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Chapter 31 - Resilient Community Networks after Disaster

Jack L. Harris and Marya L. Doerfel

Synopsis

On October 29th 2012 Hurricane Sandy’s storm surge hit New York City and the surrounding Mid-Atlantic coastlines disrupting physical, human, technological and organizational communication. Across the region, local emergency management teams were mobilized and local communities and volunteers provided services to those impacted by the storm. In the community described in this case, government agencies mobilized while unaffiliated volunteers also coordinated efforts to respond to widespread devastation in their community. Across the region, new local, grassroots organizations sprang-up to help and create a new infrastructure of community support. In Bayport, ad-hoc volunteers mobilized, coordinated with existing local organizations, and collaborated with national organizations in the days after Sandy struck.

Keywords: Resilience, Social Networks, Organizational Networks, Interorganizational Relationships, Disaster Response

Key Takeaways and Take a Stand Form

Key Takeaways and Glossary

  1. The importance of interorganizational relationships in the public sphere
  2. The role of communication in connecting resource holders
  3. The importance of formal and informal relationships in organizational partnering
  4. The importance of strong and weak ties for community and social resilience
  5. That collaboration involves both cooperation and conflict or tension

Glossary

Central members: Those with more ties than others in a network or serve as liaisons between groups that are otherwise not connected.

Dense Networks: An indication of information flows in the network based on the number of ties among network members. Denser networks have higher levels of trust and reciprocity enabling them to perform better after disaster (Doerfel & Haseki 2013).

Organizational resilience: the capacity for resourcefulness, effective communication, self-organization, reconfiguring and mobilizing social networks, redundancy, proactive practices, and repairing trust in information.

Resilience: an integrated set of behaviors that relies on collective attributes, organized around communication processes at interpersonal, intergroup and interorganizational levels of activity (Aldrich, 2012; Buzzanell, 2010; Goldstein 2012).

Social networks map the communication flows between individuals, groups, teams, or organizations, revealing overall system structures, the quality of connections (e.g. weak ties) and individuals’ roles (e.g., liaison, group member, central member, isolate).

Strong ties: involve relationships marked by greater degrees of emotional intimacy, mutually confiding in one another (trust), and reciprocity between communication partners.

Weak ties: relative to strong ties, characterized by lower degrees of emotional intimacy, mutually confiding between partners (e.g., trust), and reciprocity between communication partners.

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