Abstract:

This paper presents work-in-progress from a collaborative study examining how NHS paramedics experience, interpret, and navigate overlapping and protracted crises. Positioned at the intersection of organisational studies and critical management scholarship, the inquiry is animated by a fundamental paradox: crisis operates simultaneously as catastrophe and as catalyst. Drawing on 26 in-depth semi-structured interviews, we identify three interlocking research problems: conceptual ambiguity in crisis lexicology; the moral tensions inherent in capitalising on crisis; and the limitations of processual models in accounting for non-linear, intersecting crisis trajectories. Paramedic narratives expose institutional incentives to normalise dysfunction and surface deep ethical ambiguities in crisis-as-opportunity framings. We introduce the concept of crisis intersectionality to capture layered convergences of institutional, professional, and societal disruption. This paper contributes to critical management scholarship by repositioning crisis as an evolving organisational condition rather than a discrete, bounded event.

Please choose your submission type: Developmental Paper

Primary Track: Critical Management Studies

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Mr. Jamie Hahn