Managing Crises Collaboratively: Prospects and Problems—A Systematic Literature Review

Abstract

Effective interorganizational collaboration is a pivotal ingredient of any community or nation's capacity to prepare for and bounce back from disruptive crisis events. The booming research field of collaborative public management (CPM) has been yielding important insights into such collaboration that as yet await transfer to the study of crisis management (CM). Also, we argue that the general CPM literature has not sufficiently addressed the distinctive collaboration challenges involved in coping with crises. This article bridges this twofold gap. Based on a systematic review of prior research in collaborative CM, this study identifies dominant areas of theoretical emphasis, methodological practices, and patterns of empirical enquiry. The article highlights areas where CPM research has potential to further inform the understanding of collaborative CM, including performance, success factors, managerial skills, and learning. The article then identifies five properties associated with CM-uncertainty, leadership, magnitude, costs, and urgency-which deserve further analysis to advance the understanding of the application of CPM principles and strategies. We conclude with outlining a research agenda and offering a set of testable propositions aimed at investigating the likelihood of effective collaboration in different types of crises and as expected in different CM paradigms.

Management strategies in response to an institutional crisis: The case of earthquakes in the Netherlands

“…Our study answers recent calls for more research on institutional crises (Nohrstedt et al ) and contributes to existing research by highlighting the important role that management strategies and agency play in resolving an institutional crisis (Sabatier ; Birkland ; Baumgartner and Jones ; Nohrstedt and Weible ). Furthermore, we have theorized how incumbent policy elites may successfully navigate an institutional crisis by using numerous crisis management strategies (ranging from conservative to more reformist).…”

Appropriate Governance Responses to Infectious Disease Threats: Developing Working Hypotheses

“…In recent studies of disaster management, network governance of crisis response has gained considerable attention (Christensen & Lægreid, ; Comfort, ; Comfort & Kapucu, ; Galaz et al, ; Huizer et al, ; Kapucu et al, ; Kapucu, Augustin, & Garayev, ; Magsino, ; Moynihan & Theory, ; Nowell & Steelman, ; Nowell et al, ). As noted previously, Nohrstedt et al () produced a systematic literature review on Managing Crisis Collaboratively , Kuipers and Welsh appealed, in their Taxonomy of Crisis and Disaster literature , for more attention to be paid to inter alia “Networked Crisis Management” (Kuipers & Welsh, , p. 280), while Boin et al (, p. 32) claim in The Crisis Approach that “In fact, the crisis response in modern society is best characterized in terms of a network.” The current consensus thus appears to favour network governance, which in turn leads to the question: what type of network governance? According to the contingent perspective we follow here, the question becomes which type of network governance (or “networked enterprise” as (Nowell et al, , p. 1) call it is appropriate for which type of crisis threat?…”

“…In the present paper we contribute to this question by arguing that it is important to distinguish different types of crisis because we can expect that different type of crisis need different types of responses. We are surprised to see how few studies in the crisis literature consider type of crisis an important parameter (for exceptions, see DeLeo, ; Nohrstedt, Bynander, Parker, & Hart, ). The reason might be that the literature is dominated by case studies in which the type of crisis is a given rather than a value on a variation of types of crisis (Boin, 't Hart, & McConnell, ).…”

“…As mentioned above, types of threats are only occasionally mentioned in the literature. When it comes to responses the literature is dominated by a schism (Boin, 't Hart, & Kuipers, ; Nohrstedt et al, ; Nowell, Steelman, Velez, & Yang, ). The literature is fueled by a continuing debate among disaster scholars and practitioners concerning the networked and hierarchical aspects of incident response (e.g., Boin & Bynander, ; Comfort, ; Jung & Song, ; Kapucu, Arslan, & Collins, ; Marcum, Bevc, & Butts, ; Moynihan, ; Moynihan & Theory, ; Wittmann, Jurisch, & Krcmar, ).…”

“…In order to improve our capacity to respond to potentially catastrophic events, we need to move beyond this schism and ask ourselves the question which different, potentially effective options are available as crisis response arrangements. A rather recent and important argument in the crisis‐response literature is advancing the importance of “coordination.” This is not surprising, given the fact that crisis response, almost by definition, requires division of labour in which an assemblage of organizations collaborate (see Christensen & Lægreid, ; Galaz et al, ; Huizer, Kraaij‐Dirkzwager, Timen, Schuitmaker, & van Steenbergen, ; Kuipers & Welsh, ; Nohrstedt et al, ). Coordination is probably a good answer to a crisis threat but, from a contingency perspective, the question remains: what type of coordination is most appropriate for which type of threat?…”