Radburn Matthew, Stott Clifford, Bryant Rebecca, Morgan Bethan, Tallent Deborah, Davidson Louise
School of Psychology Keele University Keele Staffordshire UK.
Staffordshire Fire and Rescue Service Stone Staffordshire UK.
J Conting Crisis Manag. 2022 Jul 7. doi: 10.1111/1468-5973.12424.
Our case study explored a Local Resilience Forum's (LRF) civil contingency response to COVID-19 in the United Kingdom. We undertook 19 semistructured ethnographic longitudinal interviews, between March 25, 2020 and February 17, 2021, with a Director of a Civil Contingencies Unit and a Chief Fire Officer who both played key roles within their LRF. Within these interviews, we focused on their strategic level decision-making and how their relationship with national government impacted on local processes and outcomes. Using a form of grounded theory, our data describe the chronological evolution of an increasingly effective localized approach toward outbreak control and a growing resilience in dealing with concurrent emergency incidents. However, we also highlight how national government organizations imposed central control on aspects of the response in ways that undermined or misaligned with local preparedness. Thus, during emergencies, central governments can undermine the principle of subsidiarity and damage the ways in which LRFs can help scaffold local resilience. Our work contributes to the theoretical understanding of the social psychological factors that can shape the behaviour of responder agencies during a prolonged crisis. In particular, the implications of our analysis for advancing our conceptual understanding of strategic decision-making during emergencies are discussed.
我们的案例研究探讨了英国一个地方复原力论坛（LRF）对新冠疫情的民事应急响应。在2020年3月25日至2021年2月17日期间，我们对一个民事应急部门的主管和一位消防总长进行了19次半结构化的人种志纵向访谈，他们二人在各自的地方复原力论坛中都发挥了关键作用。在这些访谈中，我们重点关注他们的战略层面决策，以及他们与国家政府的关系如何影响地方进程和结果。运用一种扎根理论的形式，我们的数据描述了一种针对疫情控制的日益有效的本地化方法的时间演变，以及在应对并发紧急事件时不断增强的复原力。然而，我们也强调了国家政府组织如何以破坏或不符合地方准备工作的方式，对响应的各个方面实施中央控制。因此，在紧急情况下，中央政府可能会破坏辅助性原则，并损害地方复原力论坛助力构建地方复原力的方式。我们的研究有助于从理论上理解在长期危机中可能影响响应机构行为的社会心理因素。特别是，我们讨论了分析结果对推进我们在紧急情况下对战略决策的概念理解的启示。
