Affiliation or situation: what drives strategic decision-making in crisis response?

Journal of Managerial Issues, Summer, 2009 by Paul Drnevich, Rangaraj Ramanujam, Shailendra Mehta, Alok Chaturvedi

Temporary inter-organizational teams, such as a "Joint Operations Center" (JOC), are a common organizational form for military and government response to rare high magnitude events such as natural disasters or terrorism. Changes in the global security environment in the late 20th and early 21st century have increased both the frequency of use of these organizational forms and the importance of their effectiveness, as the costs of failure may be extensive and hold significant implications (National Commission on Terrorist Attacks, 2004; USDHS, 2004). Several features of these organizational forms--individuals from different organizations coming together at short notice to devise a common response to situations fraught with uncertainty--also characterize inter-organizational collaborations in the private sector (e.g., industry task force to respond to a common crisis). Therefore, as JOC-types of organizational forms increase in importance and prevalence, so does the need to better understand how they operate and what contributes to their effectiveness (Green and Kolesar, 2004; USDHS, 2004). However, beyond the project management literature, management research on these types of organizational forms has been limited, and their application to strategic decision making in crisis response contexts is under-examined.

The purpose of this study is to examine two important, yet underexplored, questions about the strategic decision-making processes in JOCs: (1) to what extent are team member preferences driven by different affiliations--goals, priorities, and routines of their parent organizations--rather than by the needs of the situation, and (2) how do these effects vary over the temporary life of this organizational form? To examine these questions, we begin by describing the JOC organizational form to identify its distinctive features. Next, we develop a set of competing hypotheses with which to examine the theorized conflicting influences of affiliation and situation on the response decision-making process and its effectiveness. We conclude with a discussion of the results of our hypotheses testing and the implications, limitations, and contributions of our findings for future research and practice. A major contribution is the finding that organizational affiliation drives responses, consistent with uncertainty avoidance, but that these effects decrease over time.

BACKGROUND

Prior work on this topic and context has generally been limited to public sector applications and focused on government policy development, military and law enforcement training, or epidemiological issues (Green and Kolesar, 2004). Prior research has included the development, testing, and refinement of vaccination strategies (Rvachev and Longini, 1985), response strategies to virus outbreaks (Craft et al., 2005; Kaplan et al., 2002, 2003; Kaplan and Wein, 2004), and decision-making processes during crisis response (Hale et al., 2006). There is also a substantial body of competing work developed subsequently or in parallel to the program of research on which this study is based (Carley et al., 2003; Carley et al., 2004; Chen et al., 2006; Epstein et al., 2004; Eubank, 2002; Eubank et al., 2004; Harrison et al., 2007). Extant research has also examined various issues of interorganizational coordination and trust (Hardy and Phillips, 1998; Kumar and Niti, 1998; Kumar and van Dissel, 1996; Osborn and Hagedoorn, 1997; Poppo et al., 2008; Westley and Vrendenburg, 1997), and response effectiveness (Lin and Carley, 1993, 1997). One common thread in this body of work is that interorganizational decision-making coordination is a multifaceted issue involving different schools of thought and methodological approaches (Hale et al., 2006; Harrison et al., 2007; Osborn and Hagedoorn, 1997; Poppo et al., 2008).

Joint Operations Centers (JOC) are a preferred organizational form for responding to dynamic, high-magnitude, time-critical situations of high uncertainty, which require personnel with varied knowledge backgrounds, from multiple organizations, to be rapidly combined (USDHS, 2004). Prior research often treats such collaborations as separate organizations with little history and a limited life span. However, participants in these organizations bring with them the unique histories, preferences, and routines of their parent organizations. The duration of the JOC is also often temporary and situation-dependent (i.e., the participants come together when a situation develops and return to their parent organizations when the situation is resolved). A reason for creating JOCs is that team members have different responsibilities and authority, and an effective response to a crisis may span multiple agencies. However, the JOC form also carries the potential for suboptimal decisions due to inappropriate information structure and pressure to conform to political, public, and market demands (National Commission on Terrorist Attacks, 2004). The effectiveness of a JOC's response depends on various choices members make (i.e., effectiveness depends on factors that shape these choices). Because such collaborations typically operate in situations where errors exact unacceptably high costs, it is important to understand the factors that influence the effectiveness of the decision-making processes and their outcomes. Previous research indicates that a JOC's design, command, and information structure affect the response effectiveness of these organizational forms (Lin and Carley, 1993, 1997). Other research also suggests that similar "ad hoc" organizational forms often need to respond not just to the current situation but also to the political and public needs of the organizations involved. Taken together, these demands often lead to poor information sharing, goal conflict, less than optimal decisions, and poor performance outcomes. However, no study we are aware of has examined how JOC-type collaborations balance the competing demands placed on the decision makers by the specifics of the situation and the (sometimes conflicting) needs of their affiliated organizations. Further, given the often-temporary nature of JOC-type forms, a natural tension exists between the longer-term goals and objectives of the affiliated organization and immediate needs of the crisis situation. In the next section, we leverage prior management theory to develop hypotheses from which to test whether and when these competing influences exert significant effects on the crisis response decision-making process.