Emergency preparedness management and civil defence in Sweden : An all-hazards approach for developed countries' supply chains

Sammanfattning: This thesis addresses the evolving role of supply chain networks in the structures of the emergency preparedness planning. The thesis focuses on the management of planning in emergency preparedness and civil defence in Sweden. Various levels of planning are combined with insights from business and network theories to understand how the civil society actors involved meet demands imposed by complex emergencies and changing threats to civil society. Empirically, the study is based on five case studies that primarily use interviews and secondary materials from observations, documents and research. The combined findings and analyses of the embedded case studies are integrated into a conceptual whole (called kappa) that explains how the roles and relations of actors in emergency planning need to develop over time. The most important finding of this study is that civil society in developed countries must be organised in a completely different way than today to meet the changing demands. The all-hazards approach to planning offers civil society actors a rationale for entering into different networks. The supply chain networks can provide structure to the different types of planning. Moreover, this study shows that civil society actors have strategic capabilities for meeting threats, but these should be addressed in roles and tasks for the safety and security readiness. This capability can be achieved at different levels of planning (tactical, operational, strategic) and in different relations (civil, commercial, military, voluntary), which explains the significant differences between the emergency preparedness management in different response operations. It is suggested that a lack of political willingness or policy readiness to all-hazards planning provides substantial choices in interpreting the role and task of the emergency preparedness management system, through which supply chains networks mainly become a contextualized condition. Two underlying preparedness views are identified that contribute to the planning of actors and their relations when involved in the Swedish safety and security readiness. The civil defence planning for developing civil military relations is considered in networks for structuring, managing and coordinating these relations, on the one hand. The emergency preparedness and all-hazards approach planning, for managing the commercial, voluntary and individual relations, and for delimiting the networks into manageable nets, on the other hand. This thesis contributes to the current understanding of emergency preparedness management and civil defence planning using an all-hazards-planning strategy as objective instead of a fragmented planning objective (in separated systems). This understanding is linked to the evolving role of the supply chain network as the solution to the urgent need of structure of the fragmented preparedness planning to meet the increasingly changing demands. An all-hazards-planning approach helps to describe the managing and planning structures and how supply chain networks need to develop into the preparedness systems as delimited structures over time. Moreover, this thesis contributes to the emergency planning literature by paying attention to a different type of planning for safety and security in two ways: first, by specifying what essential capabilities of civil society actors are linked to the operationalisation of planning; second, by providing insights into civil military coordination along networks over time. Rather than defining the essential differences between actors in the networks, including the military and civil actors (which refers to public authorities and the commercial and voluntary sectors in Sweden), this thesis suggests that civil-military relations public-private collaboration and voluntary involvement in the supply chain network are essential capabilities for any developed country to deal with the risky availability of essential resources. By showing how this different preparedness planning is described and located over time, this thesis discusses emergency preparedness and network theory, all-hazards planning, applicability to other developed countries, safety and security strategies, and the relations among civil society actors to examine the dimensions in supply chain network structures that can support the planning.