A case study of factor influencing role improvisation in crisis response teams

Common characteristics of crisis situations are ambiguous and unplanned for events. The need for improvised roles can therefore be an imperative factor for the success of an operation. The aim of this study is to deepen the understanding of the processes taking place during improvised work “as it happens”. A case study of a crisis management team at work is presented and provides an in-depth analysis of the information and communication flow of persons acting in improvised roles, including contextual factors influencing the task at hand. The analysis suggests that three main factors lay behind decreased performance by the team when some of its members were forced to take on roles for which they lacked professional training; lack of language skills, lack of domain knowledge and insufficient organizational structure of the tasks. Based on the observations from this case study, we suggest three ways of improving a team’s performance and hence resilience when forced to improvise due to lack of personnel in one or more required competence areas. These are training to take on the responsibility for tasks or roles outside ones professional area of specialization, developing formal routines for changes in roles and tasks and developing and using tools and routines for information sharing.     

Improving situation awareness in crisis response teams: An experimental analysis of enriched information and centralized coordination

In responding to an emergency, the actions of emergency response teams critically depend upon the situation awareness the team members have acquired. Situation awareness, and the design of systems to support it, has been a focus in recent emergency management research. In this paper, we introduce two interventions to the core processes of information processing and information sharing in emergency response teams to analyze their effect on the teams’ situation awareness: (1) we enrich raw incoming information by adding a summary of the information received, and (2) we channel all incoming information to a central coordinator who then decides upon further distribution within the team. The effect of both interventions is investigated through a controlled experiment with experienced professional responders. Our results show distinctly different effects for information enrichment and centralization, both for the teams and for the coordinators within the team. While the interaction effects of both conditions cannot be discerned, it is apparent that processing non-enriched information and non-centralized information sharing leads to a worse overall team situation awareness. Our work suggests several implications for the design of emergency response management information systems.     

Resilience is not control: healthcare,crisis management,and ICT

Like other high hazard sectors, successful crisis response relies on a well-founded understanding of the work domain and the manner in which operators perceive and deal with obstacles to achieving goals. That understanding is essential to the development of information and communications technology (ICT) that are intended to support operator performance. While crises are uncommon in other high hazard sectors such as nuclear power generation and aviation, acute and ambulatory healthcare work encounters life-and-death crises daily. This makes healthcare a useful living laboratory to develop ICT in order to manage crises. This paper shows how healthcare organizations that continually deal with complex, uncertain, high-tempo operations can serve as a model to develop ICT that supports crisis management. We illustrate the results of using these methods through an example of cognitive systems engineering research that identifies ambulatory care risks to patients. We then describe multiple methods that can be used together to efficiently study complex, high hazard work settings. We conclude with an example of how it can support the development of a cognitive aid for diabetic care to support work in that setting.     

Perceptions of strategic decision-making by crisis management teams during exercising: Establishing key dimensions

To survive and thrive in a crisis requires crisis management teams (CMTs) to make sound strategic decisions. This paper examines the perceptions of CMTs from a group of nonresponse organisations to identify dimensions of the strategic decision-making process during a crisis management exercise. The paper draws on data collected during a series of exercises with seven Australian government agencies and businesses. Using principal component analysis, this paper outlines four dimensions that are perceived to support strategic decision-making in this context—psychological safety, critical thinking, managing expectations and adaptive capability. Embedding these dimensions within key systems and processes can provide CMTs with the structure they need to effectively respond to a crisis and enhance organisational resilience.     

Technological change and the older employee: implications for introduction and training

How do older employees cope with technological change at their place of work? To answer this question, an exploratory study was conducted in which interviews were held with 34 older employees in the office, 23 supervisors, personnel managers and representatives of workers, and seven computer trainers. The older employees were classified into three groups depending on their dominant form of appraisal of computers: threat/challenge/irrelevant. While participants who experienced computers as a challenge favoured information-seeking activities, older staff members who felt threatened by computers reacted rather passively and often complained about increasing time-pressure and health-related problems. In contrast, members of the group which appraised computers as irrelevant were quite satisfied with their work and consequently reported hardly any coping behaviour. A further analysis showed that organizational factors were closely connected with the dominant form of appraisal. Therefore recommendations are given concerning the introductory phase of technological change and qualificational measures.     

Technological change and the older employee: implications for introduction and training

Abstract

How do older employees cope with technological change at their place of work? To answer this question, an exploratory study was conducted in which interviews were held with 34 older employees in the office, 23 supervisors, personnel managers and representatives of workers, and seven computer trainers. The older employees were classified into three groups depending on their dominant form of appraisal of computers: threat/challenge/irrelevant. While participants who experienced computers as a challenge favoured information-seeking activities, older staff members who felt threatened by computers reacted rather passively and often complained about increasing time-pressure and health-related problems. In contrast, members of the group which appraised computers as irrelevant were quite satisfied with their work and consequently reported hardly any coping behaviour. A further analysis showed that organizational factors were closely connected with the dominant form of appraisal. Therefore recommendations are given concerning the introductory phase of technological change and qualificational measures.     

Our flexible friend: The implications of individual differences for information technology teaching

In this article, we report the observed differential uptake and use of computer programs and activities of seven boys and girls of high, medium and low attainment in a classroom in the UK where over 40 children aged 10 and 11 have a networked PC on their desk all day and every day. We observed the detail of what happened in the small space between the pupil and the screen over the period of 1 year in the social and instructional context of the classroom. We found interesting individual differences superseding the expected variation based on gender and attainment. We suggest some possible ‘within child’ and external factors which may contribute to these differences and consider some of the implications for teaching and learning through ICT and the need for further research to investigate the nature of these differences.     

Individual empowerment of agile and non-agile software developers in small teams

ContextEmpowerment of employees at work has been known to have a positive impact on job motivation and satisfaction. Software development is a field of knowledge work wherein one should also expect to see these effects, and the idea of empowerment has become particularly visible in agile methodologies, in which proponents emphasise team empowerment and individual control of the work activities as a central concern.ObjectiveThis research aims to get a better understanding of how empowerment is enabled in software development teams, both agile and non-agile, to identify differences in empowering practices and levels of individual empowerment.MethodTwenty-five interviews with agile and non-agile developers from Norway and Canada on decision making and empowerment are analysed. The analysis is conducted using a conceptual model with categories for involvement, structural empowerment and psychological empowerment.ResultsBoth kinds of development organisations are highly empowered and they are similar in most aspects relating to empowerment. However, there is a distinction in the sense that agile developers have more possibilities to select work tasks and influence the priorities in a development project due to team empowerment. Agile developers seem to put a higher emphasis on the value of information in decision making, and have more prescribed activities to enable low-cost information flow. More power is obtained through the achievement of managing roles for the non-agile developers who show interest and are rich in initiatives.ConclusionAgile developers have a higher sense of being able to impact the organisation than non-agile developers and have information channels that is significantly differently from non-agile developers. For non-agile teams, higher empowerment can be obtained by systematically applying low-cost participative decision making practices in the manager–developer relation and among peer developers. For agile teams, it is essential to more rigorously follow the empowering practices already established.     

The crisis of control: A progressive approach towards information systems integration for small companies

When small companies grow, they face a range of strategic managerial challenges. Stage models for small company growth predict that a crisis of control can occur when existing information systems for communication and control are no longer able to cope with increased throughput, nor are they able to respond flexibly to opportunities and challenges in the business environment. In response, owner-managers (OMs) may seek technological enterprise-wide solutions, in a drive towards integrated information systems (IIS). This paper reports a case study in which the Viable Systems Model (VSM) was used during an integration project in a small manufacturing company. In this case, the solution was found in organisational learning, rather than technology. It is argued that such a phase may be an essential step to the adoption of ERP/MRP at a later date for small growing companies.     

The design of a flexible machining cell for small batch production

This paper discusses the conceptual design of a manufacturing cell for a small batch manufacturer. The cell produces small parts with dimensional tolerances of $\text{±0.005}$ inch (0.13 mm) using a minimum of machining equipment. The proposed cell can run unattended for a moderate period of time (e.g., overnight). The cell design emphasizes near-term technology and uses off-the-shelf items where possible. The design philosophy is to partition the cell components and control programs into modules according to their function. The resulting cell is easily integrated into a larger system and is readily modified or expanded as more sophisticated equipment and techniques become available.     

Neural-network design for small training sets of high dimension

We introduce a statistically based methodology for the design of neural networks when the dimension d of the network input is comparable to the size n of the training set. If one proceeds straightforwardly, then one is committed to a network of complexity exceeding n. The result will be good performance on the training set but poor generalization performance when the network is presented with new data. To avoid this we need to select carefully the network architecture, including control over the input variables. Our approach to selecting a network architecture first selects a subset of input variables (features) using the nonparametric statistical process of difference-based variance estimation and then selects a simple network architecture using projection pursuit regression (PPR) ideas combined with the statistical idea of slicing inverse regression (SIR). The resulting network, which is then retrained without regard to the PPR/SIR determined parameters, is one of moderate complexity (number of parameters significantly less than n) whose performance on the training set can be expected to generalize well. The application of this methodology is illustrated in detail in the context of short-term forecasting of the demand for electric power from an electric utility.     

Nonsingular dislocation and crack fields: implications to small volumes

The simplest, yet robust, gradient elasticity theory (GRADELA) as first introduced by the last author is used to deduce nonsingular expressions for the stress and strain fields near dislocation lines and crack tips. These expressions are particularly useful for small volumes where the details of the deformation field need to be known for interpreting related experimental observations. Various implications are discussed in relation to the determination of the size of dislocation cores, the size of maximum stress or maximum strain in crack tips, and the interpretation of X-ray line profile measurements in determining internal stresses. An erratum to this article can be found at     

Social media mapping innovations for crisis prevention,response, and evaluation

Social media has had a noticeable influence on the practice of crisis communication. Crisis managers are becoming increasingly attracted to social media because of the ability to expand the communication options available to organizations and their publics during a crisis. Previous researchers have identified a variety of benefits and challenges presented by the use of social media for crisis communication. Two new social media mapping applications, SituMap and PhotoSorter, were recently developed to cultivate participation, collaboration, and conversation specifically for crisis communication. The purpose of the present investigation is to explore the features of these applications and discuss the potential benefits of these features for crisis managers in each stage of the crisis lifecycle.     

Temporal aspects in crisis management and its implications on interface design for situation awareness

Temporality should be considered in the design of information technology support for crisis management (CM), both because crises are dynamic events and because time is a part of situation awareness (SA). This study has used group interviews to explore how different temporal aspects of CM can be considered in CM design and how they can influence crisis managers SA. A prototype and a scenario were used as mediating materials. The result consists of two parts. The first part is comprised of the participants?? reflections on how timelines can be used to display information in CM information systems. According to the participants, timelines should present: deadlines, information sent to the public, incoming and outgoing information, an overview of where the current activities belong in the CM process and what has been going on since the last shift during shift changes. Timelines should not only display the listed information, but also provide functionality for adjusting the timescale so that information can be presented in alternative temporal perspectives. The second part of the result contains several obstacles that might influence the crisis managers?? ability to obtain SA. Obstacles elicited from the group discussions are: information overflow, fast changes of SA due to incoming information, difficulties to share SA with actors outside the CM centre, forgetting things that need attention and that SA depends on the quality of incoming information. The two parts of the result have been compiled into six design principles for how temporality can be considered in CM systems in order to support SA.     

Computer-based collaborative training for transportation security and emergency response

This paper highlights the implementation of a computer-based, collaborative training prototype for emergency response in a Department of Transportation and its ability to improve organizational communication, resources and methods utilization, and best actions to follow in order to mitigate emergencies. The prototype is validated by means of several mock drills implemented in a state Department of Transportation in the United States. The drill results indicate that the computer-based, collaborative training tool developed is an economical and powerful training tool to enhance employees capabilities and preparedness to respond to emergencies.     

Development of haptic devices using flexible sheets for virtual training of abdominal palpation

A haptic device using flexible sheets for virtual training of abdominal palpation is proposed, mainly focusing on light and deep palpation. This device forms a semicylinder using two boards with rounded corners and two layered flexible sheets made of rubber. The device imitates the form of an abdomen. A trainee doctor touches and pushes everywhere of the upper sheet directly with his/her fingers and palm or single hand and both hands, regarding it as a virtual abdomen. Pulling the lower sheet lengthwise varies the softness of the sheet: the stretched sheet feels hard and the loose sheet feels soft. The trainee doctor can feel different softness of abdomens by pushing the device. Pulling the upper sheet in waistline direction depresses the centre of the device between the boards like a saddle. Stretching and loosening the upper sheet simulates up-and-down movement of an abdomen due to breathing. As a result, the trainee doctor can experience virtual abdominal palpation in the similar way as real palpation. The softness and depression at the centre of the device are measured for different tensions of the upper and lower sheets, and are compared with the measured softness and up-and-down movement due to breathing of real abdomens. A skilled physician evaluates that the device can present different softness in the range of softness of real abdomens and that the up-and-down movement of the device resembles that of real abdomens due to breathing. The empirical and sensory criterion of the physician is ascertained quantitatively using the device: he pushes abdomens until he feels the same reaction force, regardless of their softness.