Choose your collaborators wisely: Addressing interdependent tasks through collaboration in responding to wildfire disasters

• Published date: 01 November 2022
• Author: Örjan Bodin,Angela M. Guerrero,Daniel Nohrstedt,Julia Baird,Robert Summers,Ryan Plummer,Lorien Jasny
• Date: 01 November 2022
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/puar.13518

RESEARCH ARTICLE

Choose your collaborators wisely: Addressing interdependent

tasks through collaboration in responding to wildfire disasters

Örjan Bodin

1

| Angela M. Guerrero

1,2

| Daniel Nohrstedt

3

| Julia Baird

4,5

|

Robert Summers

6

| Ryan Plummer

4

| Lorien Jasny

7

1

Stockholm Resilience Centre, Stockholm

University, Stockholm, Sweden

2

School of Architecture & Built Environment,

Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane,

Queensland, Australia

3

Department of Government, Centre of Natural

Hazard and Disaster Science (CNDS), Uppsala

University, Uppsala, Sweden

4

Environmental Sustainability Research Centre,

Brock University, St. Catharines, Ontario, Canada

5

Geography and Tourism Studies, Brock

University, St. Catharines, Ontario, Canada

6

Department of Earth and Atmospheric

Sciences, University of Alberta, Edmonton,

Alberta, Canada

7

Department of Politics, University of Exeter,

Exeter, Devon, UK

Correspondence

Örjan Bodin, Stockholm Resilience Centre,

Stockholm University, 106 91 Stockholm,

Sweden.

Email: orjan.bodin@su.se

Funding information

Australian Research Council, Grant/Award

Number: DE210101385; Centre of Natural

Hazards and Disaster Science (CNDS); Canada

Research Chairs; Swedish research council

Formas, Grant/Award Number: 2020-01551;

Swedish Civil Contingencies Agency, Grant/

Award Number: 2019-09036

Abstract

Responding to disastrous wildfires traversing geographical scales requires multi-

actor collaboration to address a series of interdependent operational tasks. While

this type of distributed collective action problem is salient across governance con-

texts, less is known about if and how collaboration helps individual actors effec-

tively address their tasks. Applying a novel network-centric method to wildfire

responder networks in Canada and Sweden, this study shows that when actors

working on the same tasks collaborate, and/or when one actor addresses two

interdependent tasks, effectiveness increases. The number of collaborative ties an

actor has with others does not enhance effectiveness. Furthermore, when the

chain of command is unclear, and/or when actors lack recent disaster manage-

ment experience and/or pre-existing collaborative relationships, effectiveness only

increases if multiple actors collaborate over multiple interdependent tasks. The

results have implications for disaster response agencies, and they provide valuable

insights for collaborative responses to significant societal and environmental

challenges.

Evidence for Practice

•Successfully mitigating complex disasters such as major wildfires require individ-

ual actors to coordinate responses to interdependent operational tasks.

•Response effectiveness suffers unless these multiple tasks and their interdepen-

dencies are aligned with appropriate actor collaborations.

•When two actors working on similar tasks collaborate and/or when two tasks

that exhibit mutual interdependencies are addressed by one actor and/or two

collaborating actors, effectiveness increases.

•Thus, it is important that actors have the “right”social ties, and not just numer-

ous social ties to other actors.

•Exactly if and how these performance effects play out is context dependent, and

relates to actors’previous disaster experiences, operational procedures, and to

what extent the actors have prepared ahead for disasters.

INTRODUCTION

Images of wildfires raging out of control with deadly and

devastating consequences are all too frequently headline

news throughout the world. In addition to captivating the

attention of concerned citizens, wildfires have become a

focal point for scientific researchonprevention(Calkin

et al., 2014) and adaptation (Dunn et al., 2020; Hamilton

et al., 2018). Wildfire response, how actors effectively react to

large scale rapidly evolving disaster wildfire events, is a less

studied but equally important topic (Hamilton et al., 2019;

Nowell et al., 2018). The salience of the topic is amplified,

both now and in the future, as the frequency and severity of

wildfires increases due to a changing climate (IPCC, 2014).

Received: 11 May 2021 Revised: 6 April 2022 Accepted: 26 April 2022

DOI: 10.1111/puar.13518

This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribu tion and reproduction in any medium, provided the

original work is properly cited.

© 2022 The Authors. Public Administration Review published by Wiley Periodicals LLC on behalf of American Society for Public Administration.

1154 Public Admin Rev. 2022;82:1154–1167.

wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/puar