Frontline Crisis Response
Operational Dilemmas in Emergency Services, Armed Forces, and Humanitarian Organizations

Examines the complex dilemmas faced by emergency responders, soldiers, and humanitarians during crisis response operations.

Jori P. Kalkman (Author)

9781009262194, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 12 October 2023

278 pages, 13 tables
23.5 x 15.8 x 2.1 cm, 0.55 kg

'Enlightening and highly topical, Frontline Crisis Response is a welcome and relevant contribution to the emerging body of scholarship about crisis management and response.  It will appeal to postgraduate students and postdoctoral researchers interested in fields including Crisis Management, Disaster Studies and Humanitarian Research. Since Jori P. Kalkman addresses the multiple, complex dilemmas faced by emergency responders, soldiers, and humanitarians during crisis response operations, this book will also be very useful for practitioners and policymakers.' Kees Boersma, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam

Frontline crisis response is challenging. Emergency responders, soldiers, and humanitarian aid workers all operate at the frontlines of threatening, uncertain crisis situations on a daily basis. Under intense pressure, they need to make a range of difficult decisions: to follow preexisting plans or improvise; to abide by top-down instructions or take discretionary actions; to get emotionally involved or keep a rational distance? These dilemmas define their work but, until now, have not been subjected to systematic investigation. This book conducts in-depth studies of eleven such dilemmas by integrating a wide array of research findings on crisis response operations. The comprehensive overview of crisis response research shows how frontline responders deal with these dilemmas amidst the chaos of crises and forms the basis for the formulation of a theory of frontline crisis response. As such, this book will undoubtedly help to understand, evaluate, and advance crisis response operations.

1. Dilemmas in frontline crisis response
2. Leadership: command and control versus decentralization
3. Sensemaking: creating clarity versus embracing uncertainty
4. Acting: planned routines versus spontaneous improvisation
5. Ethics: organizational norms versus individual convictions
6. Emotions: involvement versus detachment
7. Ties: cohesion versus contestation
8. Structures: organizing versus disorganizing
9. Coordination: integration versus fragmentation
10. Civilians: inclusion versus exclusion
11. Technology: early adoption versus skepticism
12. Goals: restoring order versus social transformation
13. Advancing research on frontline crisis response.

Subject Areas: Organizational theory & behaviour [KJU]