The more complex the interdependencies within global networks become, the more challenging it becomes to manage overarching crises with cascade effects. The organisations involved in crisis management are independent but must act collaboratively. This challenge affects both private and public organisations. The increase of autonomy and self-organisation seems to be an appropriate way to meet these challenges. However, disaster control is strongly based on hierarchical management structures. This paper shows design options and fields of action for collaborative and post-bureaucratic crisis management in global networks and, on this basis, describes the state of research and research gaps. Particular attention is paid to the state of empirical research. Building on this, the paper presents a first research framework for collaborative and post-bureaucratic crisis management in global networks. The level of openness and the combination of hierarchical and collaborative elements in crisis management are taken into account.
The more complex the interdependencies between social and economic systems worldwide become, the more challenging it becomes to manage difficult to assess overarching crises with cascade effects. This challenge affects both private and public organisations.
Administrations as control systems cope with an increasing environmental
complexity by mapping this complexity in their internal structures, resulting in highly
specialised, finely structured administrations [
From an administrative and organisational science perspective more autonomy and
self-organisation are increasingly in demand (cf. inter alia [
However, crisis management is strongly hierarchical, also with a view to following military organisational principles. The combination of bureaucratic and post-bureaucratic elements and the simultaneous opening up to external actors could therefore be a suitable way of coping with crises in global networks. Highly professional external organisations and actors can then contribute to overcoming crises that affect them directly or potentially through cascade effects.
On the basis of governance paradigms (section 2), this paper derives design options and fields of action for collaborative and post-bureaucratic crisis management in global networks and, on this basis, describes the state of research and research gaps (section 3). Particular attention is paid to the state of empirical research. Building on this, the paper presents a first research framework for collaborative and post-bureaucratic crisis management in global networks (section 4). The paper ends with an outlook (section 5). 2
Public administrations are exposed to and shaped by specific paradigms and
concepts. The traditional one is Public Administration according to Max Weber where the
governance mechanism is based in particular on hierarchy. The following are, first,
New Public Management basing on the adaption of private sector management and,
second, New Public Governance (NPG), positing a plural state, where multiple
interdependent actors contribute to the delivery of public services and thus focuses on
selforganisation and inter-organisational relationships [
NPG largely meets the requirements of global crisis management in a highly
interdependent environment. However, the role of digital transformation is not sufficiently
taken into account. This aspect leads to the Open Government concept. There are some
conceptual and terminological overlaps, but Open Government explicitly includes the
extensive use of information systems. Open Government acts as an umbrella term for
various concepts of openness focussing on transparency, participation, and
collaboration of the state toward third actors in the economy or the citizenship [
Partnerships and collaboration are ways to pool efforts to deliver services or to
respond to crises; both require an appropriate governance [
The organisations involved in crisis or disaster management are independent but
must act collaboratively [
Regarding section 2, decision making is a central focus of research on collaborative
disaster management. Joint decision making requires the exchange of information and
is therefore based on information flows. Sagun et al. distinguish four channels of
information flow during a disaster [
Beyond that, the extent of hierarchical and self organised governance elements is
also the subject of some studies. Traditionally, disaster management is characterised by
hierarchy and centralisation. The shift to more decentralised disaster management
systems was especially encouraged by the need to collaborate during and after extreme
events [
Self-organisation within collaboration needs distributed decision-making, which can
be very time-consuming. In addition, distributed decision-making makes it difficult to
coordinate all information and provide situational awareness [
The question is how consensus-based decisions can be efficiently produced in
selforganised groups and to what extent hierarchical elements can be meaningfully
integrated. Janssen et al. ask whether hierarchical and peer-to-peer coordination structures
are fundamentally incompatible or whether they can be combined and, if so, to what
extent they can be combined [
Overall, there are only a few empirical studies on designing collaborative disaster
management and its governance. Based on a case study in the UK, Kapucu and Garayev
identify the following problems in collaborative disaster management: poor
communication and interoperability, miscommunications, lack of coordination among
organisations and deployed personnel, and the amount of time required to deploy common
resources [
The lack of empirical evidence to investigate and compare the impact and success of specific combinations of different governance elements (in particular hierarchical vs. self-organised) is problematic. The requirements for information systems in disaster management are very high (information aggregation, reliability). In the collaborative environment and for the achievement of consensus decisions they become even higher and in particular concern information synchronisation and visualisation as well as communication and coordination. Here, too, further research is needed, especially on the effects on disaster management output and outcome. The focus is often also on various governmental actors or aid organisations as well as volunteers. Companies are less considered in research on collaborative disaster management. Another problem is that the objectives of the different actors are often contradictory and the search for common ground can be a challenge.
The research framework results from the previously presented basics on collaborative crisis management in the context of New Public Governance and against the background of the extensive use of information systems. Since this paper reflects the status of an ongoing study, the research framework in Figure 1 is to be considered as preliminary. The framework is oriented towards the phases of crisis management. The level of openness describes the extent to which external actors are involved in terms of transparency, participation and collaboration (from the perspective of the individual actor). The level of openness can be different for the several external actors. For example, a distinction can be made between state actors, non-profit organisations, companies in general, companies operating critical infrastructures and citizens.
Furthermore, the governance of collaboration in global crisis management can be structured in different ways. To this end, the various shaping factors for governance must be considered. Of interest is the concrete application of hierarchical and self-organised elements for specific tasks in crisis management involving various actors. A problem is certainly that the level of openness and the design of governance overlap. This concerns, for example, resource allocation (information as resource, relevant for transparency) and decision making (relevant for participation and collaboration).
Also of great relevance is the question of the extent to which information systems cover the specific tasks in crisis management and the collaboration of the actors.
With regard to specific research activities, a general distinction can be made between theoretical or conceptual studies on the basis of the various disciplines and empirical studies with the focus on the impact on crisis management outcome. Empirical evidence of the impact on effective crisis management is particularly valuable here, as few results are available so far. 5
The results presented here should be further differentiated and substantiated by a
systematic literature search that takes into account the various disciplines in the field of
crisis management. However, the preliminary results emphasise the great need for
interdisciplinary and empirical research on global crisis management. In order to achieve
rapid progress in empirical research, studies on the impact of different governance
models (including the use of information systems) on the effectiveness of crisis management
are of great importance. Comparative studies and experiments are suitable here. The
research framework can help academics to classify their own research and identify new
research questions. To further develop the research agenda, it is worth taking a look at
similar work on other research topics in business informatics (e.g. [