The Functioning of Established Organizations in Community Disasters
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Date
1968-09
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Publisher
Disaster Research Center
Abstract
Description
The first part of this report will deal with a description of a theoretical framework of organizational functioning. Such a framework is necessarily abstract since abstraction allows one to explore common elements in otherwise would be a mass of detail. It provides a focus for attention and a classification of observations. In addition, it allows the formulation of possible relationships among the various observations. In addition, it allows the formulation of possible relationships among the various observations. In the first chapter, a theory and concepts embedded in this theory are elaborated. Chapter II presents certain assumptions of such a theory and some of the illustrative hypotheses which can be derived. Chapter III presents certain field observations in the context of the overall theoretical model. In Chapter IV, additional material is presented on the operational problems of established organizations. These are based on field work on some 47 instances of disasters or other forms of community stress. These observations touch on a number of matters which are not
highlighted in the theoretical model but are important in understanding the functioning of such organizations. This will include a discussion of problems and differential adaptation of such organizations to specific stress events. We begin, however, with the more abstract model of organizational functioning
Keywords
established organizations, theoretical findings, operational problems, nuclear catastrophe, assumptions, hypotheses