This case study maps the perceived collaboration between public, private, and volunteer organizations during maritime crisis work, with a substantive focus on communication, information flow, and distribution of activities. The exercise studied, the NORD exercise 2016, was held in the far north in Norway, April 2016. It was estimated to be Europe’s most extensive exercise in 2016.
The exercise was multi-scenario based, and all together 1,500 actors participated. The members of the research group were there solely as researchers and observed the exercise. In addition, 15 semi-structured interviews were conducted. The 15 interviewees represented different stakeholders such as the police, information officer at social centre, hospital personnel, aircraft personnel, Coast Guard (NoCGV) personnel, helicopter pilot, and security staff. The data were analysed through deductive coding and divided into categories selected on the basis of relevance and purpose. Passages indicating aspects of information flow and communication, intra-organization focus and professionalism, size and distribution of activity, and finally, realism, were highlighted from the data set.
The philosophy behind the exercise was that 'everyone can participate and everyone should get something from it'. This desired outcome led to an extreme version of several scenarios and technicalities in nine different phases. We organized our observations and interviews into four categories to elaborate on the collaboration between different actors. From these, the key findings showed an intra-organizational focus, a predominance of drills, and different informal exercises instead of a cohesive exercise. This made evaluation difficult. Reasons for the fragmentation of the exercise appear to be the size of the exercise and the script.
Generalization of findings is problematic as this study involved only one exercise. However, this study has national significance, as it involved 22 public, private, and volunteer stakeholder organizations.
The study shows how collaboration fails as an effect of strict agendas and scripts to accomplish an impressive but complex and oversized exercise. Inter-organisational collaboration could be stimulated by a less controlled open-ended exercise. Such open-ended exercises have been designed and studied onshore, but are rare in maritime contexts. Asymmetries in the scenarios, repeated and evaluated exercise procedures, and room for testing different strategies can preferably be included by a maritime exercise such as the one under investigation. It is plausible that such an exercise can result in new thinking patterns, which can be useful in complex and difficult to manage events that require an ability to shift strategies.