school district partner choice in emergency management collaboration

Volume 2, Issue 2 • 2011 • Article 4

School District Partner Choice in Emergency ManagementCollaboration

Scott E. Robinson, Texas A & M University - College Station

Robinson, Scott E. (2011) "School District Partner Choice in Emergency Management Collaboration,"Risk, Hazards & Crisis in Public Policy: Vol. 2: Iss. 2, Article 4.http://www.psocommons.org/rhcpp/vol2/iss2/art4

DOI: 10.2202/1944-4079.1053

©2011 Policy Studies Organization

http://www.psocommons.org/rhcpp

http://www.psocommons.org/rhcpp

http://www.psocommons.org

School District Partner Choice in EmergencyManagement Collaboration

Scott E. Robinson, Texas A & M University - College Station

Abstract

Successful emergency planning and response requires the cooperation of a broad array ofpartners. The literature on collaboration and social networks provides conflicting predictions abouthow organizations choose partners. One tradition focuses on the powerful role of similarity (orhomophily) as predicting partner choices. A contrasting tradition argues that rational organizationswill choose partners both unlike themselves and unlike their other partners to ensure that eachcollaboration provides access to unique resources. This article starts with the question of how anorganization whose primary responsibilities are not focused on emergency management choosespartners when they respond to and prepare for emergencies. Using a survey of school districts inTexas immediately following Hurricanes Katrina and Rita in 2005, the article assesses the priorityof partner choice. The results indicate that school districts choose partners largely on the basis ofstrategic difference, though there is some evidence of homophily.

KEYWORDS: emergency management, collaborative public management, educationmanagement

Author Notes: This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundationunder Grant No. CMMI-0553124 and CMMI-0555993/0757143. Any opinions, findings, andconclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author and do notnecessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation. I would also like to thank KenMeier and Alisa Hicklin for their assistance on this project.

Introduction

Descriptions of collaborative public management and the emergence of policy networks have become a prominent component of policy research (e.g., Adam and Kriesi 2007; Rhodes 1997). While the existence of such networks is hardly news to people who have been studying policy implementation, research into the dynamics and processes involved in these policy networks has recently opened a number of new research questions to investigation (Robinson 2007). Researchers have now begun to di erentiate types of networks (Agranoff ff 2007), the impact networking behaviors on policy outcomes (Meier and O’Toole 2001; Provan and Milward 1995), and the administration management skill set needed within policy networks (Koppenjan and Klijn 2004; McGuire 2002). Work has specifically revealed the importance of collaboration within emergency management networks (Comfort 1994; Waugh and Streib 2006) where diverse sets of actors must work together to prepare for and respond to events. While there have been extensive efforts to document the diversity of actors involved in emergency management networks (Kapucu 2006; 2008), there has been less attention to why diverse parties opt to participate in these networks. While some organizations are driven by their mission to participate in emergency management activities, some organizations participate as a secondary part of their mission. A local church may provide shelter or a food bank may provide nutrition support for displaced residents. These organizations do not consider themselves disaster organizations, but may opt to engage in emergency planning and response activities.

This article focuses attention on a relatively understudied question within policy network research of particular importance to emergency and crisis management: why does a collaborative manager choose the partners she or he does? Once managers become aware of the possibility of seeking resources (of various kinds ranging from financial resources to hazard information), it also becomes clear that there are many options for potential partnerships. It is not a matter of whether there are partners in the environment. Now it is a question of which of the many options will most help the collaborative organization. Given that collaboration is a costly activity (Burt 1995; 2005), one starts to consider the costs and benefits of each potential partnership. While there is little guidance within the collaborative public management literature on the choice of partners, there are theories of individual social networks that provide some initial guidance (Lazarsfeld and Merton 1954; McPherson, Smith-Lovin, and Cook 2001). The article specifically addresses the choice to seek partners in emergency management on the part of schools—organizations that have a core mission other than emergency management.

1

Robinson: School District Partner Choice

The article is organized as follows. The second section provides a general model of partner choice followed by a review of issues related to why organizations may choose one partner rather than others with applications to emergency management organizations. The third section describes data on school district emergency management partnerships following Hurricanes Katrina and Rita that are useful for identifying patterns of partner choice along with operationalized predictions. Using these data, the fourth section presents a test of these predictions. The final section gives the conclusions with attention to implications on disaster policy. The Dynamics of Partner Choice Advice about collaboration and the construction of policy networks tends to be of a general nature. There are many books and studies available to tell people that collaboration will help solve problems ranging from budgetary pressures to uncertainty about policy problems. Beyond the general advice that collaboration can be helpful, there is not much specific advice about with whom exactly an organization should partner. This lacuna in the literature is a by-product of an often implicit assumption that the costs of collaborative partnership are low or non-existent. It is only when one considers collaboration as a costly activity, and therefore creates an implied collaboration budget, that one stops to consider whether one should prioritize a specific partnership over others. This section of the article builds a general model of partner choice that acknowledges the cost of collaboration and incorporates the sorts of factors that may be relevant to the sequential choice of partnerships. A General Model of Partner Choice Reading the literature on collaborative public management one seldom sees any reference to the costs of collaboration. One is left with the triumphalist conclusion that collaboration is a magical strategy that managers have available to solve all sorts of problems. In fact, one may wonder why managers who are not collaborating extensively are not doing so. Any absence of collaboration is seen as a lack of imagination or energy on the part of the manager.

However, a simple explanation is available. Collaboration is difficult and costly. Partnerships involve investments of time (and sometimes other resources). When one is collaborating, one is not managing the day-to-day internal operations of an organization. Furthermore, a manager only has so many hours in the day to collaborate with other organizations (in addition to all of the internal demands on his or her time). Every partnership consumes some of these scarce resources. The

2

Risk, Hazards & Crisis in Public Policy, Vol. 2 [2011], Iss. 2, Art. 4

http://www.psocommons.org/rhcpp/vol2/iss2/art4DOI: 10.2202/1944-4079.1053

acknowledgment of the costs of collaboration and the scarce resources that managers consume in collaborating leads to the need for managers to budget time spent collaborating (Burt 1995; 2005). Alternatively stated, a manager has to target resources to maximize collaborative advantage without being drawn into expensive, but ine cient, partnerships (Huxham and Vangen 2005). ffi

Emergency management organizations encounter these costs when they seek to broaden their interactions with community organizations. If collaboration were costless, emergency management professionals could work with every community organization to create a maximally broad emergency operations plan, to help organizations develop their own emergency operations and continuity of operations plans, etc. Of course, this is not the case. Instead, emergency managers experience the cost of these collaborations in the time and effort required to coordinate with other partners. Each partner requires time and attention in terms of meetings, phone calls, emails, etc. When time is scarce, emergency managers have to make choices about whom to work with in their available time.

In simple terms, a manager (of organization i) will partner with an organization (j) where the expected utility of the partnership exceeds the costs of the collaboration (in terms of time and other resource investment) ( ). The model assumes that the costs and benefits of any relation are specific to the identity of each partner.

(1)

The available theory to specify the expected utility of partnership rbetween organizations i and j is sparse. As a result, it is difficult to specify the exact content of that component of the equation. Instead of a fully specified model, I propose three sets of factors that could influence the utility of the partnership. First, there are characteristics of each source organization ( ) that may make collaboration with any other partners either easier or more difficult. Examples of such characteristics could include the creation of boundary spanning components of the organization or slack resources within the organization (Thompson 2003 (1967)). For emergency management organizations, a larger staff size or other structures to facilitate coordination may make such efforts less costly. Second, there are characteristics of the partner organization ( ) that can similarly make partnership with them more or less costly. If other organizations have specialized units to interact with emergency managers, interacting with these partners may be less costly. A simple example could be a designated official for government relations or public information. Finally, there are characteristics of the relation between the two actors ( ) that can make their specific partnership more or less valuable. For example, the specific nature of the partnership (formal

3


or informal, possibly by degrees) or the relative similarity or dissimilarity of the two organizations can make the partnership more or less valuable. It will be on this last possibility that this article will focus.

(2) A partnership is efficient if the expected value of the partnership minus the

costs of that relationship is greater than zero. One should partner if

(3) Alternatively, we expect partnerships where the benefits are larger than

the costs. One should partner if

(4) The complexity of the expected value of collaborative partnership should

make it obvious that trying to study each component simultaneously would be a poor place to start. In the absence of well-developed theory to help fill in the various components of utility function, significant exploratory work is needed to build a foundation for a fuller model of partner choice.

This article then simplifies the model by ignoring characteristics of the initial actor ( ) and the potential partners ( ), and only looking at specific characteristics of the partnership itself ( ). The resulting model for this article is

(5)

For organizations that have scarce resources to devote to collaboration, it

is not enough to know that a partnership will be worth the cost. Instead, one will want to prioritize partnerships that will generate more utility than other potential partnerships. For example, if you can only choose one partner ( ), you will want to choose the partner with the largest utility net of the costs rather than all other potential partners ( ). If you are an emergency manager that seeks to add one partner to their network, you will seek a partner with the most to offer (e.g., the most resources to offer in the case of an emergency, the most specialized expertise, the most political clout, etc.) net of the costs of that partnership (e.g., the time and effort required to coordinate with this partner, political risks, etc.).

4



(6)

We should expect that organizations that only partner with one organization will choose that organization from whom they have the most to gain in partnership. If you can choose two organizations, you would expect the two most valuable (net of the costs) partnerships. The order of partnership can help provide some insight into the relative value of different partners.

I strongly encourage research into the importance of other components of the fully general model (equation 4), but illustrate the model here by focusing only on these limited components (equation 5).

In the following subsections, the article will discuss two traditions from the theory of social networks that generate expectations about how joint characteristics shape the probability of observing collaboration between two parties: homophily and structural holes.

The Homophily Principle

A time-honored tradition within the sociological analysis of social networks is to focus on the propensity of actors to seek relations with other actors who are like them in important ways. This literature reinforced the folk wisdom that “birds of a feather flock together” (McPherson and Cook 2001). The logic of such partnerships is that actors who are similar to each often share values and modes of communication. Since we are more likely to meet people who are like us (due to geographical sorting or even similarity of the needs that motivate us to venture out among other people), we are more likely to create relationships with people who are like us in key ways. It may also be the case that any collaboration with a similar partner is easier to sustain than would be the case if partners had to communicate across a language barrier or mediate conflicts over fundamental values. This process should be mirrored at both the individual and organizational levels insofar as the processes that generate individual homophily (ease of communication, propinquity, etc.) are also likely to affect the individuals who serve to connect organizations.

In terms of the general theory of partner choice elaborated above, the homophily principle suggests that costs of any partnership ( ) are reduced by similarity between the actors.

These theories of homophily generate a simple proposition for partner selection in the process of building policy networks.

• Organizations will seek partnerships that are like them in ways important to a specific policy domain.

5


Structural Holes The aphorism “opposites attract” provides a contrasting set of predictions. Rather than predicting that people seek people who are like them in key ways, this aphorism predicts that people will seek partners unlike them in important ways. The logic of such partnerships is that differences tend to compensate for each other. In inter-personal relations, scholars may seek co-authors who possess different strengths so that the partnership can jointly produce research of higher quality than either party could have done independently. Compensatory strategies create heterogeneous networks of actors.

The advantage of partnering with dissimilar organizations is the key to Ronald Burt’s theory of structural holes (1995; 2005). Burt’s focus was on the development of networks between private, for-profit organizations. He wanted to build a theory of strategic partnership to better assess the potential benefit of various proposed partnerships. He noted that a partnership could be redundant. If two potential research partners possess exactly the same skill set, adding the second identical partner does not add new skills to the network. If there were costs associated with adding the second researcher with the identical skill set, it may not be advantageous to do so.

Burt used the term “structural hole” to describe the advantage created by partnering with organizations that could contribute uniquely to the network. The unique contribution becomes of a source of leverage for the unique actor. An organization that is the only provider of a particular resource within a network has an advantage over organizations within the network that all provide the same resource. The absence of connections to people with similar unique contributions to the network are the “structural holes” that inspire the title for Burt’s original text (1995). Organizations that want to maintain power will maintain the structural holes around them while organizations that seek partnerships may want to identify partners who possess these unique resources.

The structural holes hypothesis is consonant with a resource dependence perspective as well (Pfeffer and Salancik 2003). In the theory of resource dependence, organizations will collaborate with other organizations as a means to secure needed resources. To the extent that dissimilar organizations are more likely to possess otherwise unavailable resources, the resource dependence perspective generates predictions consistent with the structural holes perspective.

In terms of the general theory of partner choice elaborated above, the structural holes principle suggests that the benefits of any partnership ( ) are reduced by similarity between the actors.

The theory of structural holes generates a simple proposition for partner selection in building policy networks.

6



• Organizations will seek partners that are unlike them in ways important to a specific policy domain.

The next section will introduce a dataset and an operational hypothesis related to these two theories of partner choice.

Data and Models

The previous section reviewed literature on social networks to generate propositions related to partner choice in policy networks. Two traditions generated opposite expectations about the propensity of actors to partner with others like or unlike themselves. This set of contrasting expectations provides a rich opportunity for empirical research. In practice, do organizations tend to partner with actors like or unlike themselves?

This article will provide a specific context in the form of emergency management networks following Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. The following section will provide a description of the data followed by a section localizing the previous propositions to the context of emergency management.

Data

In the weeks following Hurricanes Katrina and Rita in the fall of 2005, school districts across Texas struggled to provide services to hundreds of thousands of students who had either been displaced within the state or entered the state fleeing the devastation in other states. School districts, not often focusing on emergency response, found themselves with a variety of questions about how to provide services for these students. As a result, many school districts sought help from other organizations. From some organizations they sought financial resources; from others they sought information.

The uncertainty in the period immediately following the hurricanes provided an opportunity to study partner selection among these school districts. To whom did these districts turn for assistance? We sent a self-administered mail survey to every K-12 public school district (including charter school districts) in Texas two months after Hurricane Katrina (with Hurricane Rita occurring in this gap). As part of the survey, we asked each school superintendent to identify the sorts of organizations with whom they collaborated in the aftermath of the hurricanes.1 Superintendents could choose among six di erent types of ff

1 The survey also included general questions on the impact of the hurricanes on the school districts and their state of emergency preparedness.

7


organizations: police, fire, and first responder organizations; nonprofit and relief organizations; community and religious organizations; other school districts; government relief and welfare organizations; and business organizations.2 For each actor, superintendents could report whether they collaborated with this group. All superintendents were given all of these response options with the median number of chosen partners being 3.

The survey of approximately 1,200 school districts in Texas ended after three waves of self-administrated mail instruments for a response rate of approximately 60% returned by postage-paid envelopes (Hicklin, Robinson, and O’Toole 2009).3

The focus here is, then, not on how an emergency management organization builds an emergency management network (itself an interesting issue). Instead, this article focuses on how school districts—organizations not primarily involved in emergency management—choose partners following a disruptive emergency event. I choose to focus on this population for a number of reasons. First, the creation of broad and diverse emergency management networks will require convincing non-emergency management organizations to participate in emergency planning activities. The motivation of these non-emergency management actors to opt into the network becomes of central importance. Second, these actors played an important role in emergency management activities following the hurricanes of 2005. Many of these organizations took in students (up to thousands of new students in some cases) and found themselves involved in mass evacuation hosting activities. Third, this population of organizations (school districts) is one that has been subject to considerable research in terms of collaborative public management (Meier and O’Toole 2001), allowing our study to adapt existing tested instruments and research protocols.

Assessment of Partner Choice The data described in the previous section provide opportunities to test the propositions generated in the section on the dynamics of partner choice. The survey’s questions about the type of organizations with which districts partnered 2 The list of potential partners is drawn from previous work on school district collaboration partners with added partners for emergency management issues (Meier and O’Toole 2001). The added partner types were “police, fire, and first responder,” “local community and religious organization”, and “government relief and welfare organizations.” This paper will focus on two of these choices and one option from the previous battery: “other school districts.” 3 There was some item non-response which reduces the number of observations for specific questions below the overall response rate. Assessment of the comparability of respondents to non-responding districts shows that responders are slightly larger than non-responders, but not by a substantively large amount. The survey sampling frame is kept up-to-date through the state education system and resulted in very few (fewer than six) surveys returned without delivery.

8



provide a basis on which to test the propositions. To the extent that the homophily principle is correct, we would expect that school districts are more likely to partner with organizations that are similar to themselves. What is not clear is what type of similarity is relevant. If the most relevant similarity is similarity in mission and core tasks, then the most similar organizations are other school districts. This leads to the following hypothesis.

• In the wake of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, school districts were more likely to report collaborating with other school districts than other types of organizations.

However, to the extent that school districts follow a structural holes approach to partner selection, we would expect school districts to seek partnerships with partners with different competencies than they have internally. This article focuses on two potential partners that have different missions and core tasks than the schools: first responder groups and local community and religious organizations. To the extent that the structural holes motivation predicts the collaboration strategy of school districts, the following hypothesis should hold.

• In the wake of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, school districts were more likely to report collaborating with types of organizations other than school districts—specifically, first responder and local community and religious organizations.

The priority of the similar or dissimilar organizations is revealed by those school districts (a vast majority of them) that reported collaborating with some but not all organizational types. The choices that districts made when they had included (and excluded) selected partners reveal priority. If you can only choose one organization type, you will choose the organization that represents the greater potential gain in expected utility. If you need only exclude organization type, you will exclude the organization that o ers the least expected utility. The proportion ffof choices for organizations in these situations of a collaboration budget (and the allocation of scarce “slots” for collaborative partnerships) will reveal priority. This technique for inferring priority of partner types is described, along with the results, in the next section.

Results

The following series of tables presents the school districts’ reported collaborative partnerships with various organization types. Overall, we can initially see the

9


diversity of partner types and their relative frequencies (see Table 1). The overall evidence provides support for the structural hole strategies. The most frequently reported partnership is with police, fire, and first responder organizations. This is definitely an organization type that is different than the school districts in a variety of ways and offers distinctive competencies. The propensity of partnering with these organizations indicates a structural hole strategy among the superintendents. The second most common partner type was local community or religious organizations. The third most commonly reported partner was other school districts—the partner type most like the school districts themselves. Based on the overall responses, more organizations chose to partner with groups that are dissimilar in mission and core task than other school districts. This represents the adoption of a structural holes strategy.4 Table 1. Proportion of Partnerships by Organization Type

Organization Type Reported Partnerships Police, fire, and first responder organizations 69%

Local community and religious organizations 59%

Other school districts 49%

N = 549

Initial Choice In addition to the relative frequency of partner selection, equation 6 offers insight into the order of selection of partners. We would expect that when organizations’ choices are constrained, the selections they make will reveal preferences about each partnership. When a district can only select one partner, it will select the partner with the highest expected benefit (net of the costs of the partnership). When a district can select all but one of the potential partners, it will likely leave out only the partner with the lowest expected net benefit.5

By looking at the districts that reported only one partner, we get a second view of the priorities of the district officials. If a district can only partner with one 4 In relation to the full list of six potential partner types, the three omitted partner types were each mentioned less frequently than the three discussed below. We will continue to focus on these three organizations in the analysis that follows for clarity. Results for all six partner types are available from the author. 5 It is important to note that the number of observations in the subsequent analyses will not add up to the total observations in the overall table. The following tables do not include the districts that reported collaboration with no types of partners or with all of the types of partners. The numbers will also not add up to 100% because of the response options omitted for this response and the possibility of multiple choices in some of the tables.

10



organization, it is likely to choose the partner that offers the greatest net benefit. The relative proportion of partnerships among those districts who only choose one partner should then indicate the frequency within which a partner is preferred to all others. Table 2 reports these choices.

The evidence of a structural hole strategy among school districts in the overall rate of partnership is reflected among those districts who only report partnerships with one type of organization. If you only choose one partner, almost half chose a police, fire, or first responder group—evidence of a structural hole approach to seeking unique competency. The second most likely partner among those who only have one partner is the most similar group of other school districts—evidence of a homophilic tendency. Interestingly, if the district only reported one partner, it is rare that the one partner they report is a local community or religious organization. Here the evidence for the two hypotheses supports the prediction of structural holes, but only for the first responder groups.

Table 2. Proportion of Partnerships by Organization Type (Districts Reporting One Collaboration)




N = 74

Follow-Up Choices

Partner choices when there is a partially constrained resource—that is, where a district only reported partnering with two or three partner types—provides a third lens through which to dissect the partner choice process. Table 3 illustrates the proportion of partner-type selections among those districts that chose two partner types. First responder organizations are again the most frequently chosen partner but now followed by local community or religious organizations—not other school districts. Partnerships with other school districts come in third and well behind—a weak showing for this homophilic partner type.

Table 4 provides a similar illustration for the districts who reported three partner choices. Partnerships with police, fire, and first responder organizations become almost certain among these districts. Following closely behind are the relatively common partnerships with local community religious organizations. Other school districts are now chosen by over half of the respondents, but in smaller proportion than the less similar organizations. Altogether this provides stronger evidence for districts seeking unique competencies rather than simply seeking partnerships with organizations like themselves.

11


Table 3. Proportion of Partnerships by Organization Type (Districts Reporting Two Collaborations)




N = 112

Table 4. Proportion of Partnerships by Organization Type (Districts Reporting Three Collaborations)




N = 112

Final Choices The final look at the evidence focuses on the final choices of school districts who reported partnerships with most of the partner types. Here our attention shifts from asking which organization type the districts chose to partner with to the organizations with which the districts chose not to partner. Low values in this analysis represent the rarity of non-partnership. Table 5 reports the proportion of districts not reporting a partnership with each type of organization among those districts who reported partnerships with four of the six types. Organizations in this set reported leaving off two types. What is interesting is which types were most likely to be left off.

Table 5. Proportion of Partnerships by Organization Type (Districts Reporting All but Two Collaborations)

Organization Type Absent Partnerships Police, fire, and first responder organizations 11%



N = 82

12



The evidence from Table 5 is consistent with the results from the assessment in the previous tables. The least likely partner types to be left out of a district’s partnership portfolio are police, fire, and first responders. Following closely behind (in being unlikely to be left out of a district’s reported network) are local community religious organizations. In third place are other school districts who, among school districts that only leave off two types, are left off over one third of the time.

Table 6 reports the frequency with which an organization type is left owhen school districts report collaborating with all but one organization type.

ff

Interestingly, these organizations are more likely to leave off police, fire, and first responder groups than local community and religious organizations—a first for all of these analyses. Again other school districts come in third, providing support for the hypothesis that school districts prioritize organizations unlike themselves in terms of mission—and presumably expertise.

Table 6. Proportion of Partnerships by Organization Type (Districts Reporting All but One Collaboration)

Organization Type Absent Partnerships Police, fire, and first responder organizations 7%



N = 57

Conclusions and Discussion

The results of the tables in the Results section illustrate the tension between structural hole and homophilic strategies among school districts collaborating following a natural disaster. There is strong support that school districts seek partnerships with organizations unlike themselves. The most frequent partners, the first partners chosen, and the partners least likely to be left out of a network are police, fire, and first responder organizations and local community and religious organizations. These are organizations that are unlike the school districts in important ways and o er a variety of services that the school districts may not ffbe able to provide internally. Trailing relatively far behind in the partner choice process are the most similar organizations, the other school districts. These are organizations with whom it would seemingly be easy to partner. These are organizations that share important characteristics with the district, including technology and professional identification. Despite this similarity, other school districts are not attractive partners to the school districts surveyed.

13


This reveals some of the complexity in the simple homophilic and structural hole hypotheses. This article’s focus has been on similarity in terms of organizational mission and core task. In these terms, school districts are pursuing a structural hole strategy. However, one can define similarity in different terms. Other school districts typically cover different geographic areas. Follow-up interviews with some school districts’ emergency management officials reveal that first responders and local community or religious organizations are geographically proximate to the school district. In the sense of geography, these two types of organizations are similar to each school district. Further work on how school district officials perceive these other actors may provide insight into which differences are perceived as relevant.

There are a variety of directions that research into partner choice could take. First, one could assess the impact of agent characteristics on partner choice. In this case, do school districts with different characteristics choose different partner types? It could be that the size of the district or its internal planning capacity affect the expected utility of partnering with different types of others. Districts with well-developed internal planning capacities may see less advantage in working with other school districts. Districts with less well-developed planning capacities may see great benefit in collaborating with other school districts as part of an effort to pool similar planning capacities. Such internal processes may have already created relationships with some of these actors or made the process of building these relationships easier. Similarly, differences in impact of recent disasters (Katrina and Rita in this case, but possibly including previous local disasters) may have predisposed some actors to be broadly collaborative. Differences in the characteristics of these agents are not the focus of this study but is certainly worthy of future attention (Gerber and Robinson 2009; Hicklin, Robinson, and O’Toole 2009). Such predispositions are important for emergency managers seeking to recruit partners and looking for the most willing local partners.

Information on partner characteristics could also help explain partner choice. The expected utility of a potential partnership likely depends on the unique contributions of those partners. Partners that offer resources or information that, say, school districts need following a natural disaster are likely to be attractive partners. Those potential partners with either the slack to donate the resource or the facilities to coordinate activities will be more attractive than those who have to be coaxed into working with the school districts.

It may also be the case that the nature of relationships affects the expected utility of different relationships. Based on the logic of Granovetter’s “strength of weak ties” (Granovetter 1973), one might expect that some sorts of relationships are most valuable if they do not involve frequent or intense relations. It could be

14



that the preference for difference observed in these data would be quite different if one looked instead at more intensive relationships.

The findings reported in this article may be heartening. School districts are seeking di erent sorts of organizations with whom to partner in the aftermath of a fflarge natural disaster. As these school districts sought to accommodate large new enrollments and, in some cases, to respond to closures and flooding in their own communities, they sought organizations unlike themselves as partners. While these organizations could have circled their wagons and looked only within their own number for partners, they reached out to a wide variety of potential partners. This suggests that recruiting school districts to participate in emergency management networks is possible—and not a rare exception.

The willingness of school district officials to seek partnerships with first responders suggests that there is room for inclusion of school districts in emergency planning activities. Seeking these new partners can raise additional questions. What sort of complications arise as organizations partner across professional boundaries (e.g., education officials working with public health o cials), sectoral boundaries (e.g., public sector education organizations working ffiwith nonprofit organizations), and across levels of government (e.g., local education officials working with state and federal emergency management officials)? How does one manage across differences like these? Emergency management professionals who seek to integrate actors from various sectors will need to understand how various organizations choose partners to help ensure these organizations choose actors that can make each organization—and each community—safer.

As much attention as emergency management scholars have paid recently to issues of collaborative public management and policy networks, a great deal of work lies ahead. If we want to build broad and diverse emergency management networks, we will need to understand the motivation that actors have to choose partners for matters relating to emergency management. We must move beyond again pointing out how common and how important networked public policy is and assess how to manage and implement policy within these settings.

References

Adam, S., and H. Kriesi. 2007. “The Network Approach.” In Theories of the Policy Process, Second Edition. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 129–154.

Agranoff, R. 2007. Managing within Networks: Adding Value to Public Organizations. Washinton, D.C.: Georgetown University Press.

Burt, R.S. 1995. Structural Holes: The Social Structure of Competition. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

15


Burt, R.S. 2005. Brokerage and Closure: An Introduction to Social Capital. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.

Comfort, L. 1994. “Self-organization in Complex Systems.” Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory 4: 393–410.

Gerber, B.J., and S.E. Robinson. 2009. “Local Government Performance and the Challenges of Regional Preparedness for Disasters.” Public Performance and Management Review 32 (3): 345–371.

Granovetter, M.S. 1973. “The Strength of Weak Ties.” American Journal of Sociology 78: 1360–1380.

Hicklin, A.K.J.M., S.E. Robinson, and L.J. O’Toole. 2009. “Calming the Storms: Collaborative Public Management, Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, and Disaster Response.” In The Collaborative Public Manager, eds. R. O’Leary and L.B. Bingham. Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press.

Huxham, C., and S. Vangen. 2005. Managing to Collaborate: The Theory and Practice of Collaborative Advantage. Oxford, UK: Routledge.

Kapucu, N. 2006. “Public-nonprofit Partnerships for Collective Action in Dynamic Contexts of Emergencies.” Public Administration 84: 205–220.

Kapucu, N. 2008. “Collaborative Emergency Management: Better Community Organising, Better Public Preparedness and Response.” Disasters 32: 239–262.

Koppenjan, J., and E. Klijn. 2004. Managing Uncertainties in Networks. London/New York: Routledge.

Lazarsfeld, P., and R.K. Merton. 1954. “Friendship and Social Processes: A Substantive and Methodological Analysis.” In Freedom and Control in Modern Society, eds. Morroe Berger and Theodore Abel. New York: Van Nortstrand.

McGuire, M. 2002. “Managing Networks: Propositions on What Managers Do and Why They Do It.” Public Administration Review 62: 599–609.

McPherson, M, L. Smith-Lovin, and J.M. Cook. 2001. “Birds of a Feather: Homophily in Social Networks.” Annual Review of Sociology 27: 415–444.

Meier, K.J., and L.J. O’Toole. 2001. “Managerial Strategies and Behavior in Networks: A Model with Evidence from U.S. Public Education.” Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory 11: 271–294.

Pfeffer, J., and G. Salancik. 2003. The External Control of Organizations: A Resource Dependence Perspective. Stanford: Stanford University Press.

Provan, K.G., and H.B. Milward. 1995. “A Preliminary Theory of Network Effectiveness.” Administrative Science Quarterly, 40: 1–33.

Rhodes, R. 1997. Understanding Governance: Policy Networks, Governance, Reflexivity, and Accountability. Buckingham: Open University Press.

16



Robinson, S.E. 2007. “A Decade of Treating Networks Seriously.” Policy Studies Journal 34: 589–598.

Thompson, J.D. 2003 (1967). Organizations in Action: Social Sciences Bases of Administrative Theory. Edison, NJ: Transaction Publications.

Waugh, W., and G. Streib. 2006. “Collaboration and Leadership for Effective Emergency Management.” Public Administration Review 66: 131–140.

17


school district partner choice in emergency management collaboration

Documents