**5. Conclusions**

As Karl Weick [1] found in his study, wildland-fire fighters have a strong identity and prefer keeping "their familiar tools in a frightening situation" (p. 7). Weick assumed that this was because they considered the unfamiliar alternative even more frightening. As such, the results from our study may be seen as supportive of Weick's supposition, as they indicate that the exercise population prefers working in familiar patterns. While this study found a strong covariation between participation in Norwegian wildland-fire collaboration exercises and perceived level of learning, it also found a medium-to-small covariation between perceived learning and utility. The results show that the exercise contributed positively to adding new learning. However, on the basis that the goal was to strengthen collaboration utility value, the study indicates the need to focus more on collaboration building and enhancing elements throughout all phases of the exercise. To ensure an e ffective and optimized use of available resources in crisis, cross-boundary tasks need to be integrated into the exercise; more room for improvising and testing of unfamiliar and alternative strategies are suggested. As this study was limited in scope and population, we recommend conducting similar studies, preferably through the use of the same instrument.

**Author Contributions:** Conceptualization, C.H., J.P.W.A., and J.L.S.; methodology, C.H., J.P.W.A., E.C., and J.L.S.; validation, E.C. and J.L.S.; formal analysis, C.H. and J.P.W.A.; investigation, C.H. and J.P.W.A.; writing—original draft preparation, C.H. and J.P.W.A.; writing—review and editing, C.H., J.P.W.A., E.C., and J.L.S.; visualization, C.H. and J.P.W.A.; supervision, J.L.S. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.

**Funding:** This research received no external funding.

**Acknowledgments:** Reported data were first were first published in Halvorsen, C., & Aas, J.P.W. (2019). [Samvirke–Går vi mot felles mål? Subjektiv opplevelse av læring og nytte i en skogbrannkontekst (Masters thesis, University of South-Eastern Norway).

**Conflicts of Interest:** The authors declare no conflict of interest.
