Improving cooperation through storytelling: A concept for joint actor stories

One of the major challenges for crisis response is the fact that every crisis is unique. This demands the ability to cooperate in new constellations to face the challenges of each individual crisis. The purpose of this study is to explore the potential of using stories as pedagogical and communicational tools for interorganizational crisis response. The study focused on three research questions: ? How can boundary stories be defined and created to capture and spread experiences from inter-organizational cooperation during crises? ? How can systems thinking be used to describe inter-organizational boundaries? ? What learnings from inter-organizational work during the Covid-19 pandemic can be captured in boundary stories and used to develop cooperative capabilities within the Swedish crisis response system? The results of the study illustrate that inter-organizational boundaries can be described as cooperative spaces where interactions emerge in response to the nature and challenges of the crisis. The long-term character of the Covid-19 pandemic has forced new types of cooperation compared to the traditional idea of a short and intense crisis. The author further suggests that boundary stories have the potential to function not just as a tool for learning, but also as a guiding principle for communicative practice to support shared understanding in inter-organizational cooperation.