CARTOG) to create nine interactions that are useful in implementing a structured yet flexible approach to improvisation in the work of critical teams. Data collection consisted of field observations, semi-structured interviews, and impromptu interviews at work sites. In total, I engaged in 55 hours of field observations at 10 sites. I conducted 31 semi-structured interviews with members of wildland and urban fire crews; emergency medical teams; and tactical teams, including SWAT teams and a bomb squad. I also offer practical implications and future directions for research on the temporal and communicative aspects of critical teams, their parent organizations, and considerations of improvisation in their work.Communication Studie

Problems, problem-solving and problem-solving networks - a theoretical foundation for FIRE21

This document is created within the research project Nordic Fire and Rescue Services in the Twenty First Century (FIRE21). In this project, the fire and rescue services are seen as both governed by, and dependent on, formal and informal networks. A fundamental assumption in the research project is that efficient emergency management is dependent on efficient problem-solving in these networks. As a consequence, the formal and informal networks are here seen as potential problem-solving networks (PSN) that can facilitate efficient problem-solving for the fire and rescue services, and thereby contribute to better handling of emergencies and disasters.Solving problems is as obvious as it is challenging during an emergency or disaster. Some of the problems are easy to understand and solve, others are more difficult or cannot even be understood or solved. Some problems occur immediately, while others appear along the way. As a theoretical concept, problem-solving is part of many fields and studied in many different ways. It has played, and still plays, an important role in various fields like mathematics, psychology and computer science. Theories and ideas that develop in such diverse fields are not always in sync and quite often in conflict with each other. The purpose of this document is however not to present a comprehensive review on problem-solving research, but rather to describe literature and ideas concerning problems, problem-solving and problem-solving networks that can be relevant to FIRE21. It also serves to contribute to a common understanding of these concepts for FIRE21 project members, an understanding that can be used in common deliverables in the project

The Metaphysics of Improvisation

In The Metaphysics of Improvisation, I criticize wrongheaded metaphysical views of, and theories about, improvisation, and put forward a cogent metaphysical theory of improvisation, which includes action theory, an analysis of the relevant genetic and aesthetic properties, and ontology (work-hood). The dissertation has two Parts. Part I is a survey of the history of many improvisational practices, and of the concept of improvisation. Here I delineate, sketch, and sort out the often vague boundaries between improvising and non-improvising within many art forms and genres, including music, dance, theatre, motion pictures, painting, and literature. In addition, I discuss the concept of non-artistic improvisation in various contexts. I attempt to portray an accurate picture of how improvisation functions, or does not function, in various art forms and genres. Part II addresses metaphysical issues in, and problems and questions of, improvisation in the arts. I argue that that continuum and genus-species models are the most cogent ways to understand the action-types of improvising and composing and their relations. I demonstrate that these models are substantiated by an informed investigation and phenomenology of improvisational practice, action theory conceptual analysis, cognitive neuroscience studies and experiments, cognitive psychology studies and models, and some theories of creativity. In addition, I provide a constraint based taxonomy for classifying improvisations that is compatible with, and supports, the continuum model. Next, I address epistemological and ontological issues involving the genetic properties of improvisations, and the properties improvisatory, and as if improvised. Finally, I show that arguments against treating, or classifying, improvisations as works are weak or erroneous, and by focusing on music, I provide a correct ontological theory of work-hood for artistic improvisations

Crisis, learning and policy change in the European Union

This is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from the publisher via the DOI in this record.What is the causal relationship between crisis, learning and change? How does causality works in the current responses to the sovereign debt crisis provided by the European Union? We question the conventional identification of the cause-and-effect relationship provided by theories of crisis management, integration and policy learning. Drawing on models of contingent learning developed within psychology and behavioural and evolutionary economics, we theorise that surprise produces behavioural change via a fast-paced associative cue-outcome mechanism and that policy learning follows change. We then run our exercise in causal identification through a plausibility probe. We show that our argument passes the plausibility probe. Our conclusions on cognition and situational effects on learning suggest a new research agenda, more sensitive to how individuals behave in the real world and more robust in its micro-foundations

Opportunistic decision-making in government: concept formation, variety and explanation

The notion of opportunism is too often used loosely in policy and administrative research on executive decision-making: its various meanings are too rarely clearly distinguished. To make it useful for explanation, this article presents fresh concept formation work, clarifying the concept to recognize different kinds and degrees of opportunism. To illustrate the use of the refined concept, the article examines key decisions by British cabinets and core executives between 1945 and 1990. It proposes that neo-Durkheimian institutional theory can help to explain why different kinds of opportunism are cultivated in differently ordered administrations, so providing new insight into decision-making.This work was supported by the Leverhulme Trust (grant number: F01374I