Abstract
This paper explores how a social services unit in Sweden coped with the large influx of unaccompanied children during the refugee situation in 2015. Crisis management is approached using social practice theory to examine how everyday work practices and their constituent resources informed personnel's management of the chaotic circumstances. The research data consist of practice-based interviews with managerial staff from social services and operational staff at homes for unaccompanied children, as well as manuals and printed routines. The analysis demonstrates that they coped with the challenges posed by the refugee situation by adopting competences, mobilising meanings, and adapting material resources belonging to different practices of everyday work. The paper concludes by emphasising the importance of studying crisis management from a practice-based perspective as a complement to framing it as a static asset of organisations-governed by institutionalised practices-which has implications for defining what constitutes crisis management and who can become crisis managers.
Highlights
This paper explores crisis management and its relationship to an organization’s everyday work practices as a complement to the formal and top-down concepts of crisis management
The results reveal crucial elements of crisis management that the HVB housing staff took part in during the refugee situation, including the influence of pre-existing practices
Using the analytical lens of social practice theory, this study demonstrates how an organization—with little or no formal competence in crisis management— coped with and managed the chaotic and strained situations posed by the 2015 refugee situation using previous experience and professional skills
Summary
This paper explores crisis management and its relationship to an organization’s everyday work practices as a complement to the formal and top-down concepts of crisis management. Previous research on organizational crisis management typically focus on establishing a formal understanding of crisis management; that is, to develop institutionalized knowledge and best practices applicable to various actors across contexts (Fowler et al, 2007; Kovoor-Misra, 1995; Martínez‐Córcoles, 2018). Such a view presents crisis management as a process governed by rational and structural features, where certain attributes—such as plans, methods, and tools—are used to decide how crisis management should be planned and executed (Heath, 1998; Sapriel, 2003). Organizations exist as an ongoing social accomplishment, based on everyday practices (Orlikowski, 2002)
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