Citation

Eriksson P, Hallberg N. Safety Sci. 2022; 151: e105735.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2022, Elsevier Publishing)

DOI

10.1016/j.ssci.2022.105735

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

In a world of ever-changing threats and vulnerabilities, the actors involved in crisis management need to learn continuously in order to adapt and transform their capabilities, also in-between crisis. The crisis management actors can be regarded as a heterogeneous system-of-systems, where each sub-system, i.e., actor, has its specific role, culture, and procedures but where there exists little of any common theory-in-use. Achieving a conscious and coordinated change in such a system-of-systems represents a considerable challenge. This challenge is further underlined by the duality of the crisis management system, being a planning system in-between crises and a response system during crises. In this article, the theories of organisational learning are combined with general systems theory to develop a model for how systems learn in order to adapt and transform. Equating the system configuration with the concept of theory-in-use allows for a discussion on single-loop and double-loop learning as changes in single system elements and their relationships, and in the overall system configuration, respectively. This model is used to enhance the understanding of the dynamics of learning and change in crisis management systems. Further, the concept efficacy is proposed as the measurement of performance when assessing the crisis management system and its sub-systems.

Language: en

Keywords

Crisis management system; General systems theory; Organisational learning; System-of-systems