Background and rationale: In the world we live in today the question is no longer ’if’ an organization will face a crisis, but ’when’ and ’how prepared’ is the organization to deal with it. The Tsunami that happened on December 26th 2004 was a disaster of unprecedented magnitude. It had an impact on the Swedish society in general and the travel industry in particular. As the travel industry is very susceptible to impacts by external factor, its participants can never be too prepared to face a crisis. In order to be better prepared for future crisis, organizations should seek to learn from their experiences.
The research question for this dissertation is: How can tour-operators improve their organizational competence by using experiences from a crisis?
The aim of the dissertation is:
- To map the tour-operators’ crisis management work, and which parts of this work has changed as a result of the Tsunami.
- To identify and compare the differences in the lessons learned by the tour-operators from the Tsunami.
- To discuss and give recommendations on how experiences from crises can be used and lead to change, i.e. in better crisis management routines and higher organizational competence
Methodology: We have used a qualitative research method in our dissertation, our approach is deductive and for the gathering of empirical data, we have made semi-structured interviews. Our research model has been the base for the interviews. Our model shows how the different phases of a crisis – before, during and after – influence organizational competence. The selected companies for our research are the tour-operators Ving and Fritidsresor.
In our field study we map how the crisis management of the tour-operators is functioning today, and which parts of this work has changed as a result of the Tsunami. In our analysis we see that the tour-operators crisis management work in large parts coincides with the theories in the area, but there are differences in the learning processes of the organizations.
Results and conclusions drawn from our research are that the learning processes of the tour-operators already start during the crisis. By addressing the deficiencies observed during the Tsunami, new routines, systems and work processes have improved their preparedness for crisis. Both organizations have learned, but the focus at Ving has been on structural capital and at Fritidsresor on human capital. Both have introduced crisis rehearsals, but not throughout the whole organization. Whether the organizational competence to handle a big crisis has improved will be seen as the next large crisis occurs.
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