Strategic uses of Lessons for Building Collaborative Emergency Management System: Comparative Analysis of Hurricane Katrina and Hurricane Gustav Response Systems

Oh Namkyung
Additional contact information
Oh Namkyung: University of Akron

Journal of Homeland Security and Emergency Management, 2012, vol. 9, issue 1, 22

Abstract: This study examined whether there are empirical evidences of organizational learning in the U.S. emergency response system and how the strategic uses of lessons enabled organizations to upgrade system’s capabilities and interaction structure to respond to major disasters. For this, this study conducted comparative analysis of Hurricane Katrina and Gustav response systems and analyzed data from semi-structured interviews with the managers of 36 leading organizations that actively participated in both response systems. To address challenges from complex and uncertain circumstances of disasters, organizations need to collaborate and their joint operations should be nicely coordinated. The findings of this paper reveal that, through effective communications, organizations could secure timely, accurate, and valid information and create a common knowledge base that is critical for collaborative response to disasters. In addition, organizational capacity to detect, process, and transmit information could increase through appropriate training and retention programs. Importantly, the collective capacity of organizations to collaborate in coherent ways could be strengthened through the development of organizational culture that facilitates face-to-face interaction.

Keywords: Emergency Response system; Strategic uses of lessons; Hurricane Katrina; Hurricane Gustav; Inter-organizational collaboration; Common knowledge base (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2012
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.1515/1547-7355.1765 (text/html)
For access to full text, subscription to the journal or payment for the individual article is required.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:bpj:johsem:v:9:y:2012:i:1:p:22:n:1

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.degruyter.com/journal/key/jhsem/html

DOI: 10.1515/1547-7355.1765

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Homeland Security and Emergency Management is currently edited by Irmak Renda-Tanali

More articles in Journal of Homeland Security and Emergency Management from De Gruyter
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Peter Golla ().