From Trivial to Critical. Emergent Interagency Collaboration Through Co-Location of Emergency Call Centrals

Abstract

This paper studies the role of day-to-day social interaction among emergency call central operators and its effect on interagency collaboration in emergencies. In 2017 the police, fire and health emergency call centrals in a region in Norway were co-located. This was done largely retaining their formal structures and responsibilities, which follows strict sectorial boundaries. However, the proximity afforded by co-location −placing the centrals in the same building− led to the emergence of informal interactional patterns among the operators. Much of this interaction is seemingly trivial and only loosely connected to resolution of critical tasks. Our study, however, shows that it formed a basis for improved collaboration and development within the centrals. Through an ethnographically oriented normal operations study, our focus is not primarily on the outcomes of spatial proximity during emergencies, rather on the processes leading up to the outcomes: How the foundations emerge for quality in critical moments, how trust was established in the first place, how the involved actors could learn to know what others know, and how a learning-oriented community of practice was developed over time. In interviews, our informants were surprisingly uniform in their positive assessment of the co-location. The main question of the paper is thus not whether the operators were satisfied with the change, but more why, and whether this perceived improvement affected the outcome of their work in terms of emergency response capabilities. The paper thus argues for the importance of the social “undercurrents” evolving over time—the informal, trivial and often organizationally “invisible,” day-to-day interaction that provides the collaborative basis for dealing with critical situations.