RAPID: Hurricane Harvey and Organizational Resilience

本项目考察与建立更强大、更具战略性的沟通网络相关的组织流程，以提高组织适应破坏性事件带来的重大变化的能力。该项目的新颖之处在于，它发展了对组织如何沟通以及信息如何在处理自然灾害的组织内部和组织之间流动的特征的理解。当社区经历像自然灾害这样的破坏性事件时，作为社区一部分的组织也会受到影响。组织如何在短期和长期内恢复，他们的恢复在社区的恢复和恢复中扮演什么角色？虽然企业、民间组织和公共机构等组织显然会发挥重要作用，但人们对这种作用的理解并不像对社区、组织和恢复工作的利益所必需的那样好。目前的趋势是把重点放在为单个组织制定战略上，而没有充分考虑到作为整个社区支柱的组织间网络。这项工作涉及到定性访谈、参与性观察和社会网络分析技术的创新组合，以确定经纪人、孤立者和小集团在社区内组织的即时和长期恢复中的关键作用。研究结果将有助于制定在破坏性事件发生后建设组织和社区能力的实际战略。这项工作也将推进组织间网络的理论和方法，同时利用基于网络的方法发展弹性科学。飓风哈维是一场严重的破坏性自然灾害，严重影响了休斯顿地区的商业和社区组织。本项目采用基于网络的方法来了解组织对破坏性事件的弹性，以及组织内部和组织之间的通信网络如何促进或阻碍从破坏性事件中立即和长期的恢复。通过社会网络进行交流以及各组织通过信息共享相互联系的方式可以为国家加强社区和组织在具有挑战性的环境中有效运作的能力的努力提供信息。该项目将使用混合方法来描述组织沟通特征。特别是，它将分析现有的组织文件，作为一种方法来绘制组织采用的基本社会网络，以支持与关键利益相关者群体的信息流。然后，研究将使用现场观察和对构成受影响组织的利益相关者网络的关键组织合作伙伴的访谈，以进一步了解组织内部和组织之间的沟通和网络特征方面的弹性。与利益相关者的访谈也将用于确定有效恢复的标准。将进行网络分析，将通信模式与恢复结果联系起来。

This project examines organizational processes associated with building stronger and more strategic communication networks to enhance the ability for organizations to adapt to significant changes wrought by disruptive events. The project is novel in its way to develop understanding of the characteristics of how organizations communicate and how information flows within and among organizations dealing with natural disasters. When communities experience disruptive events like natural disasters, the organizations that are part of the community also suffer. How do organizations recover in the short-term and long-term and what role does their recovery play in the community's recovery and resilience? While it seems obvious that organizations, such as businesses, civil organizations, and public agencies, would have a significant role, that role is not as well understood as it must be for the benefit of communities, organizations, and recovery efforts. The tendency is to focus on developing strategies for single organizations without sufficient consideration of the inter-organizational networks that are a pillar to the whole community. This work involves an innovative combination of qualitative interviews, participant observation, and social network analysis techniques to identify the key roles of brokers, isolates, and cliques in the immediate and long-term recovery of organizations within the community. The results will contribute to practical strategies for building organizational and community capacity in the aftermath of disruptive events. This work will also advance theory and method generally about interorganizational networks while developing the science of resilience using a network based approach. Hurricane Harvey represented a significant and disruptive natural disaster that seriously affected business and community organizations around the Houston area. This project takes a network-based approach to understand organizational resilience against disruptive events, and how communication networks within and between organizations facilitate or hinder the immediate and long-term recovery from the disruptive event. Communicating through social networks and the way in which organizations are linked through their information sharing can inform national efforts to strengthen the ability of communities and organizations to function effectively in challenging circumstances. The project will use a mixed-method approach to characterize organizational communication characteristics. In particular, it will analyze existing organizational documents as one way to map out the basic social networks the organization employs to support information flows with key stakeholder groups. The research will then use in-situ observations and interviews with key organizational partners that make up stakeholder networks of impacted organizations to develop further understanding of resilience in terms of communication and network characteristics within and between organizations. Interviews with the stakeholders will also be used to determine the criterion of effective recovery. Network analysis will be conducted to link communication patterns with recovery outcomes.