Emergency Management - Research Paper Example

Emergency Management Introduction Emergency management is a discipline that deals with disasters in an attempt to develop effective mitigation, response and recovery strategies. The research into the effective emergency management reveals that there is an ongoing interest on the design of planning and emergency preparedness and the extent to which participation and involvement of the personnel is critical for successful emergency response (Ford and Schmidt, 2000; McEntire, 2002). Emergency managers are often faced with the challenge to transform personnel apathy into motivation and engagement of the organization’s or agency’s individuals. This is based on the premise that motivation and engagement foster active participation and involvement which are both critical in emergency management, as it is a discipline that requires integrated and unified approach to coping with disasters. Emergency management is found to be substantially improved in both mitigation and response strategies (and eventually recovery strategies) when there is an alignment of all the resources towards common objectives and goals. But then again, this alignment of resources requires personnel’s willingness to cooperate and collaborate so that coordinated activities can be feasible. This paper focuses on the cooperative climate at the intra-organizational and inter-organizational levels, which is reportedly promoting personnel involvement and participation. The objective is to underline and stress how the cooperative framework within and through emergency organizations, enhance personnel motivation and gradually increase the effectiveness of emergency management. The importance of Cooperation in Motivating Emergency Personnel McEntire (2002) and McEntire and Myers (2004) suggest that research studies on the degree of effectiveness of emergency management have indicated that coordination becomes the first and foremost objective that emergency agencies need to address in order to generate sufficient results in terms of response and recovery. Coordination between the emergency agencies and particularly amongst the personnel (the individuals) becomes core because it reflects an integrated and consistent approach to managing an emergency situation. But as coordination is central to the emergency management, is also the area which generates and creates obstacles. Granot (1999) argues that disasters often require multiple and multi –leveled responses implemented simultaneously; without cooperation and collaboration of the different organizations concerned or even without cooperation and collaboration of the personnel within the same organization, coordination of the actions becomes impossible in an environment where consistency is necessary for both the response and recovery. Similarly, Katz et al. (2006) explain that the absence of inter-organizational and intra-organizational cooperation brings about conflicting issues in the roles’ of the emergency agencies and in the approach to the disasters. Moreover, the absence of cooperation also implies that a particular disaster is being managed by different agencies which are underpinned by different methods of handling disasters, different organizational cultures and organizational structures. Therefore, in an emergency breakthrough the absence of collaboration and cooperation meant that each agency would contact the emergency response organization and to this extent each agency would act independently. In the inter-organizational level, furthermore, the lack of cooperation and merely the lack of cooperative atmosphere amongst the various departments would mean the absence of a unified and well integrated approach to the disaster. Some personnel in that case remains excluded from the emergency response or recovery and to this respect, indifferent and apathetic stance of these personnel would be exhibited. Ostensvig (2006) states that the decisions over emergency response actions are highly based on the people’s perceptions of the risks associated with the disaster. Given that the emergency response originates with the emergency management agencies and organizations, it becomes evident that the individuals that comprise these organizations are at the core of the entire process. If these people’s perceptions on the risks are not effectively estimated or if these people show apathy on the disaster then the problem might eventually become a large scale threat. The most important issue in emergency management is the evaluation of the risks and the emerging disaster as a whole; but this is feasible only through the participation and involvement of all individuals that are the interacting actors within the emergency situation. Involvement and participation in turn require motivation of those people and one way to promote motivation is through effective inter – firm communication and cooperation. Similarly, Waugh and Streib (2006) claim that, a fundamental obstacle in the involvement and participation of the personnel of the emergency organization is the lack of understanding of the disaster and its potential harmful effects. For this very reason what the authors propose is that ensuring collaboration and inter – firm or inter – departmental cooperation is the most important strategy in the framework of emergency management. A cooperative climate induces communication and communication induces realization of the emergency situation (Richardson and Byers, 2007). Additionally, realizing the situation implies also assessment of the risks and therefore involvement on the part of the agency’s or organization’s personnel. According to Katz et al. (2006) and Perry and Lindell (2003) the inter – organizational cooperative atmosphere is crucial for two reasons: on the one hand the cooperative atmosphere means that the members of the organization are willing to share and communicate information – which is critical in emergency management because it implies a more unified approach to the disaster and on the other hand, since practical participation of all members (personnel) in the decision making is infeasible due to the necessity for rapid and quick response to a disaster, cooperation is the only way to ensure that at least information is spread throughout the organization and therefore the quick decisions on the responses become effective. Waugh and Streib (2006) state that the information spreading within the organization is similar to a ‘chain reaction’; if a vital organizational group or department does not participate or is not involved in such a way information and cooperation with the remaining departments or groups is not adequate, then the entire decision making may ‘collapse’. Richardson and Byers (2007) further posit that cooperative frameworks which are built on communication frameworks within the emergency management organization or agency, enhance the flow of information and through this flow, exchange of ideas becomes feasible. The authors use the communication theories to explain the significance of cooperation between the various departments of the organizations; these theories suggest that the flow of information cannot be disregarded by the organizational members (personnel) and to this respect communication arises; when proper communication arises then people tend to increase their interest on the ‘subject’ of communication. In fact, these communication theories can explain the ‘apathy’ of the governmental or organizational personnel: lack of communication means lack of awareness and this in turn implies most probably a false estimation of the risks involved in the disaster. Likewise, lack of communication can cause ambiguities in the roles and responsibilities of each of the individuals and therefore lack of motivation to engage and participate in the effective mitigation or response to the disaster phases (Auf der Heide, 1989). So this apathy is targeted through the effective inter-departmental or inter-organizational communication. Perry and Lindell (2003) emphasize the issue of ‘culture’ in emergency management organizations. According to their statements, the culture of the organization is critical in determining the relationships and the communication exchanges between the organizational members. Thus, a cooperatively – underpinned culture of an emergency organization implies that the personnel knows the strengths of the communication, acknowledges barriers to communication, is aware of the roles and responsibilities and most importantly can integrate into a consistent mitigation and response to the disaster. Ford and Schmidt (2000) equally stress that the organizational culture when being emphasizing cooperation, is also what determines the ‘teamwork’ atmosphere. This according to Waugh and Streib (2006) becomes the most important ‘asset resource’ of an emergency organization which aims at building effective emergency planning and emergency preparedness. Cooperation is the basis for teamwork and teamwork is an enhancer of motivation, participation and involvement. Ford and Schmidt (2000) explain that the challenge of emergency managers is to make every individual within the organization to actively participate in the emergency response; but this has its roots in the effective emergency preparedness and the extent to which the personnel is willing to participate in preparedness. The authors state that through teamwork and team spirit, which is fostered by the cooperative climate and atmosphere, the training systems and programs become more effective and strategic as they involve all organizational members. “Most training programs focus on building individual knowledge and skills and only hope that somehow individual expertise will lead to effective teamwork” (Ford and Schmidt, 2000, p. 201). So, for effective training programs on emergency preparedness teamwork is vital and is pursued through the cooperative atmosphere throughout the emergency organization. The personnel’s willingness to participate and become involved in emergency preparedness is discussed by DiMaggio et al. (2005) who note that the most important obstacles in the ‘motivation’ of the personnel are: first, the lack of knowledge on the duties of each of the personnel individuals and second, the inability to assess the critical contribution of each and every emergency organizational member. Both these are crucial because they undermine the emergency preparedness programming and planning as they affect both the perception of the personnel on their role to the emergency response and the ability to evaluate the risks of a disaster. While emergency preparedness is an integral part of the entire emergency management discipline, lack of motivation can cause disasters to eventually escalate to large scale problems underpinned by ineffective and non – strategy response and recovery. McEntire (2002) focuses on studying the emergency management responses to the Fort Worth tornado in 2000. Examining the degree of effectiveness of the emergency management responses, the researcher concludes on a list of problems or obstacles which intervened with the ‘successful’ actions, however he states that in overall the response to the tornado disaster was effective. What made the response effective was the substantial and adequate communication and cooperation between all those involved: both intra-organizational and inter-organizational. For example, all emergency workers and personnel had undergone extensive training for emergency preparedness and all workers had maintained effective communications between them which led to strong relationships. These were underpinned by an even stronger cooperative climate within and amongst the various agencies. Characteristically, McEntire (2002) interviewed some of the personnel in those agencies and the majority of them noted that it had been the networking and the cooperative climate that made them ‘enthused’ to communicate with the remaining individuals as well as with individuals of other agencies. Moreover, it was again this climate which allowed for more consistent approach to the tornado disaster because all organizational members had clear roles and clear responsibilities and knew exactly what they should do and who they should interact with. The study of McEntire (2002) points out two important issues: the first issue is that the participation and engagement of each and every member of the emergency organization or agency is vital and critical and the second issue is that the participation and engagement are products of the effective communication and cooperation at the inter-organizational and the intra-organizational levels. Conclusions Emergency management requires complete coordination of the activities at both the inter – organizational and intra – organizational level. This has been fairly elaborated in this essay, which has illustrated that integration of the approaches is critical not only for mitigating disasters but also for responding to disasters and recovering from the harmful impacts of these disasters. Coordination, in turn is based on proper and effective communication between the various actors within the emergency management and this communication can only be achieved if there is substantial involvement and participation of the personnel. Lack of communication and lack of a cooperative atmosphere in the emergency management agencies or organizations can pose great obstacles in the information flow and most importantly in the clear boundaries of the roles of each of the members in the approach to disasters. Furthermore, the motivation of personnel is also enhanced by the communication and cooperative climate because as Auf der Heide (1989), DiMaggio et al. (2005) and McEntire (20002) have stressed, it is the cooperation through communication which enables individuals to be able to assess the risks of the disasters and understand their roles within the management of the disasters. These two alternatively are cited as the most important factors which lead to the ‘apathy’ of personnel in emergency situations. Concluding, therefore it is essential that emergency managers focus predominantly on creating such an organizational culture and developing a cooperation framework which will ultimately ‘get everyone involved’ and which consequently will yield effective mitigation, response and recover strategies. References Auf der Heide, E. (1989). Disaster Response. Principles of Preparation and Coordination. St. Louis: Mosby Incorporated DiMaggio, C., Markenson, D., Loo, G.T. & Redlener, I. (2005). The Willingness of US Emergency Medical Technicians to Respond to Terrorist Incidents. Biosecurity and Bioterrorism: Biodefence Strategy, Practice and Science, 3, 1-7 Ford, J.,K., & Schmidt, A.,M. (2000). Emergency Response Training: strategies for enhancing real-world performance. Journal of Hazardous Materials, 75, 195– 215 Granot, H. (1999). Emergency inter-organizational relationships. Disaster Prevention and Management, 8, 21 – 26 Katz, A., Staiti, A.,B., & McKenzie, K.,L. (2006). Preparing for the Unknown, Responding to the Known: Communities and Public Health Preparedness. Health Affairs, 25, 946-957 McEntire, D.,A. (2002). Coordinating multi-organisational responses to disaster: lessons from the March 28, 2000, Fort Worth tornado. Disaster Prevention and Management, 11, 369 – 379 McEntire, D.,A. & Myers, A. (2004). Preparing communities for disasters: issues and processes for government readiness. Disaster Prevention and Management, 13, 140–152 Ostensvig, I. (2006). Interagency cooperation in disaster management: partnership, information and communications technology and committed individuals in Jamaica. Master Thesis, Norwegian University ff Life Sciences, Norway. Retrieved from: http://www.islandvulnerability.org/caribbean.html#jamaica Perry, R.,W. & Lindell, M.,K. (2003). Preparedness for Emergency Response: Guidelines for the Emergency Planning Process. Disasters, 27, 336-350 Richardson, B.,K., & Byers, L. (2007). Communication Studies and Emergency Management: Common Ground, Contributions, and Future Research Opportunities for Two Emerging Disciplines. In, D.A.McEntire (Ed) Disciplines, Disasters and Emergency Management: The Convergence and Divergence of Concepts, Issues and Trends From the Research Literature (pp. 272-283). Springfield: Charles C. Thomas Publisher Ltd, Waugh, W.,L., & Streib, G. (2006). Collaboration and Leadership for Effective Emergency Management. Public Administration Review, December, 131-140 Read More