P32 Emergency Services in the Polycrisis

Panel Chairs

Corresponding Chair & Review Group Chair

• Professor Paresh Wankhade, Edge Hill University Business School, UK. Paresh.Wankhade@edgehill.ac.uk

Co-Chairs

• Professor Peter Murphy, Nottingham Trent University Business School, UK.
• Dr Lucia Velotti, John Jay College of Criminal Justice, NY, USA.
• Professor Petter Almklov, Norwegian University of Science and Technology.

Description of the panel topic

Introduce proposed topic, foreshadowing relevant theoretical framework(s) and acceptable methods.

The emergency services panel has been running successfully since the 2017 IRSPM Conference.

Emergency services, along with public institutions such as local resilience forums, and public health bodies are most directly responsible for providing safety and security to life and property. We post them as public administration systems that routinely have to coordinate response with available infrastructure, resources and democratic accountability, amidst significant organisational and wellbeing challenges (Malik et al., 2025; Brunetto et al., 2023; Wankhade et al., 2020,2018; Granter et al., 2019).

Emergency responders increasingly face overlapping and a wide range of challenges, many of which are intensified by global factors such as geopolitical instability, increased urbanisation, climate-related disasters, pandemics, cyber incidents, and public disorder. (Agger and Tortzen, 2023; Ansell et al., 2023). The panel is particularly keen to explore how emergency organisations prepare for, respond to and recover from complex crises, and how they balance command-and-control structures with collaboration, innovation and community engagement to address ‘wicked’ problems (McMullin, 2025; Seo et al., 2023). The panel is also interested to examine how resilience is produced across multiple levels: namely institutional (e.g. inter-agency coordination); organisational (e.g. leadership and culture); and individual (e.g. adaptation and job crafting).

The need for coordinated preparation and response to new forms of incidents and larger crises (such as the recent climate related forest fires) may lead to new collaboration and coordination challenges, both within and between sectors. This poses new questions regarding the balancing between flexibility and standardization within the services, and between centralization and embeddedness of services. Moreover, the geopolitical situation not only leads to new types of incidents (such as potential hybrid attacks), but may also influence information sharing and collaborative practices.

The panel will be a combination of standard academic paper, presentations, and practitioner submissions. Submissions on the following questions will be welcome (in addition to submissions on other themes) including:

• How are emergency services adapting to compound, cascading and long-duration crises?
• What tools and strategies are required for building mental health and psychological resilience?
• Individual and collective health and wellbeing, team counselling and support?
• How do emergency services coordinate across agencies, sectors and levels of government?
• How/whether frontline emergency workers craft their jobs in response to uncertainty, overload and crisis?
• How do emergency services maintain legitimacy, accountability and public trust during crisis response?
• Relationship between formal and informal organizing, particularly the role of social networks within and across the involved organizations?
• What comparative studies of emergency services can tell us about public administration in the search for safety and security?

Emerald and the International Journal of Emergency Services will sponsor the best paper award and explore the possibility of a Special Issue, similar to one published from papers presented at the 2018 panel:

https://www.emerald.com/insight/publication/issn/2047-0894/vol/9/iss/1

Theoretical framework & methods

Notwithstanding the global provision of emergency services, conceptual and methodological understanding of its working, organisations and workforce is still evolving (Wankhade and Murphy, 2023). The exact choice would depend on the specific research question(s), objectives, and available resources but several methodological choices are available. Job Demands-Resources (JD-R) Model is helpful to explain stress, burnout, and motivation in high-pressure roles to unpack job demands (e.g., trauma, workload) that leads to burnout unless balanced by job resources (e.g., support, autonomy). Job crafting gives it a distinctive micro-level contribution. The Conservation of Resources (COR) Theory can highlight why sustained exposure to crisis depletes wellbeing and affects specific groups (e.g. gender) since people strive to obtain and protect resources (emotional, physical, social), and stress arises when these are threatened or lost.

Qualitative methods can for instance provide in-depth insights into the lived experiences, perspectives, and challenges faced by emergency service staff and stakeholders. Quantitative research methods can be employed to identify patterns, correlations, and generalisable trends systems. Longitudinal studies can help reveals long-term impacts and causal relationships.

Relevance to the conference theme

What is the relevance of the panel to public management scholarship and/or the conference theme

The relationship between organisational performance, service delivery, workforce wellbeing and resilience within emergency services is complex and deeply interconnected. This panel relates directly to public management scholarship by addressing how to manage people, institutions, and systems for sustainable, effective service delivery in organisations trusted to protect lives and safeguard citizens and assets. It is thus important to ensure that the wellbeing of frontline workers is a key management priority since it directly impacts their ability to perform under pressure. Retaining supporting and motivating the workforce which often works in demanding environments is critical for long-term sustainability. Public management scholarship also highlights the importance of leadership. Our panel will highlight the role of leaders in shaping organisational culture, offering insight into how managerial decisions affect psychological safety, morale, and burnout risk. The panel can further inform public managers about the consequences of underfunding or mismanaging staff welfare, motivating them to design resilient systems that support frontline workers during crises. Public management scholarship also increasingly focuses on building institutional resilience, especially post-COVID and in the context of climate change, which are directly relevant to the emergency services.

In summary, this panel addresses the conference theme by examining emergency services as frontline public administrations where the search for safety and security is enacted under polycrisis conditions, and where resilience depends on institutional capacity, inter-agency coordination, frontline job crafting, gender-inclusive practice and public trust.

If approved, this panel will highlight the important but under-researched field of emergency services management