Isolated and Broken Bridges from Interorganizational Emergency Management Networks: An Institutional Collective Action Perspective

Abstract

We examine how interorganizational networks evolved after a disaster with an integrated approach that combines both social network perspectives and emergency management perspectives. This research describes changes in organizations that play a bridging role in interorganizational collaboration and examines endogenous and exogenous factors that lead organizations to be isolated during a disaster. Building from the Institutional Collective Action (ICA) framework, we argue that organizations that play the bridging role between two other organizations may fail to sustain their ties after a disaster. Because the bridging strategy involves risks, organizations are more likely to forge direct ties to other organizations that have resources they need rather than rely on bridges that they created before the disaster. We apply a stochastic actor-oriented model to show the dynamics of emergency management networks during the 2013 Seoul floods. This study contributes to understanding how the bridging strategy can be emasculated by endogenous and exogenous factors.