Interorganizational Communications in Disaster Management

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.