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This study examines how six Swedish municipalities coordinate and direct voluntary defence organizations (FFO) in crisis management, despite lacking formal command authority. Using a research-based analythical framework structured around three themes - formal platforms, leadership, and relational factors - the municipalities´ practices are analysed. Five of the six municipalities have signed agreements with the Voluntary Resource Group (FRG), enabling some degree of control over FFOs during manageable crises such as wildfires, floods, and pandemics etc. However, they lack preparedness to coordinate multiple external actors in more complex and prolonged crises, which prior research highlights as essential.

Formalization in the studied municipalities is limited; the agreements are simple and lack clear platforms or structures for joint work processes. Leadership is perceived as inclusive and responsive but remains informal. Together with high levels of trust, this leadership forsters functional collaboration, despite a power asymmetry between maunicipalities and FFOs. The lack of formalization may be partially explained by small-scale contexts, pragmatism, and mutual trust, but this could also be viewed as a weakness in Sweden´s crisis preparedness.

The study introduces an analythical framework based on previous research, which highlights strengths and weaknesses in interorganizational collaboration. This framework can be applied in future studies involving more actors and municipalities and may also contribute to further theoretical development within the fielld of collaboration in crisis management.