Policy-driven Reliability? A US-German Comparison of High-Reliability Networks in Emergency Management

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Unexpected emergencies like disease outbreaks or plane and train crash relief operations result in a renewed interest in how not only individuals, but also organizations and sometimes even whole societies actually face such crises. For management and organizational researchers, this raises a crucial question: how can organizations face challenges that they have not been prepared for? In management research, studies on High Reliability Organizations (HRO) feature prominently and focus upon how organizations prepare for and deal with crisis situations. Although HRO theory has advanced our understanding, we argue that research on HRO needs to be refined in two important ways. First, HRO studies have so far focused on single organizations. However, as large-scale emergencies illustrate, collaboration among HROs is frequently needed. Hence the proposed project asks "From HRO to HRN?" from its title onwards; pointing towards the broad spectrum of potential options for coordinating HROs, which may even include, in some cases at least, the formation of inter-organizational High Reliability Networks (HRN). Therefore, the first objective of the proposed project is to explore the range of possible constellations of HROs in the face of significant emergencies. The focus here is on forms of formal governance, including different forms of network governance. The second objective is to develop a practice-based framework informed by structuration theory that would take into account the peculiarities and contextualities of HROs/HRNs. Focusing in particular upon the actual coordinative practices in which actors engage across organizations, we aim at substantiating research on network genesis and development in settings with extreme uncertainties. To meet these objectives, we are applying for a two-year project researching in depth the Fire and Emergency Services of the City of Düsseldorf, including their wide network of partners; an adequate setting given the role of these services in civil safety in general and in this specific case as a network organizer for large-scale disaster. Multiple methods will be employed: first, retrospective in-depth and comparative analyses of at least 12 past emergencies by employing content and social network analyses will help to explore different HRO constellations and governance forms. Second, real-time data collection from the emergencies of an HRN by means of a 12-month ethnography will help to go beyond the forms of (network) governance by theorizing organizational and inter-organizational practices.