Inter-organizational coordination dynamics during crisis

Abstract

This paper addresses decision making process for emerging coordination in interorganizational collaborations during disasters. Lack of resources, decision making process, and poor communication are recurring problems for organizational performance in disaster operations. The aim of this study is to explore decision making during crisis through social networks. We hypothesize that the structural positions of organizations within interorganizational collaboration network have implications on the potential to coordinate leading to improved decision making in uncertain environments. To measure the structural positions of nodes, we consider three network attributes: ego-betweenness, degree centrality, and tie strength. A single qualitative survey question is used to measure coordination preparedness. We noticed that all three structural attributes have positive associations with coordination preparedness. © 2011 Lavoisier, Paris.