1st Edition
Emergency Services Management A Research Overview
An expert guide to contemporary research in the field of emergency services management, this short-form book will help academics, scholars, and practitioners to appreciate the important role and contribution of these services.
Contemporary emergency services have been rapidly changing in response to increasing demand, reducing resources, the impact of COVID-19 and the increasingly complex threats to public safety. Academics, practitioners, the emergency services and their key stakeholders all need to have a clear understanding of the changing role and contribution of these services as well as finding ways to improve their management and performance so that policy solutions to new and emerging threats may be efficiently developed and effectively implemented. The book looks at the application of public management theories to emergency services and the development of professionalism within the police, fire and rescue, and ambulance services. It examines the increasing need for better collaboration and identifies the nature and extent of the academic and practitioner divide and the research gap between the academic and professional communities in each of the services.
This book will be invaluable to researchers, scholars, practitioners, and students in the fields of governance, leadership, and management, especially those focusing on emergency services and management during crises.
1. Emergency services management: a research overview 2. Working towards attaining professional status 3. Collaboration: issues, challenges, and opportunities 4. Leadership and culture(s): still command and control? 5. The research-practice gaps in emergency services 6. Conclusion: collaboration, not isolation, is the way forward
Biography
Paresh Wankhade is Professor of Leadership and Management at Edge Hill University, Lancashire, UK.
Peter Murphy is a Professor of Public Policy and Management at Nottingham Trent University, UK.
"This new slim volume [contributes to] a debate about the gap between the theory of public sector management and the practice of managing emergency services ... This starts with the strategic leaders of today reading books like this and questioning the structures that currently surround them and asking what needs to change." Emergency Services Times
"There has never been greater need for a thorough exploration of emergency services management. In the context of rapidly evolving political, economic and social crises, Paresh Wankhade and Peter Murphy combine a deft combination of public management theory with a nuanced recognition of the peculiarities of the emergency services context. With insights into emergencies such as the Covid-19 pandemic and the Manchester Arena bombing, this concise book is invaluable to academic researchers, teachers, practitioners and policy makers for many years to come." Ian C. Elliot, Director of Education, Newcastle Business School, UK
"This timely publication is fundamental reading for leaders within emergency services. As all blue light services grapple with a dramatically changing landscape, the period of post-pandemic recovery and a challenged financial outlook, the need for ingenuity and innovation has never been more important. A compendium of contemporaneous research, this book is vital reading to ensure leaders learn from the past and can accurately visualise the future." Andy Swinburn, Director of Paramedicine, Welsh Ambulance Services NHS Trust
"With insights into the emergency services’ black box, this book takes the reader on a journey into an un-discovered arena, steeped in complexity and yet essential for governments, public sector managers and scholars to understand and negotiate with skill". Yvonne Brunetto, Southern Cross University, Australia
