Linking emergency management networks to disaster resilience: bonding and bridging strategy in hierarchical or horizontal collaboration networks

Disaster scholars have investigated the nature of organizational resilience, but extant research has not examined various network strategies within hierarchical and horizontal collaboration structures. The question of how the structural arrangements for collaboration within emergency management networks influence disaster resilience remains unanswered. This study begins to fill this lacuna by analyzing a bonding and bridging strategy for interorganizational collaboration to determine how these patterns of organizational relations might enhance the level of organizational resilience in each hierarchical and horizontal emergency management network. Bonding strategies highlight the importance of trust and information redundancy to emergency preparedness and response. Bridging strategies capture the tendency for local actors to seek partners to obtain crucial information and resources across the region. The results support the study hypothesis that bridging strategies in hierarchical emergency management networks have a positive effect on the level of organizational resilience. Neither type of network strategy influenced resilience in horizontal network structures. The findings confirm that the coordinating role of the national and provincial governments is critical to the building of a resilient community in terms of interorganizational collaboration, and demonstrate the steering role of the national and provincial governments with regard to resilience. Copyright Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2015