Paradoxes of situational awareness during health crisis
Knowledge formation tensions between stakeholders
Keywords:
situational awareness, decision-making, paradoxes, expert knowledge, health crisisAbstract
Situational awareness refers to the comprehension of past and ongoing events, the circumstances that influenced them, and the potential trajectories of such events. The formation of situational awareness is challenging, as the production of information is decentralized and detached from the entities that require it. Due to the uncertainty associated with knowledge, the dynamics of forming situational awareness are inherently tension-ridden. This tension proliferates to affect decision-making and interpretations of key situations. Interpretations of a single issue, which are justified in themselves but contradict each other, are conceptualized in this study as the paradox of situational awareness. The question is not about the superiority of different interpretations because paradox is an intrinsic feature of situational awareness. The article addresses the question: What kinds of paradoxes affecting the formation of situational awareness emerged at different stages of managing the COVID-19 pandemic? The study’s empirical data comprise interviews with members of the COVID-19 coordination teams operating in two different healthcare districts, and were conducted within research projects WELGO and IRWIN. The data revealed three paradoxes affecting information formation: 1) The ontological paradox of information formation (pandemic vs. social determinants) relates to the conceptualization of the nature of the health crisis and its significance in building situational awareness, 2) The paradox of consensus-seeking encompasses the prerequisites for collective construction of situational awareness in a multi-administrative and multi-layered cascade effect, and 3) The paradox of information utilization concerns the collection, storage, and application of information in the construction, maintenance, and anticipation of situational awareness. The article connects the identified paradoxes to the discourse on the relationship between knowledge-based and policy-based decision-making.
