The project examines the role of voluntary actors in local emergency management in Norway and Denmark, with a special focus on the collaboration between voluntary organizations and public authorities. The purpose of the project is to provide knowledge about the conditions for efficient public-voluntary emergency management collaboration.
Project Backround
Handling emergency situations often requires resources beyond those available to public authorities. Well-coordinated collaboration with partners in civil society is therefore necessary to mitigate hazards at the local level. The project will generate knowledge on how civil-public emergency collaboration work at the local level in Norway in Denmark and how such collaboration can be organized in ways that ensure good emergency capacity. The literature points to mutual trust as a key ingredient in committing autonomous actors to collaborating towards a common goal, and the project will give special attention to the role of trust and how it is generated, sustained, and developed through various forms of collaboration. The project will also investigate the motivation of the particularly demanding form of volunteer work that emergency management represents.
Project Approach
Research questions will be answered through comparative case studies in local communities in Norway and Denmark as well as through nationwide surveys to volunteers in Norway and to the responsible emergency agencies and public authorities at the local level.
Knowledge generated from the project can be used as input in organizing public-voluntary emergency collaboration and should therefore have relevance to voluntary organizations, local emergency agencies, and decision-makers. Theoretically the project will contribute with increased knowledge of the conditions for efficient interaction and capacity building in collaborative relations and increased insight into the mechanisms that promote trust in collaborative relations.
