Public Evaluations Of Organizational Performance After The Wilkes-Barre Flood
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Date
1976
Authors
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Disaster Research Center
Abstract
Description
Disaster conditions present a considerable challenge to a wide range of organizations in any affected community. Scarce resources, extreme time constraints, and disruption of channels of communication and modes of transportation often push organizations to the limits of their capabilities. Yet some organizations are overloaded while others are barely affected. A number of students of organizations (for example, Haas and Drabek, 1973, and Price, 1967) have grappled with the complex and difficult issues of organizational characteristics and environmental demands. The Disaster Research Center (DRC) at
The Ohio State University has studied aspects of this for specific organizations in the past (for example, Kennedy, 13784 Adam, 1978; Ross, 19703. However, a
different perspective can be taken. Regardless of exactly how an organization meets the tasks imposed by a diaster situation, its legitimacy and long-term success often are linked more with how the public in general thinks the organization
performed than with actual organizational experience.
Keywords
Flood, Diaster conditions, environmental demands, organizational characteristics