Inter-organizational Resource Coordination between NGOs in emergency responses

Resource coordination between NGOs is crucial to have efficient emergency responses. Information Systems (IS) are a tool facilitating resource transfers, information exchanges, and resource coordination between organizations. They cannot be efficient if they are not adapted to fundamental problems of crisis management and specifically to resource coordination processes. This paper explores the operational aspect of resource transfer processes, the intensity of resource coordination between NGOs, and the characteristics an IS, as a support to those processes, must have to improve the resource coordination. Sixty-five in-depth interviews, documentation, and on-site observations in Chile with 13 NGOs chosen for their diversity allowed identifying different categories of processes. A mixed-transformative approach being used, intensity scores were assigned to processes and global scores were calculated for NGOs, based on their processes. A brief discussion follows on how information systems should be adapted to help these processes to increase coordination intensity.