Refer to organizations that prevent, mitigate, and recover unexpected events that adversely affect people or resources and threat the continued operation of organizations. Unexpected events include any natural or man-made disaster. DMOs are responsible for preparing for disaster before it occurs, minimizing the impacts when it occurs, and rebuilding society from the aftermath of an occurred disaster. DMOs may include government agencies (e.g. Police, Fire, Medical Services), non-government organizations (e.g. UN, Red Cross), and some private sector first responder organizations (e.g. utility, transportation, healthcare, construction firms).
Published in Chapter:
Interorganizational Communications in Disaster Management
Jing Yang (Oklahoma State University, USA), JinKyu Lee (Oklahoma State University, USA), Ashwin Rao (Cornell University, USA), and Nasrat Touqan (Oklahoma State University, USA)
Copyright: © 2009
|Pages: 18
DOI: 10.4018/978-1-60566-390-6.ch013
Abstract
In response to the lessons and criticisms over the recent large-scale disasters and relief activities during the disasters, many government organizations around the world have recently launched initiatives to improve their disaster management capabilities. While a revision of disaster management capability may entail transformation of organizational structures, business processes, and technical infrastructure across multiple organizations, the field of disaster management suffers from lack of theoretical foundation. With a special emphasis on information and communication technologies (ICTs), the chapter provides a review on various issues examined in the recent disaster management literature and develops a conceptual framework of the relationships between technological properties of ICTs and multiagency collaboration in disaster management. This chapter contributes to the theoretical foundation of the field by identifying major research issues in the disaster management communications and their relationships with relevant entities and environmental factors. Discussions on future research directions are also presented.