Introduction to Special Issue: Leadership in Complex Adaptive Systems

Contains fulltext : 112107.pdf (publisher's version ) (Closed access)The concept of leadership involves making judgments that lead to action at different scales of responsibility and operations. It means the capacity to engage not only individuals in solving immediate problems, but also groups and organizations as they address broader issues of collective interest, as well as public decision making and collective action at the societal level The exercise of leadership varies by scale, complexity of operations, and impact – from the individual paramedic who has to make instant decisions regarding how to deal with an injured patient to an international coordinating committee that decides how to distribute humanitarian aid following a disaster. The contributing authors examine how leadership works in practice at different scales of public service operations. These scales range from the micro level (within organizations) to the meso level (collaboration among actors, organizations, and organizational networks) to the macro level (collaboration among international, national, regional, and local actors).5 p

Interorganizational information exchange and efficiency: Organizational performance in emergency environments

JASSS133

Editorial: Incident command systems: A dynamic tension among goals, rules and practice

This special issue examines the process of implementation, change and adaptation of Incident Command Systems (ICS) as a strategy for mobilizing and managing disaster operations in comparative perspective, focusing on ICS in practice in the United States, France, the Netherlands and Norway. Shorter essays present perspectives on ICS from China, Japan and New Zealand.The question is whether there is a distinctive organizational framework that is recognizable in all countries as the ICS, or whether there is a general set of principles for mobilizing and organizing emergency response operations that has generated a varied set of ICSs as they have been adapted to different operational contexts, resources, and training procedures for emergency personnel

Motivating factors towards willingness to contribute in collaborative tasks: A crisis cooperation perspective

The interaction among various stakeholder organizations in modern crisis response is very similar to negotiation where each organization has its own goal in addition to a common goal. Decision makers in stakeholder organizations most often have to settle for win-win situations to attain higher joint benefit. In such cases willingness to contribute in joint tasks becomes a prerequisite. In our present study performed with 111 crisis management professionals from various stakeholder organizations in decision making roles, we study familiarity and expectation to future cooperation as constructs that can motivate decision makers to be more willing to contribute to joint tasks in crisis response

Collective Action in Communities Exposed to Recurring Hazards: The Camp Fire, Butte County, California, November 8, 2018

Wildfires constitute an increased risk for California, with the frequency, size, and scale of extreme events and ensuing losses escalating year by year. This article presents a case study of the Camp Fire, Butte County, California, on November 8, 2018. The event exceeded the parameters of prior emergency planning and led to the loss of 85 lives, the deadliest wildfire in California’s history. The study’s objective is to identify gaps in the information flow within and among actors that led to this outcome and to propose more robust strategies that would enable communities to manage wildfire risk sustainably. Data were collected through documentary analysis of existing emergency plans, policies, and protocols; field site visits to the damaged area; attendance at the Paradise Town meeting; and semi-structured interviews with emergency officials who had responsibility for managing the event and residents of the damaged area. A unique combination of highly risky conditions compelled the urgent evacuation of the entire Town of Paradise when emergency personnel was committed to fire suppression in a neighboring community, leaving residents of Paradise to manage their evacuation. Communications failed; regional communities, not alerted, continued standard traffic patterns, creating a massive slowdown in evacuation from Paradise.  Key insights from this study include: 1) the need to model wildfire as a regional event; 2) informed residents of communities at risk act collectively to protect the community as a whole; and 3) interaction of science, technology, and human organizations create an interdisciplinary science for managing wildfire