P06 Critical Perspectives on the application of Public Value(s) in Emergency Services Management

Panel Details

This year’s IRSPM conference concerns the important but  under-researched themes of public value(s), management and governance in turbulent times. Facing the future in the case of emergency services relates to finding new ways of building and sustaining relationships through time. In particular, the panel seeks to understand what a sustainable relationship is in the field of emergency services (police, fire, ambulance) including also services offered by community based organizations and the non-profit sector and how sustainable relationships between emergency organisations and service users can be developed. The panel will provide an inter-disciplinary platform to debate and discuss the issues which are relevant to the emergency management communities and research groups at IRSPM. The proposed panel will provide a forum for an engaged and critical analysis against the backdrop of growing body of work to explore the role, nature and application of Public value(s) in the emergency service management and governance.

We welcome submissions of a 500-word abstract on the theme of ‘Public value(s), Management and Governance in turbulent times" in the context of emergency services in addition to other themes including:

• Application of Public Value (PV) frameworks
• Contextual factors influence the dynamics of fundamental value conflicts in emergency services
• System re-design and associated governance challenges
• Challenges of multi-agency cooperation and interoperability
• Designing effective strategies to engage with service users
• Community and organisational capacities and resilience
• Organisational culture and management of culture change
• Improving wellbeing and resilience of emergency service workers
• Building theoretical and methodological foundations for research, teaching and professional development
• Volunteer management systems

This panel follows the successful panels at IRSPM since 2017 on various management aspects of the emergency services. In 2022, 14 papers were presented at the panel. Prof. Wankhade and Prof. Murphy have vast experiences in running emergency management at the EGPA and Academy of Management (Critical Management Studies) conferences, EURAM (since 2015), BAM (2016, 2019) and PAC (since 2009) conferences since 2009. The panel chairs have published widely on this subject area.  Prof. Wankhade is also the Editor-In-Chief of the International Journal of Emergency Services,  IJES (https://www.emeraldgrouppublishing.com/journal/ijes?id=IJES ), an Emerald publication. Prof. Murphy has also served as the editor to IJES. A special Issue of IJES, guest edited by Profs. Murphy and Velotti, was published in Feb 2020 (9:1) from the papers submitted at the IRSPM 2018 Conference in Edinburgh.

Best Paper Award Emerald Group Publishing and the International Journal of Emergency Services (IJES) will sponsor the best paper award at the panel.

Informal inquries about abstracts or the panel can be made to Profs: Paresh Wankhade,  at Paresh.Wankhade@edgehill.ac.uk or Peter Murphy at  peter.murphy@ntu.ac.uk  or Dr Geoffrey Heath at g.heath@keele.ac.uk or Dr Lucia Velotti at lvelotti@jjay.cuny.edu