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The aim of this study is to examine how personnel from three different organizations create meaning and intend to act in a potentially dangerous situation. The article reports an experiment depicting a bomb at an elderly care center and the participants were to describe the situation and decide how to act. The participants were personnel from the police, rescue services and an elderly care centre. The findings show that participants had different types of understanding of the situation and how to act. The personnel at the elderly care centre were confused by the situation but they were familiar with their work routines. The emergency organizations were familiar with the situation and the task, but not with the work routines.

This thesis is about the conflict between participation and bureaucracy. This conflict is illustrated by a case study within the Swedish Armed Forces under the activity that preceded the 1996 Resolution on Defence. More closely it focuses on the decision-making process that led to the Swedish Armed Forces report that were handed over to the Government in March 1996. In this decision-making process the Supreme Commander tried different ways to create participation among all the high- ranking officers, from local up to Headquarters level, to make them participate in the process. The thesis answers the question if it is possible to create participation in a bureau­cratic organisation such as the Swedish Armed Forces, and the conclusion that I draw is that participation is hard to establish. First there is a conflict within the bureaucratic form itself, since a bureaucracy implies a diversification of assignments and responsibilities in different functions and at different levels in a hierarchy. Every level has its own task to fulfil and this states how reality is to be understood. In the Swedish Armed Forces the bureaucratic structure is reinforced by the fact that the officer is promoted to a higher rank after his or her military training. Both the bureaucratic structure and the military training will lead to a differentiation between individuals, and they will be placed in different skills and status levels within the organisation. Besides this, individuals will gather information mostly from their own level, which will further fortify the difference between the levels. Furthermore there are also individual factors connected to the bureaucratic structure that have shown to complicate participation. For example individuals choose not to participate since they experience that they lack necessary competens for the task, that they do not have time, that they have not been consulted or that they consider the task to be solved at a higher level. So even if the military decision-making model encourages and advocates partici­pation, there is a big difficulty to break the bureaucratic design. Leaders often show inability to go from a bureaucratic leadership style to a democratic one. At the same time the subordinate support their leaders when they act as a traditional leader. ; digitalisering@umu

The aim of this study was to examine the practices of crisis management adopted by operative staff when facing a crisis situation in their workplace. This research is based on interviews with personnel from social services and staff from homes for unaccompanied youth. The interviewees asked respondents about their actions in caring for young refugees during the refugee situation. The results are structured around three themes: everyday practices, crisis work, and the process of normalization. Three practices for handling the situation—improvisation, prioritization, and creating alternatives—served as crisis management‐as‐practice. The staff members' everyday practice for solving problems became the basic method employed during the crisis to normalize everyday work.

The aim of this study is to examine the reserve force's role in and contribution to the new Swedish expeditionary armed forces. Survey data were obtained from 418 reservists. The results show that reserve officers are well educated and hold high positions in the civil society. According to the reserve officers themselves, the Armed Forces do not ask for their nonmilitary competence. The discontent with this situation is greater among the younger reservists as opposed to the older ones. Four different opinions on the need for the reserve officers are suggested. First, reserve officers are requested to fill vacancies, that is, a volume regulator. Second, the reserve officers are needed because they have unique competences other than military that are used by the armed forces. Third, reserve officers are needed from an economic point of view. Finally, reserve officers contribute to the civil-military relationship. However, when using a framework intended for regular officers, the contribution of the reserve officers' civil professional competence has not been recognized. [Reprinted by permission; copyright Inter-University Seminar on Armed Forces and Society/Sage Publications Inc.]

The aim of this study is to examine the reserve force's role in and contribution to the new Swedish expeditionary armed forces. Survey data were obtained from 418 reservists. The results show that reserve officers are well educated and hold high positions in the civil society. According to the reserve officers themselves, the Armed Forces do not ask for their nonmilitary competence. The discontent with this situation is greater among the younger reservists as opposed to the older ones. Four different opinions on the need for the reserve officers are suggested. First, reserve officers are requested to fill vacancies, that is, a volume regulator. Second, the reserve officers are needed because they have unique competences other than military that are used by the armed forces. Third, reserve officers are needed from an economic point of view. Finally, reserve officers contribute to the civil–military relationship. However, when using a framework intended for regular officers, the contribution of the reserve officers' civil professional competence has not been recognized.

This article illustrates the role of sociology at the Swedish military academies. Finding a suitable balance between theoretical and practical education seems to have been a major thread in Swedish officer education from the eighteenth century to the present day. The emphasis has been on education that is closely linked to military war positions, with extensive elements of combat planning and carrying out military operations. But as tasks have changed, areas such as leadership and organizations have become more important, and the positions of sociological theories and perspective have gradually increased. The belief put forward here is that the demand for sociology will increase for two reasons: the current struggle to make Swedish officer education more university-like and, more important, the need for sociological knowledge that will grow the more the Defense Forces will be engaged in the international arena.

This study examines the handling of a school fire in a rural Swedish community and the role of the normalized narratives of leaders in crisis management. The article claims that leader normativity legitimizes certain positions and actions in a crisis management narrative and marginalizes others. The study uses theories on gender, boundary work and space to illuminate this claim. To explore such processes in narratives, we use feminist theory and critical management studies. The study shows that leader normativity creates gendered differences that result in both inequalities and the marginalization of any parts of crisis management that do not apply to leader normativity. The study shows that there is a strong norm of crisis management as an individualistic perspective that focuses on heroes and higher‐level management as the people managing a crisis. Support for describing crisis management as a collective achievement and caring perspectives become marginalized.

Sociologisk Forskning bad fyra sociologer i Sverige att svara på några korta frågor om coronapandemin och vårt samhälles hantering av den.
Deras tidigare forskning har på olika sätt berört olika frågor såsom socialmedicin och medicinsk kunskapsproduktion, sociala nätverks betydelse för smittspridning, samhällets hantering av kriser och risker, genusaspekter av samhällskriser samt dynamiken mellan expertis, politiker och medborgare i beslutsfattande och debatter kring frågor där expertkunskap är centralt.
De fyra medverkande forskarna är Erna Danielsson, docent i sociologi vid Mittuniversitetet och föreståndare för Risk and Crisis Research Centre (RCR), som forskar om samhällets krishantering vid såväl vardagskriser som större händelser och specifikt genus och krishantering; Fredrik Liljeros, professor i sociologi vid Stockholms universitet, som genomförde sitt postdoktorprojekt på dåvarande Smittskyddsinstitutet tillsammans med nuvarande statsepidemiologen Anders Tegnell och i dag bedriver forskning om hur människors kontaktnätverk påverkar spridningsdynamik; Shai Mulinari, docent i sociologi vid Lunds universitet, som bedriver forskning om medicinsk kunskapsproduktion, läkemedelsindustrin, epidemiologi och folkhälsa; samt Linda Soneryd, professor i sociologi vid Göteborgs universitet, som forskat om miljörelaterade risker och kriser samt om hur demokrati och deltagande förstås i anslutning till expertfrågor.