Between Peacetime Structures and Wartime Demands : Continuity, Flexibility and Sensemaking in the Swedish Fire and Rescue Services

The reconstruction of Swedish civil defence has expanded the responsibilities of municipal Fire and Rescue Services (F&RS), requiring them to prepare for heightened alert while maintaining everyday emergency response. While crisis management research emphasises the importance of balancing continuity and flexibility, less is known about how such demands are interpreted and managed in practice during periods of institutional transition. This thesis examines how rescue chiefs within Swedish F&RS make sense of and navigate demands for continuity and flexibility in the context of ongoing civil defence reforms. Drawing on sensemaking theory, the study is based on semistructured interviews with eight rescue chiefs. The findings demonstrate a growing institutional imbalance in how continuity and flexibility are governed. While continuity is strengthened through bureaucracy, regulation and administrative control, civil defence demands remain vague. Increased administrative burden and resource scarcity lead to redistribution of attention rather than expanded capacity. This results in local leaders having to manage competing demands by reinterpreting existing structures and priorities through sensemaking. Preparedness to heightened alert is therefore constructed as plausible rather than optimal, raising concerns about long-term sustainability.