The Organizational Evolution of the American National Red Cross: An Austrian and Bloomington Approach to Organizational Growth and Expansion

Laura E. Grube, Stefanie Haeffele () and ErikaGrace Davies

A chapter in The Austrian and Bloomington Schools of Political Economy, 2017, vol. 22, pp 89-105 from Emerald Group Publishing Limited

Abstract: The American National Red Cross is in many ways the iconic symbol for disaster response and recovery. The organization, founded in 1881, has a long track record for coming to the aid of those in need in the wake of wars, natural disasters, and other crises. However, in the wake of recent disasters, the Red Cross has been criticized for underperforming. By combining the literature on bureaucracy in Austrian economics and the literature on monocentricity in the work of Vincent Ostrom and Elinor Ostrom, we provide an analysis of the Red Cross that helps explain the organization’s evolution over time and that also yields implications for disaster management more broadly. Specifically, the Red Cross is a bureaucracy that has become increasingly centralized and rigid as it has become further enmeshed with governmental responsibilities.

Keywords: Nonprofits; disasters; Hurricane Sandy; Red Cross; Austrian economics; B53; H84; L31; L32; Q54 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.110 ... d&utm_campaign=repec (text/html)
https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.110 ... 9-213420170000022006
https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.110 ... d&utm_campaign=repec (application/pdf)

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:eme:aaeczz:s1529-213420170000022006

DOI: 10.1108/S1529-213420170000022006

Access Statistics for this chapter

More chapters in Advances in Austrian Economics from Emerald Group Publishing Limited
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Emerald Support ().