Organizational Adaptation to Disaster

The major focus of this chapter is twofold. We first consider what has been learned about organizational adaptation to disasters from original field studies by the Disaster Research Center (DRC) during the initial 20 years of its existence (1963–1983). We then examine a series of secondary data analyses (1982–2001) that we, along with our graduate and undergraduate students, completed using data archives produced primarily from these studies and maintained by the DRC. The groundwork established by what amounts to several decades of original field studies and follow-up archival analyses has continued to inform DRC field research on preparedness for and response to natural, technological, and willful disasters by organizations in both the public (e.g., Tierney, 1985, 1993) and private sectors (e.g., Webb, Tierney, & Dahlhammer, 2000). Arguably the most compelling example of continuity from the earliest to the most recent work within the DRC tradition is the Center’s major study of organizational adaptation following the September 11, 2001 terrorist attack on the World Trade Center (Kendra & Wachtendorf, 2003; Kendra et al., 2003; Wachtendorf, 2004).