**4. Discussion**

In this study, the learning process of the exercise organizers of major fire emergencies in underground mines was examined through the use of the cycle of expansive learning [29]. The results in this study presented the process that started with the major underground mine fire incident in 2013 and up to the end of 2018. During this period of time, the exercise organizers not only realized the di fficulty of managing major fire incident scenarios but also made progress in improving the rescue operation practice. This was a continuous process and is an example of expansive learning [29] because the methodology of performing exercises in underground mines was not pre-existent in this context.

In this study, analyzing the material according to the cycle of expansive learning, the results showed that collaboration meetings in combination with the full-scale exercises developed the foundation for a new exercise concept. This is in line with other authors' [37] argumen<sup>t</sup> that exercises can be positive learning opportunities for organizations. A positive learning opportunity can be facilitated if the involved managers question the current emergency managemen<sup>t</sup> practices and work toward developing a new and more comprehensive approach [37].

The results showed that the exercise organizers were influenced to identify collaboration challenges within the current response during the collaboration meetings. In line with what other authors [22] report, the exercise organizers in the present study had to be interested in understanding the other organizations' tasks and responsibilities during rescue operations. The collaboration meetings improved the participants' understanding of the complex situation, allowing them to discuss challenges and find solutions as also described by others [1,22]. Thus, including collaboration meetings between the full-scale exercises can motivate the exercise organizers to consider full-scale exercises from the other organizations' perspectives.

The results also indicated that the collaboration meetings in combination with the full-scale exercises also were helpful for the exercise organizers to practically examine the tools and practices they had developed. This can be compared with the implementation of collaborative elements into exercises, such as the reflection seminars, to facilitate learning as recommended by other authors [22]. In this study, the combination of collaboration meetings and practical exercises influenced the exercise organizers to identify needs and challenges of various activities, as well as possibilities to develop and test new tools to support collaboration and the development of new knowledge of how to conduct rescue operations in underground mines. Thus, a productive approach for sustainable organizational learning, as in our study, is the combination of the collaboration meetings where the tools are modeled and examined and thereafter implemented in full-scale exercises. The tools evolve as they are implemented [30], which was also the case in our study. The exercise organizers evaluated and modified the implemented tools iteratively during the following collaboration meetings and full-scale exercises. Thus, even though significant time and resources were spent on this iterative process, this process may still induce a sustainable organizational learning process.

The results of this study showed that the increased realism and complexity of the full-scale exercises resulted in the exercise organizers realizing that there was a need for the development of new solutions for the rescue operation. The exercise organizers did not have a finished instruction for how the participants ought to respond in order to rescue the injured mineworkers, except for following the practices of their respective organizations. This meant that the exercise organizers had the opportunity to observe the participants as they responded to the presented challenges. The exercise organizers

could thereafter further develop the ideas of the participants and develop tools to facilitate the rescue response. Furthermore, the participants were educated in the new tools and practices between exercises, which also helped the participants manage the increasing difficulty of the scenarios. This is in contrast to the results of other authors [19] who mentioned that, in general, participants who attended several exercises considered that they did not learn anything new during the exercises. However, the participants of the exercises in this study also had grea<sup>t</sup> power to influence the development process, and the exercise organizers did not just observe the participants, but they also asked the participants to evaluate the exercises and to reflect on identified issues. This is supported by other authors [19] who recommend that exercise organizers focus on collaborative learning during exercises, where the participants are forced to improvise when they encounter variations of the scenario and the unforeseen.

#### *4.1. Learning the Importance of Including the Mining Organization as an Equal Responder in the Rescue Operation*

As a result of the learning process of the exercise organizers, the mining organization became an active participant of the exercise rescue operation practice. The exercise organizers realized that the mining organization has an important responsibility in the exercise rescue operation because fire incidents are located within a complex industrial context that the emergency organizations are not accustomed to. This complexity might necessitate collaboration [18,38]. However, in our study, the exercise organizers also recognized that the mining personnel were not as accustomed to managing emergencies as the rescue service and EMS personnel were. Thus, all of the developed collaboration tools can support the workers and managers within the mining organization. The modified first-aid course prepares the mineworkers for helping severely injured peers and for keeping the EMS managers informed during major incidents. The emergency managemen<sup>t</sup> template aids the mining managers as active participants during the rescue response, and the educational video informs the mineworkers of the organizational structure and responsibilities of the rescue service and EMS. This can be compared to another exercise study [39], which showed that the organizations involved in a rescue operation at an elderly care center had different understandings of the emergency situation and that the rescue operation experiences of the police and rescue service personnel were complemented by the contextual experience of the elderly care personnel. However, the managemen<sup>t</sup> of the rescue operation was, in general, handed over to the emergency organizations [39]. In our study, this was exemplified in the analysis of the present practice of the rescue operation by the mining personnel thinking that their main objective was to accommodate the needs of the rescue service and thus handed over most of the responsibility to the emergency organizations.

In the study mentioned above [39], the rescue operation was analyzed to have been more efficient if the emergency organizations had collaborated more with the elderly care personnel and had adapted their practices to the situation. The findings in our study showed similar outcomes. In the beginning, the mining organization mainly considered their responsibility to be to accommodate the rescue service's needs, but in the new consolidated practice for rescue operations, the mining organization had their own managemen<sup>t</sup> structure and equal responsibility for the rescue operation. This is supported by other authors [21] who state that giving each organization specific meaningful tasks can increase organizational involvement in full-scale exercises. The increased participation of the mining organization perhaps also led to one of the most important realizations of this study. The exercise organizers reflected on the change of focus of the exercises, from the perspective of the rescue service in just carrying out a rescue operation to taking the perspective of the injured into consideration.

#### *4.2. Methodological Considerations*

This study had several benefits and limitations. The most important benefit of the study was the illustration that the learning process of the exercise organizers led to sustainable organizational change. Other benefits of the study included the comprehensive material gathered from all of the exercise organizers and from several consecutive exercises and collaboration meetings. This is an example of triangulation of the gathered material that increases the credibility of the study [40,41]. The specified inclusion and exclusion criteria, i.e., collaboration and the application of the theory in the analysis, accounted for the confirmability of the study [40,41]. Using the theory of expansive learning as a theoretical framework for the study helped to visualize and organize the learning process of the exercise organizers. The application of the cycle of expansive learning has not previously been used to analyze the iterative learning of exercise organizers, and this study can thus be seen as a contribution to the research field. By using the theory of expansive learning, it is also possible that the transferability and dependability of the study were increased [40–42].

The limitations of the study included the risk of confirmation bias [42], meaning only including information that is in accordance with the theory. To minimize the risk for this, the research team thoroughly discussed the application of the theory on the comprehensive available material for this study. When the material was analyzed in chronological order the cycle of expansive learning can be argued to loop several times in various ways, for example, when a new tool was implemented during a full-scale exercise and later consolidated while at the same time new challenges were identified. Nevertheless, this process would have been too tedious to report and the material was therefore divided based on the content and meaning of the text and on the learning of the participants. Although this approach was used, progress can still be discerned when reading the results section.
