The mass-migration of refugees in the fall 2015 posed an immense humanitarian and logistical challenge: exhausted from their week-long journeys, refugees arrived in Vienna in need of care, shelter, food, medical aid, and onward transport. The refugee crisis was managed by an emerging polycentric and inter-sectoral collective of organizations. In this paper, we investigate how, during such a situation, leaders of these organizations made decisions in concert with each other and hence sustained the collective's capacity to act collectively. We ask: what was the logic of decision-making that orchestrated collective action during the crisis? In answering this question, we make the following contribution: departing from March's logics of consequences and appropriateness as well as Weick's work on sensemaking during crisis, we introduce an alternative logic that informed decision-making: the logic of tact. With this concept we (a) offer a better understanding of how managers make decisions under the condition of bounded rationality and the simultaneous transgression of their institutional identity in situations of crisis; and we (b) show that in decision-making under duress cognition is neither ahead of action, nor is action ahead of cognition; rather, tact explicates the rapid switching between cognition and action, orchestrating decision-making through this interplay.

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The European common currency, the euro, is in crisis. Bad news about indebted governments and economic recession has continuously outperformed itself since 2009/2010 and kept the European Union and its member states in suspense. It is up to them to combat the crisis. This master thesis deals with the European sovereign debt crisis (“euro crisis”) and tries to allow a better understanding of how the crisis has been managed by governments at the European level. A special focus is put on decision-making in the crisis, posing the research question “How can the decision-making of the EU in the euro crisis be understood?”. To solve this research problem, three different approaches are applied: liberal intergovernmentalism, historical institutionalism and cognitive institutionalism. Each of them adds different aspects to the analysis, gives answers from its respective point of view and thereby widens the overall picture that evolves. The design of the thesis is a case study with the euro crisis as a special case of decision-making and crisis management. Official documents and statements, expert interviews, scholastic, expert, and journalistic analyses are employed as basic research material. It has been uncovered that, powerful states, especially Germany and France, have bargaining advantages during crisis decision-making. However, the decision-making is constrained by institutional aspects (rules, norms and values). Stress factors deriving from the crisis situation facilitate group dynamics that appeared at least partially during the ongoing crisis.

En kris såsom Coronapandemin är en extrem situation som skiljer sig från normala förhållanden och kräver att rätt beslut tas. Det sätter press på chefen i en organisation att fatta ett beslut som många gånger är improviserat, dels på grund av tidspress och stress, dels på grund av att varje kris är unik där det är otydligare vad som är rätt och fel beslut. Det beslut som chefen tar under en kris kan många gånger skilja sig från hur beslutet hade tagits under en normal situation. Bör chefen göra mer analyser före beslutet tas eftersom krisen är så pass komplex eller bör chefen i stället förlita sig mer på sin magkänsla eftersom krisens komplexitet är alltför omfattande att göra en analys av? Det är en fråga som har fått mycket uppmärksamhet inom beslutsforskning, inte minst under extrema situationer och kriser såsom en pandemi. Syftet med denna studie är att öka förståelsen för hur chefer hanterar det improviserande beslutsfattandet som uppstår under en kris. I studien sätts analytiska beslut i kontrast till beslut baserade på intuition eller magkänsla, men öppnar samtidigt upp för en möjlighet att båda kan kombineras. Intervjuer har gjorts med chefer från olika branscher runtom i Sverige för att öka förståelsen för krisbeslut under Coronapandemin. Studien visar att de flesta chefer använder analys eller kombinerar analys med intuition. Endast ett fåtal chefer tenderar att enbart använda intuition. Vidare framkommer det att hur chefen betraktar krisen får en effekt på vilka beslut som tas. Betraktas pandemin enbart som ett hot väljer chefen att fokusera på interna aktiviteter som ämnar lindra pandemins negativa påverkan i organisationen och stödja medarbetarna. Väljer chefen att även betrakta pandemin som en möjlighet så öppnar det upp för externa aktiviteter som kan dra nytta av pandemin, såsom att expandera verksamheten till och bredda kontaktnätverken för nya affärsmöjligheter. I de allra flesta beslut framkommer det att de baseras på ett nära samspel och kommunikation med andra aktörer. Det är sällan som ett beslut tas utan någon som helst kommunikation med någon annan. Denna kommunikation tycks ha motarbetat de negativa effekter som olika biaser medför i besluten. Exempelvis är cheferna mindre partiska när andras perspektiv tas med i beaktning före ett beslut tas. Slutligen tror de flesta cheferna att denna pandemi har gjort dem till en bättre beslutsfattare och vissa tror att tidigare stressfulla situationer och kriser har varit till stor hjälp även under Coronapandemin. / A crisis such as the Covid-19 pandemic is an extreme situation that differs from day-to-day situations and require that the right decisions be made. Such extreme situations put pressure on managers in organizations to make decisions that many times are improvised, in part because of time pressure and stress, and in part because each crisis is unique and makes it harder to know what the right decision is. The decisions managers make during a crisis are often different from how those decisions would have been made during a normal situation. Should the manager analyse the situation before the decision is made because the crisis is so complex, or should the manager instead follow his or her gut feeling because the crisis’ complexity is too overwhelming to possibly analyse? Such a question has received much attention in research of decision making, not least under extreme situations and crisis such as a pandemic. The purpose of this study is to increase the understanding of how managers deal with the improvised decision making that occur during a crisis. This study contrasts analytical decisions to intuitive decisions, while at the same time opens for the possibility that both styles of decision making could be combined. Interviews have been made with managers from different industries throughout Sweden to increase the understanding of crisis decision making during the Covid-19 pandemic. The study shows that most managers use analysis or combine analysis with intuition. Few managers tend to use intuition only. Furthermore, this study shows that the way the manager views the crisis can affect the decisions that he or she makes. If the manager views the merely as a threat, he or she will tend to focus on internal activities aimed at reducing the negative effects caused by the pandemic on the organisation and their members. If the manager chooses also to view the pandemic as an opportunity, it can lead to external activities that can take advantage of the pandemic, by for example expanding their business and business network. The study shows that most decisions have been made through communication and interplay with other actors. Only few decisions have been made without any communication or interplay whatsoever. The fact that most decisions have been made through communication with others seem to have reduced the effect of different biases. Managers have become less partial when other people’s perspectives have been included in the decisions. Finally, most managers believe that this pandemic has made them a better decision maker, and some believe that prior stressful situations and crisis have greatly assisted them during this pandemic.