Factors contributing to business recovery 6-8 months after Hurricane Katrina were examined. Managers from 183 surviving organizations in the Greater New Orleans area rated the levels of storm preparation, amount of storm damage, severity of storm-related problems and organizational performance. Factors under management's control such as having an emergency response plan, storm preparation and effective staff communication had no real impact on organizational performance. Significant predictors with a negative impact on organizational performance included variables such as storm damage and post-disaster problems. Complications arising from extreme population dislocation, specifically loss of customer base and staffing issues, had the greatest impact on organizational performance. The implications for disaster preparation and management are discussed.

Purpose -This study is an empirical examination of the ongoing recovery efforts of surviving businesses in the greater New Orleans area four years after Hurricane Katrina. Factors thought to contribute to long-term recovery were examined including internal factors (e.g. organizational size), population-related issues (e.g. loss of customer base), and macro variables (e.g. neighborhood recovery). Problems with population issues were expected to be a primary cause of slow business recovery. The paper aims to discuss these issues. Design/methodology/approach -Managers from 186 businesses in the New Orleans area participated in the study by completing a survey. Eligible business needed to exist before Hurricane Katrina and still be operating at the time of data collection which occurred in Spring 2009. Findings -Results from analysis of variance indicated that managers from organizations performing worse compared to pre-Katrina levels reported significantly greater problems across the internal, population-related and macro variables. In regression analysis, only three factors within the population and macro variable areas were significant predictors of organizational performance. As expected, organizational performance was strongly predicted by population-related issues, especially the loss of customers.Research limitations/implications -One limitation concerns the cross-sectional design of the study which focused specifically on surviving businesses. The survivor bias in the data limits the generalizability of the results. Also, observations from businesses in the same neighborhood could be spatially dependent due to the systematic influence of external factors. Originality/value -This study provides a rare investigation of long-term business recovery, at the organizational level of analysis, in the wake of a disaster that resulted in one of the most extreme population dislocations in US history.

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Abstract. Individuals vary in their mindsets – their implicit beliefs regarding the malleability of human attributes. Because mindset influences responses to achievement situations, we hypothesize that employees with a more incremental mindset (i.e., believing that human attributes can be changed through effort and hard work) will have higher job performance and better relationships with their manager. We found that employees with a more incremental mindset have higher job performance. Also, when their manager has a strong learning goal orientation, employees with a more incremental mindset have a higher quality relationship with their manager, which, in turn, positively relates to their job performance.