Agility and Discipline: Critical Success Factors for Disaster Response

For more than thirty years, the U.S. emergency management community has been increasing its ability to structure, control, and manage a large response. The result of this evolution is a National Response System based on the National Response Plan and the National Incident Management System that is p...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 2006-03, Vol.604 (1), p.256-272
Main Author: Harrald, John R.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Agility
Communities
Disaster Preparedness
Disasters
Economic recovery
Emergency management
Failure
Government
Hurricane Katrina
Hurricanes
Information resources
Louisiana
National security
Natural Disasters
Organizational Effectiveness
Organizational research
Planning methods
Problem solving
Terrorism
Typology
U.S.A
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Summary:For more than thirty years, the U.S. emergency management community has been increasing its ability to structure, control, and manage a large response. The result of this evolution is a National Response System based on the National Response Plan and the National Incident Management System that is perceived to have failed in the response to Hurricane Katrina. Over the same period, social scientists and other disaster researchers have been documenting and describing the nonstructural factors such as improvisation, adaptability, and creativity that are critical to coordination, collaboration, and communication and to successful problem solving. This article argues that these two streams of thought are not in opposition, but form orthogonal dimensions of discipline and agility that must both be achieved. The critical success factors that must be met to prepare for and respond to an extreme event are described, and an organizational typology is developed.
ISSN:0002-7162
1552-3349
DOI:10.1177/0002716205285404