Supporting improvisation work in inter-organizational crisis management

Improvisation is necessary when planned decision-making as the main managerial activity does not fit the conditions the practice provides. In these cases, information technology should not just automate planned and structured decisions, but support improvisational practice. In this contribution we present an empirical study about the improvisation work in scenarios of medium to large power outages in Germany. Our focus is on inter-organizational cooperation practices, thus we examined the cooperation of fire departments, police, public administration, electricity infrastructure operators and citizens. Our empirical material allows to describe reasons and conditions for improvisation. Our resulting recommendations address the support of aggregation and visualization of information, a necessary individualization of information compositions, options for collaborative situation assessment, requirements for informal and formal communication, and accessibility of information resources.

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