Sources of Organizational Resilience for Sustainable Communities: An Institutional Collective Action Perspective

Abstract

Scholars in the field of sustainability have often argued that the purpose of establishing and maintaining interorganizational collaboration is to overcome internal limitations of organizations and to strengthen organizational capacity. To examine structural effects of inter-organizational collaboration regarding the ability of networked organizations to effectively manage disasters, this study uses an institutional collective action framework to design a critical lens to objectively analyze collective action issues in inter-organizational collaboration networks. Results, based on the Heckman selection model with two stages, provide evidence that networked organizations holding a central position between two other actors perceive a higher level of disaster resilience. The finding implies that local organizations with a bridging strategy can enhance their capacity to recover from a catastrophic event by securing access to critical resources and information through comprehensive emergency preparedness such as joint response and recovery planning.