Interorganizational Interaction in Disaster Response Networks: A Government Perspective

• Date: 01 July 2020
• Published date: 01 July 2020
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/jscm.12225
• Author: Anne M. Quarshie,Rudolf Leuschner

INTERORGANIZATIONAL INTERACTION IN DISASTER

RESPONSE NETWORKS: A GOVERNMENT PERSPECTIVE

ANNE M. QUARSHIE

LUT University

RUDOLF LEUSCHNER

Rutgers University

Governments play important roles as focal organizations in many interor-

ganizational networks. However, the government perspective has largely

been overlooked in the literature on supply networks, including research

on humanitarian operations and logistics. So far, little attention has been

devoted to how government agencies and other actors interact within

complex networks. In this study, we use a qualitative research approach to

study interorganizational interaction in the context of a major U.S. disas-

ter: Hurricane Sandy. Specifically, we investigate the relatively successful

Sandy response effort conducted by the New Jersey state government in

interaction with other humanitarian actors. We find that the government

took three main roles in interacting with other actors within the disaster

response network: organizer, facilitator, and supply network member.

Moreover, we develop a grounded model that provides a theoretical expla-

nation of the interaction process and highlights the practices used by the

government during the response stage. In addition to contributing to the

humanitarian research domain, our study advances the emerging dis-

course on networks whose focal actors are not for-profit firms.

Keywords: humanitarian operations and logistics; partnering; cross-sector interactions;

qualitative data analysis; grounded theory building; network theory; organizing

INTRODUCTION

Hurricane Sandy devastated the East Coast of the

United States in October 2012, causing significant

financial and material damage (Blake et al., 2012;

Eggen & Branigin, 2012). In New Jersey, following

Hurricane Sandy, a number of organizations from a

wide range of backgrounds came together within a

disaster response network to help reduce human suf-

fering and allow most residents to return quickly to

their normal lives. Although the state had not been

struck by a storm of a similar magnitude in over 50

years, the interorganizational network was steered by

the state government with considerable order, and it

performed its main response objectives relatively suc-

cessfully (Bucci et al., 2013; Hall, 2012). The nature

of the government’s attempt to conduct the effort with

other organizational actors within the complex net-

work forms the core of our study.

Governments all over the world have significant

influence over supply chains and other organizational

networks. Yet, scholars have so far neglected the gov-

ernment perspective in their studies of supply net-

works. Although interorganizational relationships and

interactions have been a core topic in supply chain

management (SCM) (Ellram & Hendrick, 1995; Lam-

bert, Emmelhainz, & Gardner, 1996) and the broader

organizational (Oliver, 1990; Ring & Van de Ven

1994) literature for over twenty years, the extant

research has largely been limited to relationships

between for-profit firms. It is only recently that studies

have started to investigate SCM from alternative

actors’ perspectives. For example, Rodr

ıguez et al.

(2016) examine the resources used by a

Acknowledgments: We are sincerely thankful to the entire review

team, especially Co-Editor-in-Chief Mark Pagell and the anony-

mous Associate Editor, for their detailed feedback, which helped

us to write a significantly improved paper. In addition, Anne

Quarshie gratefully acknowledges research funding from the

Foundation for Economic Education (Liikesivistysrahasto).

July 2020

This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any med-

ium, provided the original work is properly cited.

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Journal of Supply Chain Management

2020, 56(3), 3–25

©2020 The Authors. Journal of Supply Chain Management published by Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

nongovernmental organization (NGO) in managing

its suppliers for poverty reduction aims. Longoni et al.

(2019) study the relationships between a social enter-

prise and its stakeholders, and propose mechanisms

for tension management between them. While these

discussions have produced important insights regard-

ing nontraditional actors’ potential to further societal

objectives in supply chains (Gualandris & Klassen,

2018), a government perspective is still missing.

Exploring how government organizations interact with

firms and other humanitarian actors in interorganiza-

tional networks is important, first, because of the

unique roles that government actors can play, and,

second, for the varying types of influence they can

have within such networks.

Hurricane Sandy offered us a suitable setting in

which to study interaction from a government per-

spective because government agencies have tradition-

ally acted as focal organizations in disaster response

networks in the United States. Response efforts often

also involve the participation of NGOs and firms,

among other participants, but it is generally only

when the disaster strikes that the actors will know for

certain which players, actions, and interactions may

be needed. Building upon studies of interaction in the

humanitarian research area (McLachlin & Larson,

2011; Nurmala, de Leeuw, & Dullaert, 2017), we seek

to produce a better understanding of how government

agencies interact with other actors within complex

interorganizational networks.

We conducted a qualitative study of the multisector

disaster response network for Hurricane Sandy in New

Jersey. Choosing the state government as the focal

actor in our study, we directed our analysis toward

the government’s interactions with other actors from

the public, private, and nonprofit sectors. To investi-

gate these issues, we asked the following main

research question: How do government agencies interact

with other organizational actors within the complex net-

work? Specifically, we examined the roles that govern-

ment agencies took and the practices they used during

the disaster response stage. We employed an inductive

approach (Bansal, Smith, & Vaara, 2018; Corbin &

Strauss, 2014) to build SCM theory (Saldanha, Mello,

Knemeyer, & Vijayaraghavan, 2015). We interviewed

29 individuals from 18 organizations—including lead-

ing response nonprofits, government agencies, and

businesses—and collected an extensive set of archival

and field data (Quarshie & Leuschner, 2018). We used

the Gioia method to derive our grounded theoretical

model from empirical data (Gioia, Corley, & Hamil-

ton, 2013).

We found that the government took multiple roles

in steering the actions of the various organizational

actors within the complex network (Kourula, Moon,

Salles-Djelic, & Wickert, 2019). More specifically, the

state acted as an organizer, facilitator, and supply net-

work member in this context. Furthermore, we identi-

fied three sets of practices used by the government

during the disaster response stage and brought them

together in a grounded model, which illustrates and

explains the overall interaction process.

Our study contributes to SCM research and practice

in several ways. First, it advances research and theory

on humanitarian efforts and supply chains in a critical

area: interorganizational interaction (Day, Junglas, &

Silva, 2009). Similar to high-performing sustainable

supply chains, during the Sandy effort, the govern-

ment used novel practices and ways of interacting that

were not observed across prior disaster contexts

(Rodr

ıguez et al., 2016). In addition, we advance the

theoretical knowledge of interactions among different

types of actors within complex interorganizational

networks and systems (Carter, Rogers, & Choi, 2015;

Johnson, Dooley, Hyatt, & Hutson, 2018). Researchers

studying interaction in such contexts can benefit from

our findings regarding the unique roles played by the

government and the identification of three sets of

practices that enhanced the Sandy effort. Indeed, a

theoretical understanding of roles of the government

within the network may inform studies of the roles of

powerful actors in more traditional supply chain con-

texts (Huo, Flynn, & Zhao, 2017; Zacharia, Sanders, &

Nix, 2011), as well as interactions between focal and

other actors in other complex (e.g., sustainability) net-

works (Quarshie, Salmi, & Leuschner, 2016). Hence,

our findings can advance both mainstream and

emerging debates in SCM and additional disciplines.

Finally, learning from the Sandy response can help

prevent loss of lives and other damage during various

types of disasters and emergencies globally.

Our paper is structured as follows. In the next sec-

tion, we review the relevant humanitarian literature.

In the subsequent sections, we present our methodol-

ogy, findings, and grounded model. Finally, we dis-

cuss the study’s implications.

LITERATURE REVIEW

Humanitarian Efforts and Actors

Several terms are used to describe humanitarian

research in the SCM domain (see Abidi, de Leeuw, &

Klumpp, 2014; Gupta, Starr, Farahani, & Matinrad,

2016), including humanitarian operations (Pedraza

Martinez, Stapleton, & Van Wassenhove, 2011),

humanitarian logistics (Tatham & Pettit, 2010), and

humanitarian disaster relief supply chain management

(Day et al., 2012). In this article, we consider all of

these debates as parts of the humanitarian research

area.

A disaster is defined as “a disruption that physically

affects a system as a whole and threatens its priorities

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