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Introduction
The technosphere created by society and the way of managing the economy became powerful factors of influence on nature, which caused a high degree of aggravation of the contradictions between society’s needs and the natural environment. The vulnerability of the world community to natural disasters is growing: the number of people affected by them increases every year (Zhou et al., 2017). The increase in the potential threat of emergency situations is also due to the fact that a large number of potentially dangerous objects are located on the territory of modern developed states. In the nearest future, the vectors of the national anti-crisis management system development will be determined by the forecasted hazards and threats of a social, technology, and military nature.
The foundation of the anti-crisis management system in case of emergency situations consists of established management bodies within functional and territorial subsystems created during the elimination of emergency situations, groups, and headquarters for fulfilling operational tasks, which, in turn, requires high professionalism of those employed in this area. Canton (2018) provides a list of recommended professional competencies in the discussed sphere. First, economic and legal regulations are to be developed to ensure that the country’s population is under protection from emergencies. Second, appropriate preventive programs are to be utilized to provide the functioning of institutions, enterprises, and organizations. Third, a competent specialist should be able to forecast and analyze the socioeconomic aspect of emergencies. Fourth, emergency management implies preparedness for the required actions in case of emergency on behalf of all responsible bodies. Finally, the general area of expertise for such specialists consists of ensuring the safety and well-being of citizens, institutions, and enterprises affected by an emergency situation.
The main features of the functioning of control systems in emergency situations are that the problem – emergency – develops unexpectedly and suddenly. When it arises, the management system faces tasks that are not characteristic of the static mode of operation of the organization and its past experience. Countermeasures must be taken urgently, but the usual order of management does not allow this for many reasons (Zhou et al., 2017). First, the current work plans do not correspond to the new situation. New tasks arise, and other information that should be studied and analyzed comes in a stream. Thus, the competencies acquired within the framework of general management education, even skills of usual corporate crisis management, are not sufficient to perform the functions of emergency management. Accordingly, it seems necessary to study the opinion of perceptions dominant among emergency management authorities concerning activities associated with control of entry through the requirement of a university credential. This determines the research question: do perceptions and intentions of emergency management leaders at the state level and in frames of professional community promote activities associated with occupational closure as part of the furtherance of the profession of emergency management?
It should be noted that the dissertation mainly concerns the response stage of the emergency management cycle, considering it as an integral category, while the daily process is not less important. In emergency situations, management of measures and works starts from the moment when an emergency happens, and its finishing is implied only after the situation elimination. As a rule, it is carried out in frames of daily cycles, and each of them includes the following elements: revealing, collection, and systematization of data regarding the situation; analysis and evaluation of the case; formulating of conclusions and proposals for the decision on necessary measures; making decisions, as well as clarifying and communicating tasks to those who are responsible for their performance. This implies, in particular, interaction organization and agreeing the forces’ actions and means. The dissertation does not consider to the true extent that the management functions content and their cyclical nature are inherent in the conduct of emergency rescue operations based on the systematic approach. If the situation changes suddenly, functions and their implementation can be modified, and the responsible bodies will take actions according to the specifics of the case. Accordingly, this requires advanced situational skills and a certain degree of soft skills in emergency managers.
These experts should be capable of making an analysis of the situation in terms of elements array; among them, the core ones are the scale and nature of the emergency development, the degree of danger to people, hazardous zones boundaries, along with the forecast concerning their expansion. It is necessary to make a correct evaluation of urgent work regarding the types, volumes, and conditions; moreover, the need for forces and funds sufficient to complete the job quickly is needed. In the process of analyzing the situation, specialists make a comparison of the requirements for means and forces for carrying out work with their current availability and capabilities, make appropriate calculations, analyze their use options and identify the best one. Suggestions made by specialists are systematized and used in the process of decision-making.
Interaction between subordinate units, as well as with special units of other departments, is organized when making a decision and is carried out in the course of work. First of all, it is applied when rescuing people, localizing and extinguishing fires, eliminating accidents at utilities and energy systems, preparation of bypass ways and roads for the entry of forces, and the evacuation of victims. Thus, the competence of emergency managers is a multi-element system in which all skills must be interconnected and well developed since the safety of the population, various facilities, and, to a certain extent, national security, in general, depends on the actions of these specialists (Bullock et al., 2017). This tendency, in turn, points toward a certain eclosed aspect of emergency management in the context of its furtherance.
Literature Review
The literature review starts with a discussion of the very concept of profession and professionalization, with a gradual transition to the definition of emergency management profession. However, too much attention is paid to the definition of the profession as such, as well as division of labor, starting from the ancient paradigms, which seems unnecessary in the scope of the current research. At the same time, a detailed analysis of the understanding of the control of entry through university credentials should be noted as a positive feature of the presented literature review, as this topic is highly relevant to the research question.
The issue of the jurisdiction of emergency management is covered in detail, to the detriment of the overall contents of the literature review, while it would be rational to pay more attention to the specifics of emergency management skills and their core differences from overall managerial competence. It would also be beneficial to consider some features of military leadership, the trend of its application in modern business organizations in times of crisis, and compare these features with the ones inherent in emergency leadership to analyze the expediency and possibilities of attracting experts with military leadership background to work in emergency management organizations.
The purpose of the literature review is to demonstrate familiarity with what is already known on the relevant topic. The review should cover the subject areas of the main prevailing theory as well as other theories that have been developed and their criticism. To start, one needs to turn to those sources that are likely to contain a summary or overview of key questions on the research topic. An essential point is the systematization of materials if there is the need to receive the maximum result from a scrupulous study of existing sources of information. Such an outcome was assumed within the framework of the dissertation research under consideration. However, in the literature review, there is some misalignment of its elements, which, in turn, negatively affected the overall conclusions made as a result of the review. In the absence of a structured approach, it is possible to overlook relevant content and misuse important links.
One of the effective methods for reviewing the literature is “sequential focusing,” in which the researcher starts with a broader perspective and narrows it down by applying more selection criteria and definitions to include or exclude relevant materials. This correlates with the deductive method of research, which, however, was neither applied nor indicated in the dissertation. Thus, it seems appropriate to restructure the literature review, excluding the aforementioned irrelevant subtopics and including the necessary ones.
Having identified the relevant conceptual definitions, the researcher focuses on concrete examples of their practical implementation. Accordingly, the author of the dissertation under review quantifies the available programs for state-level emergency management certification. An examination of concepts, which are considered by the creators of such programs, in reality, are considered, as well. Among other criteria, the level of prior work experience is identified to be one of the key factors defining the profession in practice. Furthermore, the researcher narrows the scope of the review to sixteen relevant credentialing programs proposed by the Department of Defense. Among five devices supporting the entry aspect of closure, the author operationalizes three, which are licensing, formal education, and voluntary certification. Therefore, the researcher demonstrates an optimal degree of data relevance assessment, providing pointed insight into the pertinent aspects.
The literature review considers autonomy and bureaucratization of professions, as well as a semi-profession paradigm, but then transfers directly to the ideal type of emergency management profession, without proper transition from theoretical and even philosophical issues to purely practical ones. At the same time, the dilemma that often arises in the planning and writing of a review is whether to focus on common issues or on details. The general advice that can be given on this score is to write a review on the narrowest possible problems that correspond to the objectives of the study and explain the formulation of just such problems. Moreover, if the analysis of theoretical parts of the profession paradigm started from previous centuries, consideration of the emergency management profession starts from the current century, not analyzing the evolution of the concept, while it could be highly beneficial for the research.
The analysis is essentially objective in nature and involves following specific procedures using well-known and widely accepted techniques such as content analysis. Synthesis, by contrast, often involves creativity and requires the researcher to look beyond known and established relationships to see if new and more compelling explanations for the phenomenon of interest can be found. Synthesized explanations are undoubtedly more persuasive than evidence based on individual elements integrated through synthesis. The analysis was performed properly, but the synthesis lacks completeness.
Methodology
The methodology section, at its beginning, includes the research question and subquestions, which does not seem necessary. It is expedient to start from the presentation of the overall philosophy of research. For now, it is not described, thus depriving the researcher strong scientific foundation for the overall results they expect and the intention of the research. Moreover, the methodology section does not represent in a sound manner justification of the choice of specific methods, in particular, the interview. Thus, while literature review, to a large extent, is of conceptual and paradigmatic nature, the methodology of research is presented with the dominance of purely practical approach, more inherent in the reports of consulting companies such as Deloitte, Gartner, or McKinsey than in dissertations.
The chosen methodology is a mixed one, which is popular and justified for modern research. To implement mixed research that combines qualitative and quantitative methods, it is important to understand the nature, capabilities, and limitations of each approach. When executed correctly, this methodology enables a clear, accurate understanding of concepts with an appropriate presentation (Gibson, 2017). For example, the main characteristics of traditional quantitative research are focus on the deduction, confirmation of theories and hypotheses, explanation, standardized data collection, and statistical analysis. The distinctive core features of traditional qualitative research are inductive logic, continuous search, exploration, hypotheses or theories, and the continuity of data collection and analysis. The researcher acts as the primary ‘tool,’ where their subjectivity is the basis of cognitive capabilities. The philosophical platform for the strategy of mixing methods in classical pragmatism, a kind of continuation of positivism that has developed in America (Poth, 2018). Pragmatism allows understanding how the most outstanding efficiency and utility can be achieved by combining different modes of action.
Pragmatists believe that scientific methods should be applied to find the “best” answer possible. Here, an attempt is made to consider various points of view and perspectives, including the ‘optics’ of qualitative and quantitative research (Poth, 2018). In the broadest sense, pragmatism is a kind of conceptual framework allowing combining methods and research tasks, which was done in the dissertations under consideration, that, however, due to this apparent “bias” towards pragmatism, is more practical than scientific and fundamental value and importance for the field of emergency management.
Although the study is declared as exploratory in nature and has a small sample size, basic inferential statistics was applied in order to assess the relationship between responses from the two groups of respondents based on respondent demographics. The sample included only higher leaders of emergency management bodies, which serves as a limitation to this study. While the credentials and expertise of the respondents is a clear advantage of the sample, it would be expedient to include also representatives of professional communities to test the hypothesis, as the perception of profession, proper competence, and colleagues among professionals are vital for such research.
Nevertheless, the survey and interview questions are coherent, enabling consistency of the overall empirical research conducted. Procedures of triangulation seem to be competently provided, and the formal features of the empirical part of the study can be called satisfactory. However, there is some gap between literature review and empirical research due to the above-mentioned difference in approaches: more paradigmatic for literature review and more practical for empirical research. Overall, the practical aspect of the study partially relied on the theoretical findings inferred from the literature review. Simultaneously, it would benefit from a more substantial literature-based foundation in terms of practice.
References
Bullock, J. A., Haddow, G. D., & Coppola, D. P. (2017). Introduction to emergency management. Butterworth-Heinemann.
Canton, L. G. (2018). Emergency Management: Concepts and strategies for effective programs (2nd ed.). Wiley.
Gibson, C. B. (2017). Elaboration, generalization, triangulation, and interpretation: On enhancing the value of mixed-method research. Organizational Research Methods, 20(2), 193–223. Web.
Poth, C. (2018). Innovation in mixed methods research: A practical guide to integrative thinking with complexity. SAGE Publications.
Zhou, X., Shi, Y., Deng, X., & Deng, Y. (2017). D-DEMATEL: A new method to identify critical success factors in emergency management. Safety Science, 91, 93–104. Web.
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