Master Thesis Integrating Activities in HROs, when does it happen and how long does it take? A Case Study into a Fire Station

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Integrating Activities in HROs, when does it happen and how

long does it take? A Case Study into a Fire Station

Master Thesis

By

Menno Bijlsma

University of Groningen Master Business Administration

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Preface

All good things come to an end. This master thesis represents the end of a very satisfying journey with adversity and prosperity. A period in which I finished my bachelor Business Administration and which I end with my final master thesis of Change Management. Above all, I am grateful that I learned a lot during this period and that I have become wiser as a person.

From day one it was clear for me that business administration fascinated me. As a freshman starting at the University of Groningen I could not have imagined which intriguing business concepts in this world were established in literature. I have learned a lot during my study about doing academic research and I think that the combination with my curiosity to understand organizations has led to a great experience in writing this master thesis.

The next chapters will give you as reader an insight into the timing of integrating activities in HROs, but first I would like to say a lot of thanks to my supervisor Ms. Dr. Hille Bruns. Her patient supervision, enthusiastic assistance and fruitful feedback have really helped me writing and improving my thesis. I would also like to thank the fire station Leeuwarden for their cooperation to this case study. The participants took considerable time for the interviews and I am very grateful that I could attend a 24 hour shift. My gratitude also goes to my fellow students and family who supported me during my study career.

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Integrating Activities in HROs, when does it happen and how long does it

take? A Case Study into a Fire Station

Menno Bijlsma University of Groningen

This research represents a case study of when integrating activities in HROs occur and how long they take. Scholars have studied the concept of coordination in order to get an understanding of the interplay between the division and integration of labor. This research provides a detailed exploration of the timing of integrating activities in the coordination process. The findings indicate that integrating activities in HROs occur in different phases throughout the process of goal accomplishment. Moreover, the results indicate that each time integrating activities occur, they last for a very short time. By providing a timeline of the occurrence of integrating activities in an HRO, this research has implications for the literature on coordination in HROs and practice.

Keywords: Integrating activities, specialized activities, coordination, teams, high reliability

organizations, coordination mechanisms

1 Introduction

In recent years it has been shown that people become increasingly specialized, inducing industries which are facing an increasing variety of activities (Axelsson & Axelsson, 2006; Chavas, 2008). Much of these activities in organizations today are completed by teams and the notion of teamwork is therefore a critical component these days (Hollenbeck et al., 2004; Marks et al., 2001). Since Adam Smith described the division of labor in 1776 already, managers are becoming concerned with the difficulty of reconciling the need for specialization with the need for integration of effort (Lawrence & Lorsch, 1967). Hence, the concept of coordination is being studied to get an understanding of the interplay between the division and integration of labor. Integration of activities is particularly important in high reliability organizations (HRO), since these organizations operate in hazardous environments where the consequences of wrong integration are extremely high (Baker et al., 2006). HROs are organizations that operate under trying conditions and make use of strategies that can delay or even defer inevitable accidents (Weick et al., 2008).While we know a lot about the key aspects of HROs and why they work (Baker et al., 2006; Weick et al., 2008), we lack the understanding when their integrating activities occur and how long they take.

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Page | 5 activities is the essence for an organization to exploit its capabilities (Grant, 1996). While organizations often focus on their members’ specialized skills only (Orr, 1996), members spend a third of their time on integrating activities in the meanwhile (Perlow, 1999).Moreover, organizational members with very specialized knowledge often have difficulties establishing a common language when interacting (Gray, 2000) and thus, integrating their activities. If members don’t see the need to get an understanding of activities of other organizational members, insufficient translation will enhance inadequate communication (Heath & Staudenmayer, 2000). As a result, they are likely to fail to integrate their efforts on time.

The concept of specialization and integration started by the organizational researchers Lawrence and Lorsch (1967) who noted that organizations have to adapt to the constantly changing world. They conclude that organizations have to differentiate into parts, with fundamental differences in attitudes and behavior, while the functioning of these separate parts has to be integrated if the entire organization is to be viable. Literature on the coordination of HROs, however, originate from the early ‘90s. A number of research elaborated on the coordination process in HROs, for example in patient care (Baker et al., 2006; Hales & Chakravorty, 2016; Kohn et al., 1999), the Mann Gulch fire disaster (Weick, 1993), aircraft industry (Weick, 1990; Weick & Roberts, 1993) and the Bhopal gas disaster (Weick K. , 2010). Although these studies express the importance of coordination in HROs, the characteristics of these organizations and the disasters that can occur, none of the studies explicity investigated when in the process they integrate their activities or how long they take.

Timing of integrating activities is vitally important in HROs. For example, medical personnel is not allowed to make mistakes caused by wrong communication (Knox & Simpson, 2004). The Institution of Medicine (IOM) showed in their book To Err Is Human however that 98.000 Americans die annually as a result of medical mistakes (Kohn et al., 1999). Costs of these mistakes accounted for between $17 billion and $29 billion (e.g. lost income, lost household production, disability and healthcare costs). The timing of integrating activities in such organizations has not been explicitly tackled in literature. Therefore, the goal of this inquiry is to develop an empirical exploratory research on the occurrence of integrating activities.

Research question: When do integrating activities in HROs occur and how long do they take?

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Page | 6 accidents and maximize the reliability of the organization. Second, this paper advances the process of goal accomplisment that highlights the integrating activities that team members make in response to the need for integration of the individual specialized activities. Understanding when integrating activities occur and how long they take in this process, will enable managers to select, train, develop and reward personnel for effective teamwork (Marks et al., 2001). This research will also have an important theoretical contribution to the understanding of coordination. Only a few researchers have focused on the time dimension in measuring integrating activities within de coordination process (e.g. Gersick, 1988, 1989; Kelly & McGrath, 1985). McGrath (1991) mentioned time as an environmental driver in achieving the team goal and Marks et al. (2001) argued that teams must integrate their contributions in different time periods in the pursuit of the team goal. Literature lacks however on a specification of timing of integrating activities, particularly in the context of HROs.

2 Theoretical background

In this section the different variables of this research will be explained by means of a literature review. First, the interplay between both specialized and integrating activities will be explained by explaining the dynamic coordination process as proposed by Bruns (2015). Explaining the dynamic coordination process assists in understanding the occurrence of integrating activities in particular for this study. Second, specialized and integrating activities will be explored separately. Finally, this section will end with theorizing the HROs setting on which this research is focused.

2.1 Coordination

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Page | 7 As Bruns (2015) conceptualized team coordination as the temporal relationship between specialized and integrating activities, this research will focus on the occurrence of the integrating activities in this coordination process. Hence, the dynamic coordination model explains how integrating activities unfold in relationship to specialized activities due to pull and push mechanisms, i.e. drivers. In fact, two drivers are identified who dynamically shape the coordination process. The first driver is functional diversity, which refers to the diversity of specialized team members (Bunderson & Sutcliffe, 2000). It includes a variety of attributes (e.g. expertise) that team members contribute to a joint objective which leads to specialized activities. So, functional diversity enables specialized activities.

More important in this research however is the second driver, interdependencies, because this driver indicates that integrating activities are driven by the interdependencies that exist between the different specialized activities of team members. In order to accomplish a joint objective team members have to bring their diverse specialized activities together (Bruns, 2015; Kellogg et al., 2006). But just putting the contributions together will not automatically lead to a compatible end result. For example in the healthcare, physicians, nurses, and other specialists have to coordinate their activities to ensure that the patient will be treated properly (Baker et al., 2006). A physician cannot do surgery before the nurse takes care of the anesthesia. Strong interdependence will lead to more time intensive integrating activities in order to orchestrate emerging contributions (Bruns, 2015). So, as the coordination process appears to be dynamic, both drivers push and pull the temporal occurrence of specialized and integrating activities.

Furthermore, teams can benefit from both specialized activities and the ability for integration. Integrating activities rely on collaborative abilities that involve communication and leadership abilities (Hamilton et al., 2003). Such collaborative skills may not only improve coordination, but also facilitate the discovery of ways to assign, organize, and perhaps alter tasks to produce more efficiently (Hamilton et al., 2003). However, this collaboration is not simply based on the position of the team members and their willingness to cooperate. Efficient teamwork with reliable outcomes requires coordination which is rather based on a shared set of knowledge, skills and attitudes (Baker et al., 2006).

2.2 Specialized activities

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Page | 8 of bounded rationality, as explained by Herbert Simon (1955), because people only have to focus on activities that meet their unique skills, training and abilities (Heath & Staudenmayer, 2000). This is in the same line of reasoning as Netjes and colleagues (2005), who define a specialist as “a resource able to perform exactly one task”. Hence, specialization requires a unique set of specialized activities (Bruns, 2015). An understanding of specialized activities is important in this study, because without these activities as part of the coordination process, integrating activities do not unfold.

An example of teams who carry out specialized activities are characterized in the literature as communities of practice (Brown & Duguid, 1991).The identity of the members within a community is based upon the kind of work they do (Van Maanen & Barley, 1982). They share training, standards, language, artifacts, technology and work environments (Bruns, 2015). The identification of an own language becomes particularly visible when they use a “complex system of codes which enable the members of an occupation to communicate to one another an occupationally specific view of the world” (Van Maanen & Barley, 1982:19). Since this language is established by a particular community and can have different meanings (Hawkes, 1977), it is rather difficult for people outside the community to understand this language. For example in the automobile industry (Sadler, 1999), where you have engineers who design the transmission, production workers to produce the parts of the car and the marketers who promote the cars. The more diverse these different communities are, the more complicated the integration of their activities is, since they often do not share the same language, standards, training, and so on. Hence, they operate in a different domain (Heath & Staudenmayer, 2000). Specialist are often highly trained in their own domain (e.g. own community of practice), but are not knowledgeable of other domains.

Furthermore, communities of practice are oftentimes recognized by distinctive equipment, outfits and jargon (Van Maanen & Barley, 1982). These visible signs present a cognitive and social link between the members of a domain and distance themselves from people outside the domain. For example, policemen who wear special uniforms, guns, and wallet badges or electricians who wear special colored overalls and shoes to show the identity of their community (Reimer, 1977). Moreover, the properties of the policemen and electricians express the position of the workers compared to policemen and electricians in another region. Since workers from another region often carry different standards, artifacts and even a different culture, they belong to another domain (Van Maanen & Barley, 1982).

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Page | 9 2001). For instance, in the software programming industry software programmers become increasingly specialized (Malone et al., 2011). Some programmers focus on programming specific parts of software, some focus on putting together software components that are written already, and some are good at fixing bugs in software. The same goes, for instance, for the healthcare industry, where hospitals focus on specialized services and deliver high quality at high speed (Tiwari & Heese, 2009). Although this increasing specialization will lead to a better suited response to environmental demands for organizations, it will also demand for a better integration of the different specialized activities. This integration process will postulate an enormous challenge for organizations (Okhuysen & Bechky, 2009). Therefore, the next section will elaborate on integrating activities.

2.3 Integrating activities

The flip-side of specialization is integration. Integration is defined as “the quality of the state of collaboration that exists among departments that are required to achieve unity of effort by the demands of the environment” (Lawrence and Lorsch, 1967:11). In order to achieve the unity of effort within teams, people need to adopt integrating activities. For example, due to narrowly focused specialized activities, how can people establish common languages that allow them to communicate? Lawrence and Lorsch (1984: 27) add that “the integrator's role involves handling the nonroutine, unprogrammed problems that arise among the traditional functions as each strives to do its own job”. This also includes activities like resolving interdepartmental conflicts and facilitating decisions (e.g. regarding large investments, product features, quality standards, output, cost targets, schedules etc.). According to Bruns (2015:19), integrating activities also “entail cross-specialty interaction through which collaborators build shared expertise on the task at hand”. Hence, team members get a shared understanding of the different specialized activities and are likely to improve their own expertise (Gray, 2000).

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Page | 10 this inquiry will focus on the occurrence of integrating activities, we first have to understand what these activities look like.

Theory describes several integrating activities that help team members integrate and utilize their specialized expertise (Cummings & Kiesler, 2007). In prior theory these activities are primarily categorized as coordination mechanisms, but can particularly be classified as what Bruns (2015) called integrating activities. Integrating activities are not domain-specific and are required for the manifestation of the domain-specific activities, i.e. specialized activities (Bruns, 2013). Traditional coordination mechanisms, like protocols, schedules and routines, become insufficient since these rely on specialization (Bruns, 2013). I follow Thompson (1967) who mentioned different coordination mechanisms to integrate multiple activities. Many different coordination mechanisms can be used for integration, but Thompson (1967) adresses these coordination mechanisms on a group level, which makes it more appropriate for this study.

First, Thompson (1967) describes rules and standard procedures as coordination mechanisms that demand for minimal coordination. Hence, the use of established rules and procedures would diminish the need for direct communication. Communications constraints would limit the effectiveness of a large number of team members. Therefore, the integration of knowledge into organizational rules and procedures in order to perform a discrete productive activity is necessary. Grant (1996) proposed to use the establishment of firms to integrate the specialized knowledge of organizational members into stability, propinquity and social relationships. For example, for new product development a broad amount of knowledge is required. Also, day and night shifts at plants make use of rules and standardized procedures (Thompson, 1967).

Secondly, Thompson (1967) described activities that are performed in sequential order. In a process of sequential interdependency workers are dependent on the progress of workers earlier in the process. The coordination mechanisms planning and scheduling are required to orchestrate the specialized activities. This planning and scheduling also include the division and assignment of responsibilities for tasks to different team members. Spending time on the division of tasks can improve productivity, since it can lower the time and costs of direct communication (Porac, et al., 2004). For example in the software industry, software experts getting frustrated when their time is more assigned to telephone tags and meetings instead of working on their independent task (Heath & Staudenmayer, 2000). When these experts know their responsibilities in advance, they can spend less time on those telephone tags and meetings.

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Page | 11 make on-going adjustments to manage interdependencies. Furthermore, team members must actively share, discuss and remember valuable information during the execution of their activities to orchestrate their contributions (Kirschner, Paas, & Kirschner, 2009). At the same time, team members must actively retrieve and negotiate information to enhance learning. Kirschner et al., (2009) refer in their article to collaborative learning, meaning that team members can learn within groups when knowledge and information is divided across individuals. This is important for team members in order to build on a shared understanding towards the joint objective. Particularly team members who engage in multiple domains often do not share the same understanding and are, therefore, likely to conflict (Bechky, 2003). This coordination mechanism also includes the use of direct communication through meetings and discussions. According to Klein (1996), face-to-face communication is the most effective way. Even though the costs for this type of commucation are relatively high, the impact is the highest. Direct communication through meetings and discussions permits two-way communication, which increases the chance of involvement of every team member and decreases the probability of miscommunication (Cawsey et al., 2012).

2.4 High Reliability Organizations

Since the publication of Charles Perrow’s (1984) Normal Accident, literature sheds light on the context of organizational accidents. High reliability organizations (HROs) are organizations that “operate in an unforgiving social and political environment, an environment rich with the potential for error, where the scale of consequences precludes learning through experimentation, and where to avoid failures in the face of shifting sources of vulnerability” (Weick et al., 2008:32). In these organizations, extreme accidents like plane crashes, ship collisions, fire and nuclear disasters, or medical mistakes can occur. Theory on HROs already appeared in the literature on organizational behavior, health care, education, communication and engineering outlets (Roberts, 2009). Although HROs may be seen as diverse, according to Weick et al. (2008:32) most HROs can be placed together since they all operate in an environment rich with the potential for error and shifting sources of vulnerability.

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Page | 12 about the patient (Kohn et al., 1999). The inclusion of the different stakeholders requires a fluent process in order to provide information on time.

The initial idea of HROs originates from the definition of an organization repeatedly producing collective outcomes with a certain minimum quality (Hannan & Freeman, 1984). This also includes the reproduction of roles, authority and communication from day to day. Whether this definition is likely on a macro level, it is however unlikely on a more micro level (Weick et al., 2008). How should organizations repeatedly integrate the various activities of team members when their working conditions fluctuate and are not known in advance? Unexpected circumstances require redirection of assessments, plans and tactics. Therefore, integration in HROs is not just based on repeatable steps, but requires enriched awareness of potential disasters. This notion is conceptualized by Weick et al. (2008) who mention mindfulness as antecedent of a reliable organization that is capable to discover and manage unexpected events. Hence, mindfulness is not only about the attention people have for the circumstances, it is rather about the quality of attention, meaning what people do with what they notice. Furthermore, mindfulness can help people manage circumstances they have never seen before. It will create an active, continuous revisiting and revision of assumptions.

Thus, I have argued that coordination is an essential component of achieving high reliability organizations. HROs demand for strategies that can delay or even defer inevitable accidents (Weick et al. 2008) and the literature on coordination provides great insights for improving performance within such organizations. However, the timing of integrating activities in coordinating HROs has not been specified in literature yet. Therefore, this research focuses on when integrating activities in HROs occur and how long they take.

3 Methodology

In this section I will elaborate on the procedure of this study. First, I will explain the research approach, where after I describe the case context. Then, the third section explains the way the data is collected, while I give an elaboration on the data analysis in the concluding section.

3.1 Research approach

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Page | 13 quantitative measurements. Since this study needs to unravel the integrating activities, particularly when they occur and how long they take, interviews are appropriate to gain a good understanding of these integrating activities in an HRO setting (Cooper et al., 2006).

Whereas different research methods can be used to answer the main research question, theorists mention a case study as the best approach to explore new topic areas (Ackroyd, 2010; Miles & Huberman, 1984). In this study I unravel the integrating activities which are required for the integration of specialized activities in an HRO setting. According to Eisenhardt (1989:534) a case study is a research strategy which focuses on understanding the dynamics present within single settings. With the use of qualitative data I was able to uncover anecdotes about incidents. For example, most respondents talked about problems they encountered during operations.

3.2 Case context

This research is based on the data gathered at the fire station Leeuwarden. This fire station operates rather independent, but is part of a province wide firefighter organization. This station, however, is responsible for firefighting emergencies in the city Leeuwarden, which encompasses approximately 96000 citizens. They are also responsible for emergencies with gas leaks and drowning people in the province Friesland (approximately 650.000 inhabitants). In total, 56 firemen work at the fire station Leeuwarden. In addition, 20 employees are working at this station and are responsible for tasks such as planning, facility and administration. On average, 2 times a day a call comes in. Calls can range from automatic alarms, in which 94% is false alarm (e.g. caused by smoke from cooking) to huge house fires. The firemen are working at the fire station during their shift (e.g. maintenance or training) and all get an alarm on their pager when a call comes in. At these moments, they all put down their work and rush to the firetruck.

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Figure 1: Relationship between teams

The teams were structured in a way that each team had the required specific skills to accomplish the overall goal. The team goal was to solve the emergencies as best as possible when they get a call, keeping their own safety in mind. The type of call determined which people were needed. In situations where fire was involved, firefighters were called, but for water incidents for example, the diver specialists were called out. Some operations also included gas leaks, where gas specialists were needed. When a team did not have the required specialism for their shift in a certain period, members of other teams were asked to join. For example, at a certain moment there were not enough divers in one team and thus, divers from another team had to switch. The activities for the firefighters range from very complex activities to simple tasks. When there was no emergency, the firemen had training or maintenance at the fire station. When they were called out, their operations were very sophisticated, ranging from firefighting to rescuing people out of cars or burning houses. These sophisticated activities make this research context very suitable for this research, because clear coordination was necessary to orchestrate these activities. These teams, however, operate in small temporary outfits in which stakes are high and where foul-ups can have serious consequences (Ancona & Caldwell, 1992; Heydebrand, 1989).

The respondents all had backgrounds as fireman, and further specialized themselves during their tenure at the fire station. After a couple of years getting experience, firemen were often able to specialize as commanding officer. Due to the hierarchical structure in this organization, commanding officers are the ones who mainly coordinate the operations. Each team had drivers, divers, gas specialists, instructors, firemen and commanding officers. Only team D (daily shift) did not have divers and gas specialists in their team, but did have the same specific ability for a general fire emergency. Nevertheless, the different team members perceived their specialized activities as rather similar compared with other teams.

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Page | 15 during an operation. The central emergency office is the intermediary between the location of the incident and the firemen, meaning that they communicate all the facts that are known about the incident to the firemen during their way. The notification of the incident is always received by this office first and they are also the once who maintain contact with the person who notified the incident. Second, most of the respondents worked, besides their 24 hour team, also as a volunteer in their hometown. Therefore, most of the respondents referred to the volunteers as well when they were talking about operations. A comparison between the volunteers and the 24 hour team was very useful, since volunteers performed their integrating activities slightly different. For example, commanding officers had tighter coordination to maintain, because volunteers were less experienced.

3.3 Data collection

Typical for a case study is the use of multiple data collection methods (Eisenhardt, 1989). For this case study I combined the data collection methods interviews, observations and the analysis of protocols. The use of triangulation of data strengthens the grounding of the theory (Eisenhardt, 1989). Moreover, the combination of multiple sources of data is highly synergistic, since I used the observervation and analyis of protocols as input for the interviews. The experience of a real life operation also carried me away from false impressions during interviews. Additionally, this method allowed me to adjust the interview questions with emergent themes, such as the problems firemen had with the self- contained breathing apparatus.

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Page | 16 asked the respondents to describe a typical operation, almost all respondents described an operation in a different setting. From there, I could go deeper into some facts they described. After the interviews were conducted, I transcribed the recordings verbatim.

Secondly, I observed the operations of the firefighters in order to get familiar with their activities. In these observations the focus was particularly on the way the firefighter performed their specialized activities, how they communicated with each other and how long and when this communication occurred. I started participating in a commanding officer meeting a single morning. This was the moment where one 24 hour team took over the tasks from another. The commanding officers of the two switching teams and the commanding officer of the daily swift team came together for consultation. The key facts of the day and night before were discussed, including the problems they encountered. One commanding officer notes that they have had one alarm during their shift. No problems arose, however, since they could return from the incident as the ambulance personnel and car service already took control over a car incident. Then, all the firemen of the new 24 hour shift came together, where the commanding officer announced the division of labor for that day. Next, I fully attended a 24 hour shift of the team that day. During this shift I took field notes about whatever impression occurred. These field notes were helpful during semi-structured interviews as it gave me hunches about anecdotes.

Lastly, I analyzed different protocols in order to get a better understanding of the work processess. For example, I analyzed accessibility maps, which are used for emergencies at important buildings in Leeuwarden. They make use of these accessibility maps to enter a building as quick as possible and to know exactly what the building looks like from the inside. The firemen note that these maps can speed up the goal accomplishment. Furthermore, the firemen guided me through the firestation to show me the tools they use and how to use them. They showed me for example how they gain quick access to fire on a higher floor with the tower ladder vehicle. I moved up to 82 feet with this vehicle and analyzed how they could still communicate via radio. This helped me understanding both their specialized and integrating activities.

3.4 Data analysis

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Page | 17 activities, namely, direct communication and evaluation. However, for the results I could assign these two codes to the three coordination mechanisms. For example, direct communication and evaluations were frequently used in constant information sharing and mutual adjustment. Therefore, I have included these two codes into constant information sharing and mutual adjustment. For the coding process, a coding scheme including codes, descriptions and examples is used, and is included in appendix 8.4. In order to make the results more reliable and to enhance confidence in the findings, the coding scheme was assessed by an external researcher who is not further involved in this study. Furthermore, I analyzed data across the different teams and across hierarchies. First, I attended a task division of team A, C and D, but I found no differences in task division between these teams. I also compared interview data of the four different teams. Therefore, I coded the functions and backgrounds of the different team members. Hence, I could compare functions with their integrating activities. It became clear that the four teams were all able to carry out the same activities and that they did not integrate in a different order. Although the commanding officer was in charge of the team, each team member felt he was just part of team and therefore, I also found no difference in integration across hierarchy.

4. Results

In this section the results are presented. The three coordination mechanisms as proposed by Thompson (1967) will function as a roadmap through this chapter. Therefore, the first section will elaborate on planning and scheduling. The second section will focus on rules and standard procedures, while the third section will elaborate on mutual adjustment and constant information sharing. Lastly, this section will end with an overview of the time in which the coordination mechanisms occur by means of a timeline. This section starts with a short vignette of an experienced operation by the researcher:

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Page | 18 This example already indicates that the firemen have to act quickly after they got called out. During an operation, integration of several activities was necessary to achieve coordination among the specialized firemen. Integrating activities took more time before and less time during an incident. When the firemen arrived at the location of the incident, integrating activities were concise and firemen only spend little time on communication (e.g. short sentences, keywords or signs). Of course, in bigger operations, where for example fire was reaching several houses, more integrating activities occurred and oftentimes took more time. Nevertheless, there was a clear line of repetitive integrating activities the firemen took in order to accomplish their joint objective.

4.1 Planning and scheduling

The task division each morning was the first step where all the specialisms came together. This was a very short meeting of around five minutes, since most of the firemen knew their schedule already. This division was based on the availability of the specialists that day in the first place, but commanding officers also made sure that the firemen rotate among the different tasks:

Most often there is a planning for one month. Each morning at the task division we just repeat what is going on at the moment and what we have to do. […] But it rotates every day. In principle, you have to be an all-rounder. Some people do have a preference, for instance some people want to be the number one, because they like to approach fire quickly, but basically everyone must be able to do that.

(Commanding officer, Harry) The firemen rotate among the different tasks since they are all able to carry out multiple activities. The task rotation ensures that the firemen have to perform multiple tasks in a week. This causes them to remain trained in the different tasks and makes their work more exciting. At the task division in the morning, every firemen was getting a number. This number was assigned to a certain task for that day. It was striking that the use of numbers was helpful for the communication during an operation:

Normally, you have six people in one car. All the people on the car have a number and each number has its own function. You have number 111 and 112, that is the attacking team. 113 and 114 is the water team. 119 is the driver and 110 is the commanding officer. The convenient thing about the numbers is that you don’t have to call on names, because sometimes people have the same name or you just don’t hear it. The numbers are so car specific. If a second car arrives, you never have the same numbers. The second car operates with numbers starting from 200.

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Page | 19 alarm went off, during the day or night, there was no communication needed when they moved to the firetruck, since everyone knew his position in the firetruck and his role for the operation. By contrast, there was not a predetermined task division for volunteer firemen. As one commanding officer noted, this took the volunteers considerable time during an operation:

Look, that group is a lot bigger, around 30 people, so you have a lot more variety in composition. Hence, you have to know exactly which people don’t work together well, and let other people work together. Then, you have to make a task division along the way, because they don’t have a fixed number. All those people want to go with you, but you really have to finger point who is going with you. Over here, it is just fixed. […] At the volunteers, I have less time [for my own tasks]. Look, the consultation is happening outside. As soon as I am inside [a burning house], people outside have to wait for me. My focus is on the firemen inside at these moments. If they are inside, and I have to go inside as well, the head officer outside has to wait, or the police, or whoever.

(Commanding officer, Frank) Because the task division was not always clear at the beginning for the volunteers, the commanding officer must pay close attention to the activities of the firemen. As a result, the commanding officer is not able to discuss information with the other emergency services. For example, normally he has to ask the police to keep away the crowd, the ambulance to stay ready for the victims, or he has to gather information from several witnesses. In case the commanding officers must go inside the building with his firemen, he is not able to integrate the activities of the police or ambulance with the operation of his firemen. Consequently, operations in these kind of situations take much longer compared to the 24 hour team, who know exactly what to do and where the commanding officer can step aside and take control over the communication with other people. Indeed, this also has to do with the experience the 24 hour teams have, but a task division in advance saved minutes of time during an operation. Next to the division of labor each morning, commanding officers also made up a plan of attack before an operation started. This ensured that the firemen were able to work immediately when they arrived at the incident. “They know what to do” (Commanding officer, Frank). Therefore, they mainly communicated things they encounter during the operation. Although they knew what to do, there were still some firemen who felt convenient by describing everything they encountered or who needed a very long story to explain everything. This could also lead to frustration among other firemen:

Communication, it remains difficult. In the sense of how it is expressed by someone. The same goes within this team, with both practice and real operations, there are people who can make something clear within two words. But on the other hand, there are also firemen who have to make clear their story via Rome.

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Page | 20 So, even though the plan was clear, some firemen still felt comfortable by asking a lot of questions about situations they encountered. On the other hand, sometimes commanding officers were surprised with the situation they encountered. Hence, they needed to revise their plan of attack:

First, you get information from the mobile radio. Nowadays, you can get a lot of information from that. Then you draw a picture of the situation. You share this information with the firemen as much as possible and then you will make a preliminary plan of attack. […] I do this in the car already. I just turn to the firemen and tell them, face-to-face, which situation we could encounter. […] [But] most often we just look how the situation looks like. Then we meet again at the car and make the plan final. But that is always the thing, it is a preliminary plan. We investigate first and then we can change it. But I will make sure that we all have that plan clear. […] Otherwise it will go wrong.

(Commanding officer, Harry) If the plan was not clear to everyone, they run the risk that firemen were acting in the wrong manner. Therefore, although sometimes it took some time before the firemen could extinguish the fire, it was important that they took some time for integrating activities in terms of the plan of attack. Depending on the situation, this often took one till five minutes of investigation and making the plan clear. The next example of a fire station with volunteers illustrates that confusion can arise when people do not know or understand the plan:

Last year we had a huge fire with a strong wind force. Near to the sea. A house was burning. People are obsessed by fire, but most often you can’t do anything about a house that is burning already. However, the street was three meters wide only and the house next to it was almost burning too. The firemen didn’t see that. “It is burning over there right?” “Yes, but it is also burning next to it if you don’t stop it.” So you have to spend a lot of time on setting the priorities.

(Commanding officer, Will) This illustrates that the firemen approached the fire without a proper understanding of the consequences of their actions. Commanding officers had to spend more time on communicating the plan to volunteers. Commanding officers are often more experienced and therefore often know earlier what needs to happen. Understanding the plan was easier for experienced firemen compared to less experienced firemen. As one commanding officer notes: “They [volunteers] are less experienced, some of the guys extinguished a fire just once before. In my view, I need to check frequently if they stick to the plan” (Frank).

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Page | 21 that at least one team member had some distance from the incident and was able to notice when the situation was changing. When a different situation emerged, the commanding officer quickly had to instruct his firemen about the changing situation. Sometimes, the firemen pulled back to discuss a new plan. This entailed a redistribution of responsibilities, i.e. integration, was required when a new situation emerged.

Thus, the importance of schedules and plans become particularly apparent at the beginning of the process, where tasks are divided before an incident and where plans are made once they got called out. Furthermore, it becomes clear that these plans and schedules contribute to faster running operation, as it can considerably shorten the communication at an incident.

4.2 Rules and standard procedures

It was remarkable that the use of a shared protocol for hazardous substances was very important. For example, in the past, firemen were not able to have quick communication about the hazards of substances. The respondents note however that communication was essential in these kind of situations, due to the hazards of these emergencies. There are so many different substances and each substance has its own risk. Since the firemen do not know exactly each substance and its risks, everything has to be communicated and investigated first. Therefore, presently, they make use of identification cards, which considerably shorten the communication – an important advantage when time is critical – and makes it possible to ask the commanding officer for permission for control of the substances:

Since recent years the things are a bit easier. For example, now we have identification cards, including labels about dangerous substances. Now you can say, this is card 6 or 7. Previously, we didn’t have that and we had to describe these labels by ourselves. Triangle, square, rectangle, one calls it a diamond, the other a triangle. Sometimes this caused miscommunication.

(Fireman, Jason) Miscommunication in these kind of situations caused the costs of negotiations and time required to continue the process. It was therefore particularly important that the firemen learned how they could use these identification cards, as they could make the communication more fluently. Previous mistakes were recovered and established in the identification and in practices in order to prevent those mistakes in the future. For example, they record every practice and investigate who needs additional training. If it becomes clear that some firemen still do not understand how to use the cards, tailor made practices will be set up for those firemen.

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Page | 22 allowed to make their own decisions and to anticipate on the situation. As one commanding officer noted: “Then they should do that just by themselves. If they locate the victim and they see, for example, rubbish is burning down, they should ask themselves whether they should go. They make their own estimate at that moment” (Frank). From the perception of the commanding officers the firemen are trained enough to make these decisions: “If you move inside and it is burning, and it is hot, then they want you to extinguish that fire by yourself. You should not communicate with your commanding officer first” (Frank).

4.3 Mutual adjustment and constant information sharing

The firemen also make use of information sharing in order to orchestrate their own activities with the activities of their team members. The sharing of information occurred several times during operations, starting from the moment the firemen step into the firetruck. It was remarkable that information sharing did not occur before they got into the firetruck. Except when the driver was not sure about the location of the incident. Then there was barely time, 30 seconds maximum, to ask someone about the location. Otherwise, location analysis took place in the firetruck. Once in the firetruck, first the central emergency office shares information about the incident to the firemen. Based on this information, the commanding officer prepares his plan of attack and shares his plan with the firemen, who are already preparing their uniforms. Indeed, the time the commanding officer and the firemen have to prepare themselves depends on the distance between the fire station and the incident, but they are always able to prepare themselves within five minutes. When they arrive at the location of the incident, the firemen need to explore the situation and share this with the team. At the incident, they frequently make use of portable radio’s to share information. The team builds on the provided information and reevaluate the plan within a brief period. As noted, when the commanding officer had to reconsider his plan, new information sharing was required. Although this additional information sharing took some time, it was necessary for the continuity of the operation. Spending time on sharing new information could save time during the operation, because a revised plan was more adjusted to the situation and therefore did cause less communication requirements in the continuation of the operation.

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Page | 23 If there are really things that went significantly wrong, for example, when people make mistakes… Look some mistakes are redirected during the operation, that is very dynamic. You can redirect constantly. We are so well attuned to each other, that is the advantage of the 24 hour teams, we know each other so well that we can say everything during an operation. Then we can adjust. If there are really big things that went wrong, or if thing are being overlooked, then it will be reported and we will use this during the next practices.

(Fireman, Mike) Evaluations were remarkably important for instructors to establish past experience into practices, because it could enhance cross-team learning. Instructors note that if teams make a mistake during the operation, it is also important for other teams that these mistakes are shared in the evaluation of the operation. The people who are responsible for preparing and devising the practices (mainly instructors, but also other firemen) try to make sense out of these mistakes and try to put them into the practices:

I am an instructor for dangerous substances. If there are learning moments resulting from an incident, then I would like to use these moments in the next training. […] Each team has its own instructors. As an instructor, we have a meeting four times a year. There we discuss exercises, but also experiences from the operations. And we talk about it during the coffee breaks in the morning. For example about a gauger that we used. […] That kind of information is shared within the teams.

(Fireman, Jason) Subsequently, teams learn from each other in making the integration (e.g. communication) more efficient. Some firemen experienced problems with breathing, particularly when they experienced stress and when they used the self-contained breathing apparatus. One fireman found a new method to control the breathing in a better way. He devised an exercise to practice this all together. With these exercises the firemen could control their breathing. Firemen who start hyperventilate with a self-contained breathing apparatus can obtain a very high concentration of oxygen, which can be very dangerous.

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Page | 24 when it is essential it is allowed to talk. The [communication of the] people inside get preference, there we have the most dangerous situation. So, we try to keep the communication as brief as possible” (Fireman, Mitchell). Due to the mobile radio’s they used, not all the firemen could talk at the same time, because this would create a tangle over the radio. Therefore, the communication that was coming from the firemen inside a building was preferred over the communication from other people. The respondents indicated several reasons why short and concise communication was required for the firemen. First, in case the firemen had to rescue victims, there was less time available for communication. Due to time pressure, they were trained to communicate very briefly (e.g. with the use of the aforementioned identification cards). Otherwise, there was no chance for the victims to survive. Furthermore, although the firemen make use of both face-to-face communication and different integrating tools (e.g. portable radio), sometimes it was not possible for the firemen to communicate to their commanding officer:

If you find a victim, then you want to go outside as soon as possible. It is almost reflexively that you grab the radio to say that you found a victim and that you are moving outside. If the commanding officer doesn’t hear you, then you try it another time during your move, but you are not waiting till you got direct order to move outside. […] And unfortunately, although the communication is not always running smoothly in these kind of situations, you always try to communicate.

(Fireman, Peter) In these kind of situations it is often not possible to spend a lot of time to the communication. Whereas the goal is to save the victim, the fireman knows which steps he has to take in order to accomplish his goal. Communication at these moments would hinder them in their specialized activity. Sometimes I ask them how the situation looks like or what they encounter. But then they are so busy, I actually hinder them. In principle, they should focus on their activity. […] If I ask them questions along the way, it will hinder them (Commanding officer, Frank).

Secondly, firemen were complaining about the communication when they were wearing the contained breathing apparatus. The contained breathing apparatus causes communication problems, because (1) they could not hear each other well, (2) they lost too much oxygen when they were talking and (3) a button must be pressed to make themselves understandable. This additional action is not always possible in situation where time is already scarce, plus they are handling other tools (e.g. waterjet) or have to care for victims at the same time. In situations where they could not hear each other, a short, high-pitched sound was emitted by the radio or other noise was on the radio. This was frustrating for the firemen:

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Page | 25 an example were I asked “can I open the door for ventilation?” Because I would like to get rid of the flued gasses. In the answer I could not hear what he was saying, the words were too similar. I have asked it for three times. Instead, he should have said: ‘not now’. Then I would understand it. That would have been two very clear sounds. Then it is much more likely to make something out of it. He said something like “I’ll come back to the question if you can open it”. That was just a blurry sound. So, just try to make use of short terms like “yes” and “no”.

(Commanding officer, Steven) We work with the self-contained breathing apparatus. When you open the microphone, you will hear it. That hinders you, you will have more noise on the radio. There are people who consciously breathe in and then tell their story. And if they breathe out, they stop telling their story. But there are also people who just keep on talking, resulting in very difficult communication. […] Then you have to ask it twice. That is frustrating for people and those people will become curtly.

(Fireman, Jason) It becomes clear that the self-contained breathing apparatus can cause a bottleneck in communication during an operation. Therefore, firemen are getting trained in order to cope with this communication. The next example shows the importance of oxygen for divers and how and when they make use of signs and very short sentences:

Yes, that is in words. As short and briefly as possible. You are also trying to relieve the diver as much as possible. Then, the diver will do his search methods, there you have some strategies. From one till five. One is start swimming, two is to the right side, and three is to the left side. Then you just say: “We are going to do the direct search method”. So he is going directly to the object. If that doesn’t work out, then he is coming back, but then we say that he has to turn when I pull the line ones. Normally, I have to say “attention one” and he has to repeat that. But in practical, we keep that as short as possible. One pull? Okay, then he knows that he has to turn. We make arrangements before we go under the water. As short as possible. When he talks, he loses oxygen. And oxygen is the most important thing you need. You need oxygen under the water. That is essential.

(Commanding officer, Harry) This example illustrates the usability of signs in order to shorten the communication. Divers are trained to recognize the different sign that are used via the line. Consequently, they did not lost any time resulting from miscommunication or had to return for new oxygen, which sometimes happened in situations where fire was included. The next example also shows the effectiveness of the use of signs:

For some part it is communication, but I also think that for some part we understand each other as a team, since we work with each other for a while. For example, when I see one of my colleagues at the other side of a car, then I can choose to walk with the scissor to the other side of the car in order to cut a bar. But in terms of speed, let me say to run an operation fluently, I can also choose to push the scissor over the roof, so he can cut the bar. Sometimes there is no wording required, but is it just a glance. Communication without wording, but just looking at each other to know what you mean.

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Page | 26 Again, this example can be compared with the volunteers. The firemen note that they understand each other at the 24 hour team, since they work with each other for a while, plus they are more trained in running an operation fluently. Meanwhile, firemen note that if they have to work with team members at the volunteers, who are less capable of doing their job, they will feel frustrated, because they have to communicate a lot more with those members: “So basically, he is not capable enough, and that is why nobody can work with him, because we are a team. If one is not working properly, the team doesn’t work fluently” (Fireman, Tess). Therefore, the firemen feel more comfortable when they are well trained and are able to make use of very short communication with their team members.

Thus, while on the one hand respondents noted that communication is inconvenient, or even impossible in certain situations where they have to carry out their specialized activity, on the other hand commanding officers highly prefer to know what the firemen are doing during an operation, particularly when new situations emerge. Going even further, if the commanding officers did not know what their firemen were doing, they could not perfectly integrate the activities of other emergency personnel for example. When firemen were inside a burning house, commanding officers were acting on the basis of information gathered from those firemen. For example, as one of the firemen reported that he found a victim, the commanding officer already had to call for an ambulance to be ready. Hence, integrating activities were essential for the continuity and quality of the specialized activities. All of the four commanding officers indicated that they want to know where their firemen are and what they are roughly doing, because a move of one team member could have influence on another team member, and ultimately on the team in total:

It is important that they discuss it with me first, because I am responsible in the end. It will be less harmful when they do something different in a situation where they assist at an accident. But if they do something different when fire is included, it can be catastrophic, since this process is much more dynamic. If they strike out a door or window somewhere, I really want to know this in advance. Maybe I will say “we won’t do this, depending on the situation. It can have very serious consequences when someone throws out a window somewhere.

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Page | 27 of the commanding officer. Then you can regain a fire spread. That is not what you want (Mike). The firemen often do not have the information about other components of an operation. For example, a fireman does not always know where his colleagues are moving. The commanding officer is oftentimes the one with this overview. Therefore, communication between the commanding officer and the firemen is remarkably important. Hence, commanding officers can coordinate their firemen.

4.4 Timeline integrating activities

Figure 2 provides an overview when in the process integrating activities occur and how long they take. The activities are divided into 4 main phases, starting from the task division each morning. The call is not an explicit activity, but encompasses the start of an operation (incident). In the next phase, driving to the incident, firemen have to arrive at the incident within seven minutes. Important integrating activities occur in this phase already. As much information as possible is gathered in this phase in order to make a preliminary plan.

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Figure 2 – Timeline of integrating activities

5 Discussion

This case study into a fire station focused on when integrating activities in HROs occur and how long they take. Scholars already contributed to the definition of team processes and their content (Marks et al., 2001), non of them particularly studied the timing of integrating activities in an HRO setting. Theory on HROs tried to frame processes that support organizations who operate under trying conditions (Weick et al., 2008). This study offers an explanation of when in the process of goal accomplishment team members in these kind of organizations integrate the diversely specialized activities and also elaborate on how long these activities take.

The theory on HROs explained that members of an HRO need to create a sense of mindfulness in order to be aware of potential disaster (Weick et al., 2008). This study contributes to this idea that the occurrence of certain integrating activities are highly situation dependent, emergent and contextualized. Therefore, these organizational members need to be flexibel whenever they have to integrate their activities. Results show that, in certain situations, members should recognize by themselves when they can share their contributions. This also rejects tradional coordination models, and supports Bruns (2013) in the notion that these models appear to be too much standardized. For example, highly standardized protocols or routines will become insufficient when members have to react to emergent situations.

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Page | 29 team in the Mann Gulch Disaster (Weick, 1993:650) did not keep each other informed of what they were doing, which contributed to the disaster that occurred. Our results indicate that team members should inform their colleagues whenever they encounter a changing situation. Weick (1993) analyzed the death of thirteen smokejumpers in the Mann Gulch fire disaster in the light of a desintegrated structure within a group and the role of sensemaking of the smokejumpers. The smokejumpers died after the fire moved at high speed towards them and they were not able to escape from the fire. It was remarkeble, however, that foreman Wag Dodge survived, because he was able to create an escape fire. He tried to get his men along with him, but the team got totally desintegrated and everyone tried to escape on his own.

At the Mann Gulch Disaster there was no task division in advance. The smokejumpers only knew that Wag Dodge was in charge of the team. Based on the call, they expected to find a fire which could be extinguished quickly. At the incident, it was captain Wag Dodge who did the investigation of the situation. The smokejumper felt no one was in charge of the team anymore. When Wag Dodge found out that fire was approaching them very soon, he was no able to set up a plan for the firemen anymore. If we compare this with the integrating activities of this inquiry, it is clear that there is always a prelimenary plan and that firemen do not have to wait till they get orders. The firemen are the ones who carry out the investigation of the situation, so the commanding officer can keep an overview. As Weick (1993:646) noted: “What people needed was a structure in which there was both an inverse and a direct relationship between role systems and meaning”. The smokejumpers did not know what they had to do and therefore could not maintain resilience. This study adds that a task division in advance and a preliminary plan was required to keep the team together.

Although HROs may be seen as diverse, according to Weick et al. (2008:32) most HROs can be put together since they all operate in an environment rich with the potential for error and shifting sources of vulnerability. On the other hand, the results of this research are applicable for a fire station, but considerable variation might exist among other settings. For example, in health care they are using meditiation prior to treatment (Baker et al., 2006) and can therefore gather a lot of information before the operation starts. Another important distinction between the fire station and health care is that firemen act rather as a team, whereas most clinical units continue to function as discrete specialists (Knox & Simpson, 2004). A patient oftentimes needs to go through several processes in the hospital. A hospital needs to integrate this separate collection of specialists in a sequential order.

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Page | 30 information sharing the commanding officer cannot continue coordination. He is highly dependent on his team members. Going even further, the more interdependent the task, the more teams have to rely on coordination of these tasks (Marks et al., 2001).

This research also confirms the dynamic nature of integrating activities. Bruns (2015) and Okhuysen & Bechky (2009) mentioned coordination as a dynamic process rather than static mechanisms. This research particularly shows that team members integrate their contributions several times during an incident. They communicate their contributions each time they encounter an emergent situation to subsequently focus on their own task again. This is also in line with Marks et al., (2001:368) who note that coordination occurs in different phases. Different to their study, however, is that they also identified coordination mechanisms that occurred throughout several phases (e.g. interpersonal processes). This study clearly distinguish coordination mechanisms that occur in different phases. For example, scheduling only occurs in the first phase, while contant information sharing only derives form the third phase, operation at the incident.

Gray (2000) noted the importance of knowledge management for the sharing and pooling of specialized knowledge. This study shows how an organization establishes specialized knowledge into protocols and excercises. Boh et al. (2007) argued that the sharing and pooling of specialized knowledge could lead to learning and productivity enhancement, but did not specified how this is caused. This study specifies that protocols significantly shorten the amount of communication and it reduces the likelihood of miscommunication. The use of protocols made sure that operations were less ambiguous, and therefore, it was easier for team members to communicate the specialized knowledge. Furthermore, the establishment of previous mistakes in exercises ensured that next operation were running more fluently. Learning within and across teams was only possible when knowledge was transferred by individuals. Subsequently, this can be explained by Kirschner et al. (2009), who already mentioned that team members can learn within and across groups when knowledge and information is divided across individuals.

6 Conclusion

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Page | 31 for a very short time. For example, firemen made use of very short sentences, sign or glances to shorten the communication. Although it was required for the firemen to integrate their contributions several times in the process, spending too much time on it could be detrimental for the operation. Most of the integrating activities occurred at the beginning of the process. For example the task division was already clear in advance and a plan of attack was created before the firemen approached a fire. However, some integrating activities were highly situational and contextual dependent and emerged during the operation. In fact, for each emergent situation firemen had to share their actions with team members and particularly with their commanding officer, since he needed information in order to coordinate firemen and other emergency services. An overview of the timing of integrating activities can be found in figure 2.

6.1 Implications

This research has considerable contributions for literature on timing of integrating activities in HROs. Bruns (2015) already described coordination as a dynamic process, where activities temporal unfold over time, this research sheds a new light on the integrating activities in this process. Where recent literature frequently talks about coordination mechanisms (e.g. Thompson (1967)), Bruns (2015) framed it as integrating activities instead. Although early literature highlighted the static nature of these coordination mechanisms, more recent scholars found a more dynamic nature of these mechanisms (Okhuysen & Bechky, 2009). What remained unaddressed in literature though, was a specification of when integrating activities in this dynamic process occur and how long they take. This research specifies different integrating activities in the process of goal accomplishment by providing a timeline with different phases. Hence, it shows for example that integrating activities occur throughout the whole process of goal accomplishment.

Moreover, many scholars noted the importance of coordination in organizations today, but I deepened the understanding of coordination by analyzing an HRO by means of a case study. Weick et al. (2008) noted how HROs are created and why they work, but literature did not address how the implementation is specified in terms of coordination. Basically, Weick et al. (2008:32) indicate that important aspect of HRO activities still remain unarticulated. This research is at least one step to an understanding how HROs coordinate their activities. Besides, the case study method taken in this inquiry provides a basis for theoretical generalizability (Eisenhardt, 1989). Therefore, this single case study provides a theoretical basis for the literature of coordination in HROs.