1st Edition

Chaos Organization and Disaster Management

Edited By Alan Kirschenbaum Copyright 2003

    Chaos Organization and Disaster Management offers a scholarly survey of disaster response behavior and management in the face of natural and manmade catastrophe. The author provides a methodological and empirical platform from which to initiate a critical analysis of disaster management. Sparked by a unique field study of the Israeli experience during the Gulf War, this book demonstrates the massive divide between individual responses to disaster and the actual functioning of disaster management organizations. It exposes the fundamental flaws of disaster management agencies, analyzing disasters from the perspectives of both agencies and potential victims.

    Formulating an alternative approach to disaster management that draws upon the advantages of privatization, this volume appraises methods of measuring disaster agency effectiveness, emphasizing the citizen vantage point and stakeholder evaluations. It outlines the intrinsic bureaucratic constraints that impede the efficacy of government agencies, and reveals the disconnect between organizational and victim perceptions of disaster.

    By highlighting a new empirically based understanding of disaster behavior, the book recommends moving the focus of disaster management to a social process model that will save lives.

    The Official Organizing of Chaos
    Creating Disasters
    Preparing for the Worst
    Are Disaster Agencies Effective?
    The Other Side-Victims Perspective
    The Power of Tradition
    The Odds of Being a Victim
    The Mother Hen Effect
    Alternative Organizational Forms
    Disaster Communities as Survival Mechanisms
    Privatizing Disaster Management

    Biography

    Kirschenbaum, Alan

    "an eye-opening analysis of disaster management, one that provides practical advice…his ideas will challenge even the most knowledgeable disaster-management practitioners…anyone who accepts the challenge will find this book to be both intellectually stimulating and practical."
    -Security Management, July 2005