Disaster Management Collaboration in Turkey: Assessing Progress and Challenges of Hybrid Network Governance

Abstract

Managing disasters generally demands multiorganizational collaboration and collaborative skills. In Turkey, observed shortcomings in disaster management collaboration prompted a reorganization of the disaster management system that led to the emergence of a centralized hybrid network. The network governance literature generally heralds decentralized organization and shared network governance, which facilitate collaboration by maximizing trust and legitimacy and minimizing power imbalances. Through the use of 24 semi-structured interviews, this article's objective is to assess the applicability of prior theoretical assumptions regarding interorganizational collaboration in a political-administrative context different from that in which they were originally developed. The study contributes to the theoretical discussion about how political-administrative system attributes might influence interorganizational disaster management collaboration. The results suggest that 'tailor-fitting' interorganizational network designs to the political-administrative culture can be beneficial for collaborative disaster management. Furthermore, results suggest that more effort should be devoted to examining cases where actors manage to overcome barriers to collaboration despite challenging institutional and political-administrative landscapes.

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