Covid-19 krisen har påverkat hela världen på flera olika sätt däribland organisationer och HR-utövare. Syftet med studien var att få en fördjupad förståelse för de utmaningar HR-utövare upplevt i samband med Covid-19 krisen och deras upplevelse av hur tidigare erfarenheter och organisatorisk krisberedskap påverkat utmaningarna. Covid-19 krisen skapade en unik möjlighet att undersöka HR i förhållande till krissituationer. Studien genomfördes med nio HR-utövare från en och samma region, som helt eller delvis arbetade med strategiska HR-frågor. För att samla in empiri tillämpades en kvalitativ metod där semistrukturerade intervjuer genomfördes, intervjuerna analyserades genom en tematisk analys där fyra övergripande teman med tillhörande subteman utformades. Resultatet visade på utmaningar i att ställa om och ha ett kristänk, kommunicera och sprida information, säkerställa en god arbetsmiljö, bibehålla effektivitet, hantera ovisshet och oro samt att se till att organisationen var bemannade trots ökade sjuktal. Resultatet visade även att erfarenheter och organisationens krisberedskap på något sätt hade påverkat respondenternas upplevelser av vilka utmaningar de sett och för hur de hanterats. Teori och tidigare forskning som presenterats har lagt fokus på krisberedskap, krishantering och HRs roll vid krisarbete. Tidigare forskning om HR-utövares upplevelser av utmaningar kopplat till krissituationer har däremot inte gått att finna, därmed kan studiens resultat ha bidragit till nya perspektiv inom området. Slutsatserna som dras är att tidigare erfarenheter och krisberedskap kan ha betydelse för hur HR-utövare upplevt utmaningarna i Covid-19 krisen och att utmaningar kan vara svåra att undvika trots att förberedelse och erfarenhet finns. / The Covid-19 crisis has affected the world in many different ways, including organizations and HR practitioners. The purpose of the study was to gain a deeper understanding of the challenges that HR practitioners experienced in relation to the Covid-19 crisis and their experience of how previous experiences and crisis preparedness may have affected the challenges. The Covid-19 crisis created a unique opportunity to examine HR in relation to crisis situations. The study was conducted with nine HR practitioners in the same region, who worked entirely or partly with strategic HR issues. To gather empirical data, a qualitative method was used in which semi-structured interviews were conducted, the interviews were analyzed through a thematic analysis in which four overall themes and related subthemes were designed. The results showed challenges regarding adapting and having a crisis attitude, communicate and disseminating information, ensuring and providing a good working environment, maintaining efficiency, managing uncertainty and concerns, and ensuring that the organization was staffed despite increasing sick leave rates. The results also showed that experiences and the organization's crisis preparedness in some way hade affected the challenges the respondents saw and how they were handled. Theory and previous research that has been presented have focused on crisis preparedness, crisis management and HR's role in crisis work. Previous research on HR practitioners' experiences of challenges linked to crisis situations have not been found, the result of the study may therefore have given new perspectives to the field. The conclusions that can be drawn is that past experiences and crisis preparedness can have an impact on the challenges that arised in the Covid-19 crisis and that challenges are difficult to avoid for HR practitioners despite preparation and experience.

Being prepared for different situations can be decisive for how tangible a crisis becomes. With the security policy transformation that the world is facing, crisis preparedness is becoming an increasingly popular topic. This essay is about young adults' attitudes towards crisis preparedness.The goal of the essay is to understand the individual's reasoning regarding crisis preparedness and how it is affected by different spatial perceptions. This enables new knowledge about how young adults reason and what characteristics spatial perceptions can imply. Spatial perceptions in this study are mainly linked to rural and urban areas. The study is based on previous research and the empirical material has been collected through semi-structured interviews. The results of the study showed that there is some connection between strong crisis preparedness and rural areas. Also, the result showed that young adults' attitude to crisis preparedness is something that they dissociate fromconsidering they don’t believe that anything will affect them, even though they think crisis preparedness is an important subject. According to the analysis, it’s the perspective of responsibility and different spatial perceptions that influenced their reasoning regarding crisis preparedness measures. The conclusion of this study is that rural areas are involuntarily more resilient than an urban area, and that preparedness measures would be more normalized if the topic were raised more often. This may be relevant for responsible authorities, communicative websites or media to enable better communication and knowledge information to individuals. The essay also shows that there is a need for further studies.

Since the end of the Cold War, security and security threats have transcended beyond the traditional security aspects due to changed global interactions in the facets of economic, political, diplomatic and even domestic policies of individual states. The ongoing war between Russia and Ukraine has not only heightened defence and security concerns in Europe and globally but has also revived the Cold War security tensions in some way necessitating an understanding of how contemporary security threats and crisis preparedness are perceived by civilians in this modern day and age.  Building from Ontological Security theory which holds that when an individual's sense of self and stability is challenged, they experience enormous anxiety, this study examines the attitudes and perceptions of the youths (many of whom were born and raised in the post-Cold War era) on security threats as well as their knowledge and trust in the government's civil defence and crisis preparedness in Växjö, Sweden. The study's analysis concludes that, despite being barely informed on civil defence crisis preparedness, Växjö's youths regard the ongoing war in Ukraine as less threatening to their ontological security but rather other human security issues due to factors like the war's narrative bearing little relevance, youth's media scepticism and refraining from negative news. Furthermore, the findings present a dramatic range of trust among the youths in the government's competence to handle emergencies, reflecting on crisis preparedness knowledge among the youths in Växjö.

This thesis demonstrates that it is paramount to develop crisis-preparedness strategies and practices based on empirical research, in order to improve an organisation‘s ability to manage effectively and, ultimately to survive, a high-profile crisis event. Although there are many high-profile crises that have been managed successfully by applying strategies to make organisations more resilient, there is still considerable confusion and uncertainty about the way these crises have been evaluated and the way their success can be measured in relation to other crises.There are no international crisis-preparedness standards in relation to a set of crisis outcomes indicators that could be applied. This lack of empirically proven relationships between crisis-preparedness strategies and their effect on crisis outcomes makes the identification of effective strategies very difficult. Case studies, anecdotal evidence and a limited number of empirical crisis management studies (i.e. effect on share price) suggest a great variability in the effectiveness of certain strategies and practices that have produced inconclusive results. This study analyses the strategies variability to advance knowledge in the field of crisis management. (For complete abstract open document)

In the theoretical section of my master thesis I focused especially on the role of the health services within the crisis management. In particular chapters I tried to write down a simple and comprehensive summary of the role of the healthcare within the integrated rescue system, I dealt with the function of the Ministry of Health, the hierarchy of the healthcare in solving the emergencies, the valid law and the crisis preparedness in the healthcare. In one part of my master thesis I also mentioned the importance of testing the professional and practical readiness of particular units of the integrated rescue system by emergency exercises and the characterization of their individual types. Of course I could not omit the crisis planning and a brief description of some chosen types of plans that are used during emergencies.The goal of my thesis was to map the preparedness of the South-Bohemian Region inpatient healthcare facilities for possible emergencies in the respective facility or out of it and the medical staff´s awareness of possible risks and of possible solving the emergencies in the respective facility.In the practical section of my master thesis I used the methods of quantitative research. The technique of this research is based on the questionnaire survey with bounded, half-bounded and open questions. The questionnaire designated for medical staff consists of 23 questions. The first three questions are focused on the characterization of the respondents; the remaining twenty questions are to find out the stock of knowledge related to the crisis preparedness. The respondent gets one point for each correct answer to a knowledge question. This part of the questionnaire is composed as a multiple-choice test and one can get 43 points at most. The questions were created using the crisis plans that are valid in the České Budějovice Hospital. After our mutual agreement I took over the questionnaire designated for healthcare facilities from Mgr. Jolana Němečková, who analysed the crisis preparedness of the South-Moravian Region healthcare facilities in her master thesis. I did not change the method of questionnaire analysis either to enable a subsequent benchmarking of the results in the South-Moravian Region and the South-Bohemian Region. The questionnaire consists of 28 questions. One can get one point for a dichotomous question and two points for a closed-ended question. The highest possible score was 22 points. The results of the questionnaire survey for medical staff show that the preparedness of the České Budějovice Hospital´s medical staff is at a very good level. The average score was 37 out of 43 points and that complies with the classification 2. When analysing the relation of the preparedness with the highest achieved education level and the preparedness with the length of the practice, the positive correlation was confirmed. That means that the higher achieved education and the longer practice, the more was the knowledge of the respective area. The results of the questionnaire survey for the inpatient healthcare facilities management are not so positive. The average score was 12.3 and that complies almost with the classification 4, which means a bad preparedness. In comparison with the South-Moravian Region healthcare facilities, the preparedness in the South-Bohemian Region is one level worse. For the purposes of my master thesis I set four hypotheses that were proved or falsified during a follow-up statistical assessment. Hypotheses No. 1 and No. 2 cannot be accepted. Hypotheses No. 3 and No. 4 were accepted.

Problem: Crisis and crisis preparedness are being increasingly discussed within the business world. Especially now, when the current pandemic triggered maybe the most significant wave of economic downturns the globe is facing ever. Nevertheless, the Manufacturing Industry (MI) was severely impacted due to its dependence on the e.g., supply chain aspect. Therefore, it was interesting to explore how MO’s challenge crisis by investigating how they prepare for a crisis, i.e., crisis preparedness. A review of the topic within the scientific papers shows a lack of knowledge regarding crisis preparedness within MO’s. Purpose: This thesis aimed to increase how MO’s prepare for a crisis and explore what measures (actions) they use to prepare for a crisis. Method: This thesis followed a qualitative research approach (inductive) with a multiple case study design approach. The data were collected by three semi-structured interviews with three major organizations, where all the participants had a long experience with crisis management. Later on, the collected data were analyzed thematically (thematic analysis approach). Empirical findings: The empirical findings showed that organizations need to consider four main aspects when building a solid crisis preparation structure. These aspects consist of: (1) careful understanding of the environment the crisis occurred in, (2) possess extensive experience dealing with a crisis, (3) scenarios practices, (4) strong communication and transparency system, and finally (5) fostering crisis preparedness culture within the organization. All these aspects/skills must be acquired within the crisis management team (CMT). However, the communication aspect stood out more than the other aspects, which indicate the importance of communication within the organization. Contribution: This thesis contributes theoretically by emphasizing the essentiality of the communication aspect and its positive impact on a crisis preparedness process within organizations. Likewise, from a managerial perspective, this thesis suggests that organizations should implement a crisis communication hub, where all departments within an organization possess all necessary tools to help them survive any crisis through an effective communication system. / <p>Confidential</p>

This bachelor thesis aims to investigate household electricity supply and demand during a crisis. Both quantitative and qualitative aspects of crisis preparedness and household electricity demand are considered. In this thesis, the subject is studied by conducting simulations of electricity consumption as well as retrieving theoretical framework and concepts from literature and interviews. Emphasis will be on how the cost of a lithium-ion battery storage, that supplies households with electricity during power outages, is affected by households’ behavioural patterns regarding electricity use. To estimate household electricity demand, data are utilized from a stochastic model which simulates household members electricity usage patterns. Three different scenarios are modelled, representing varying household electricity reliance, across different lengths of power outages. The first scenario illustrates households’ normal electricity demand. The second scenario represents a changed behaviour pattern leading to a reduced electricity demand. The third and last scenario concerns a case where households with adequate crisis preparedness are taken into account, resulting in a linearly scaled down electricity demand. Gaps in the distribution of responsibility between municipalities and households concerning crisis preparedness are brought up and discussed. The thesis highlights households with unique needs that risk not getting the support needed from the municipality in case of a crisis. The result shows that meeting the electricity demand for Knivsta urban area during a power outage by utilizing a battery storage would be very costly for the municipality. Despite the cost reduction from decreased electricity consumption, large investments are still required. A battery storage system on that scale might not be the only nor most optimal solution for crisis preparedness. Instead, opportunities are found by challenging prevailing norms of constant electricity supply and increased resilience among households. Lastly, possible solutions less costly for the municipality are presented.

In a time where crises are more present, risk communication plays an important role in equipping citizens with information and knowledge on how to prepare themselves. This study examines how citizens in the municipality Strängnäs perceive and interpret the municipality's risk communication, particularly focused on the information folder "Be prepared for a crisis or social disturbance". Through two focus group interviews, eight citizens of different ages have participated to discuss the content of the folder and reflect on topics such as crises and home preparedness. The study's theoretical framework is based on Ulrich Beck's theory of risk society and protection motivation theory, as well as previous research in areas such as risk communication and risk perception. The results show that the folder is generally perceived positively by the participants of the study, though there are some differences such as preferences on the amount of text and design which could be explained by their different coping styles. The results emphasize the folders’ significant role in making citizens more aware of their own home preparedness. Despite the concern about crises being higher today, the concern does not necessarily correspond to the participants level of preparedness which can be understood by a lack of motivation or an excessive trust in others. The research provides valuable insights to enhance the municipality's risk communication, aiming to raise awareness and preparedness levels among citizens. However, it is important to note that the results of the study are specific to the limited group of participants and require further research to be able to be generalized and understood in a wider context of risk communication.

SAMMANFATTNING Datum: 2024-05-29 Nivå: Kandidatuppsats i Företagsekonomi, 15 hp Institution: Akademin för Ekonomi, Samhälle och Teknik, Mälardalens Universitet Författare: Klara Helin Sofia Skohg                    (02/12/09) (99/11/08) Titel: Den kommunala synen på kriser Handledare: Magnus Hoppe Nyckelord: Organisatorisk kris, Krishantering, Krisperspektiv, Krisberedskap, Kommunala kriser Forskningsfrågor: Hur återspeglas det funktionalistiska och/eller meningsskapande perspektivet i organisationernas sätt att se på, förebygga och hantera kriser? Vad kan respektive perspektiv bidra med för att stärka kommuners krishantering? Syfte: Arbetet syftar till att utforska hur och om det funktionalistiska och/eller meningsskapande perspektivet präglar kommunala organisationers syn på- och hantering av kriser. Metod: Arbetet har genomförts med hjälp av kvalitativa metoder och ett abduktivt förhållningssätt där metoderna har utformats utifrån det teoretiska ställningstagandet om att synen på organisatoriska kriser kan beskrivas utifrån två perspektiv. Arbetets forskningsdesign har haft ett utforskande syfte och ämnet har utforskats genom en fallstudie hos en kommunal organisation i Sverige. Data har samlats in genom semistrukturerade intervjuer som sedan analyserats utifrån en tematisk analysmetod. Slutsats: Slutsatsen som kan dras utifrån den genomförda fallstudien är att det meningsskapande perspektivet i stor utsträckning återspeglas i kommunens sätt att se på, och definiera, kriser. Synen anses däremot inte vara total då arbetet identifierat hur erfarna medarbetare visat på en funktionalistisk syn på kriser som externa händelser med en stabsmetodisk hantering. Kommunens syn på förebyggande av kriser kan främst anses präglas av ett mentalt meningsskapande förhållningssätt. Vissa arbetssätt och traditioner återspeglar däremot inte den mentala inställningen och kan liknas mer vid det funktionalistiska förhållningssättet. Det parallella nyttjandet av de två perspektiven skulle kunna förklara deltagarnas uppfattning av att den valda kommunen har en sverigeledande position i avseende på krisarbete. Slutsatsen som kan dras gällande vad respektive perspektiv kan bidra med för att stärka kommunala organisationers krishantering är att krisarbetet kan anses framgångsrikt när de två perspektiven parallellt genomsyrar organisationen. Studien påvisar däremot även vikten av att det finns en samstämmighet bland medarbetare kring vid vilka tillfällen karakteristiska egenskaper kring respektive perspektiv bör komma till uttryck för att stärka hanteringen. / ABSTRACT Date: 2024-05-29 Level: Bachelor thesis in Business Administration, 15 cr Institution: School of Business, Society and Engineering, Mälardalen University Authors: Klara Helin Sofia Skohg                 (02/12/09) (99/11/08) Title: The municipal view on crisis Supervisor: Magnus Hoppe Keywords: Organizational crisis, Crisis management, Crisis perspective, Crisis preparedness, Municipal crises Research questions: How is the traditional and/or social constructionist perspective reflected in organizations’ ways of perceiving, preventing, and managing crises? What can each perspective contribute to strengthen municipalities’ crisis management? Purpose: The aim of the study is to explore how and if the functionalist and/or sensemaking perspective characterizes municipal organizations' view of and handling of crises. Method: The study has been carried out using qualitative methods and an abductive approach where the methods have been designed based on the theoretical standpoint that the view of organizational crises can be described through two perspectives. The study's research design has had an exploratory purpose and the topic has been explored through a case study at a municipal organization in Sweden. Data has been collected through semi-structured interviews which were then analyzed through a thematic analysis method. Conclusion: The conclusion that can be drawn from the completed case study is that the sensemaking perspective is largely reflected in the municipality's way of looking at, and defining, crises. The perspective, on the other hand, is not considered to be total as the study identified how experienced employees showed a functionalist view of crises as external events with a staff-methodical approach. The municipality's approach to crisis prevention can primarily be considered characterized by a mental sensemaking approach. However, certain traditions and ways of working do not reflect the mental attitude and can be more likened to the functionalist perspective. The parallel use of the two perspectives could explain the participants' perception that the chosen municipality has a leading position in Sweden with regard to crisis work. The conclusion that can be drawn regarding what each perspective can contribute to strengthen municipal organizations' crisis management is that it can be considered successful when the two perspectives permeate the organization in parallel. On the other hand, the study also demonstrated the importance of there being a consensus among employees as to when characteristic features of each perspective should be expressed in order to strengthen crisis management.

The content of this thesis is an analysis of crisis preparedness organizations in the field of education. It consists of a theoretical - methodological part and a practical part. The theoretical part discusses the specifics and peculiarities of crisis management, and analyzes the objectives and nature of crisis preparedness organizations of this type. The practical part presents the current research shows the strengths and weaknesses, as well as the threats and opportunities, which significantly limits the status and level of crisis preparedness of schools surveyed. The penultimate section focuses on the design methodology to ensure crisis preparedness in schools. Conclusion then summarizes and evaluates the investigation. For the sake of better illustration is the work of the Annex attached to the issue more closely.