Organizational Perceptions of Women's Vulnerability to Violence in the Wake of Disaster (open access)

Organizational Perceptions of Women's Vulnerability to Violence in the Wake of Disaster

Women as a group hold little power in the social system which increases women's vulnerability to domestic violence. According to Merton (1970), social problems may be revealed through the disaster recovery process. A coraHunity1s organizational response to social problems such as wife abuse depends upon organizational members' perceptions. The data suggest that organizational perceptions of domestic violence largely depend upon the setting or environment in which an organization exists and operates. A second factor that greatly determines an organization's perception of domestic violence after disaster is organizational type. Organizations which provide services to domestic violence victims pre-disaster are more likely to perceive domestic violence following disaster than organizations which do not provide domestic violence related services prior to disaster.
Date: August 1995
Creator: Wilson, Jennifer L. (Jennifer Lyn)
Object Type: Thesis or Dissertation
System: The UNT Digital Library
A Case Study of NASA's Columbia Tragedy: An Organizational Learning and Sensemaking Approach to Organizational Crisis. (open access)

A Case Study of NASA's Columbia Tragedy: An Organizational Learning and Sensemaking Approach to Organizational Crisis.

No other government agency receives as much attention as the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). The high-profile agency frequently captures attention of the media in both positive and negative contexts. This thesis takes a case study approach using organizational learning and sensemaking theories to investigate crisis communication within NASA's 2003 Columbia tragedy. Eight participants, who in some capacity had worked for NASA during the Columbia tragedy in a communication centered position, were interviewed. Using a grounded theory framework, nine themes emerged pertaining to organizational learning, leadership, structure, and organizational culture. The results of the study aid in understanding how high risk organization's (HROs) can learn from previous failures and details how organizational culture can hinder organizational change.
Date: December 2007
Creator: James, Eric Preston
Object Type: Thesis or Dissertation
System: The UNT Digital Library
Citizen Involvement and Law Enforcement: Does Coproduction Affect Organizational Efficiency and Organizational Effectiveness? (open access)

Citizen Involvement and Law Enforcement: Does Coproduction Affect Organizational Efficiency and Organizational Effectiveness?

Citizen involvement in the production and delivery of public service has been a long time topic of interest and controversial debate among scholars. Essentially, the belief has been that if citizens are actively involved in the process, public organizations and communities benefit in numerous ways that will ultimately lead to increased citizen satisfaction. The purpose of this research is to explore the relationship between citizen involvement in the production of public safety and security and its effects on organizational efficiency and effectiveness of law enforcement agencies. To test the assumption that citizen involvement is positively correlated to organizational success and organizational efficiency of law enforcement agencies, a citizen involvement index was developed and used as the independent variable in ordinary least square regression (OLS) analysis. Three separate models are developed to measure the impact of citizen involvement on law enforcement. Findings obtained through bivariate and multivariate analyses indicate mixed results. Bivariate analysis revealed that citizen involvement was negatively correlated to organizational efficiency while no statistically significant correlation was found in multiple regressions. In addition, through bivariate analyses, citizen involvement was positively correlated with crime rates reported to city police departments, whereas multivariate regression analyses indicated that citizen involvement does not …
Date: August 2009
Creator: Gultekin, Sebahattin
Object Type: Thesis or Dissertation
System: The UNT Digital Library
Local Government Fiscal Stress and Financial Coping Strategies Following Disasters (open access)

Local Government Fiscal Stress and Financial Coping Strategies Following Disasters

This dissertation analyzes how local governments adapt to the fiscal stress of major disasters. Unifying theories of fiscal stress with emergency management theories, the dissertation presents a model of what influences local governments coping strategy use following disasters. Using new survey data and secondary financial data on cities, counties, and school districts that experienced Hurricane Harvey, findings show that local governments adapt in a variety of ways; of 137 local governments that responded, 66 percent used some number of coping strategies, with only 5 of 62 possible strategies not being used by any local governments. For those which did adapt, they on average used 7.06 strategies, and tended to show a preference towards revenue increasing strategies and rebuilding the community through new capital projects, with less emphasis on expenditure cuts compared to some prior literature findings on fiscal stress. The results indicate that local governments step up and provide new services necessary during the recovery process, to serve their community, despite fiscal stress. A negative binomial model shows partial support for the hypotheses that local governments with lower prior fiscal condition and greater hazard exposure will use more coping strategies. The findings show mixed results on whether institutional rules that …
Date: May 2020
Creator: Winkler, Julie Georgina
Object Type: Thesis or Dissertation
System: The UNT Digital Library
Economic Resilience, Disasters, and Green Jobs:  An Institutional Collective Action Framework (open access)

Economic Resilience, Disasters, and Green Jobs: An Institutional Collective Action Framework

This dissertation is about economic resilience of local governments to natural disasters. Specifically, the dissertation investigates resilience on regional level. Moreover, the dissertation also investigates growth in the green job sector in local governments. The findings indicate that local governments working with each other helps green job creation. In addition, the dissertation finds that green jobs, following disasters, experience three percent growth. This dissertation is important because it investigates the relationship between climate- related disasters and green jobs, which is an area that is under-investigated.
Date: December 2017
Creator: Ismayilov, Orkhan M.
Object Type: Thesis or Dissertation
System: The UNT Digital Library

Disasters, Smart Growth and Economic Resilience: An Empirical Analysis of Florida Cities

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This dissertation examines the relationship between economic resilience, disaster experience, and smart growth policies at the local government level. The study is based upon three research questions that examine spatial distribution of economic resilience in Florida cities, and examines the impact of disaster experience, and smart growth policies adopted by local governments on economic resilience. Based upon the bounce-forward approach (Cowell, 2013; Klein et al. 2003), economic resilience is defined using three dimensions—economic stability, economic equity, and economic diversity. The spatial analysis is conducted by mapping economic resilience scores across 780 Census Designated Places in Florida through standard deviation method of classification, and conducting cluster-outlier analysis. Results suggest difference in economic resilience within coastal and inland communities—with higher scores mostly situated inland. East Central Florida, Tampa Bay, and South Florida were identified as high economic resilience clusters, and Northwest Florida was identified as low resilience cluster. Impact of disaster experience, and smart growth policies on economic resilience was examined based upon logic of focusing events by Birkland (1997, 2010). Data was collected from the U.S. Census, the National Climatic Data Center, and the Energy Sustainable Florida Communities Survey conducted by Florida State University in 2009. Results suggest significant association between …
Date: August 2019
Creator: Chatterjee, Vaswati
Object Type: Thesis or Dissertation
System: The UNT Digital Library
Sources of Organizational Resilience During the 2012 Korean Typhoons: an Institutional Collective Action Framework (open access)

Sources of Organizational Resilience During the 2012 Korean Typhoons: an Institutional Collective Action Framework

The objective of this proposed research is to test whether interorganizational collaboration contributes to the ability of an organization to bounce back swiftly from disasters. The research questions are examined from the Institutional Collective Action (ICA) perspective. The general argument of this dissertation is that organizational resilience can be explained by interorganizational collaboration. The ICA framework, specifically, identifies two general network structures to explain strategies that can be adopted to minimize collaboration risks: bonding and bridging structures. This dissertation focuses on how governmental and nongovernmental organizations in South Korea collaborated. The data was collected from the southeastern tip of the Korean Peninsula in August of 2012, and January of 2013. The 2012 Typhoons devastated the area after the first data set was collected in August 2012, causing the loss of estimated US$ 730 million and 29 fatalities. Afterward, the second survey was administrated in January of 2013 to gauge respondents’ views on how organizations responded to the disasters. This dissertation consists of three essays. The first essay presents a brief overview and assessment of the current research on resilience. The second essay empirically tests the sources of organization resilience. The third essay examines the dynamic nature of interorganizational ties by …
Date: May 2015
Creator: Jung, Kyujin
Object Type: Thesis or Dissertation
System: The UNT Digital Library
Effects of Disasters on Local Climate Actions: Climate Change Mitigation and Adaptation Actions (open access)

Effects of Disasters on Local Climate Actions: Climate Change Mitigation and Adaptation Actions

This dissertation investigates the effects of natural disasters and political institutions on municipalities' climate change policies. Although most theoretical frameworks on policy adoption highlight the roles of extreme events as exogenous factors influencing policy change, most studies tend to focus on the effects of extreme events on policy change at the national level. Additionally, the existing theoretical frameworks explaining local policy adoption and public service provision do not pay attention to the roles of extreme events in local governments' policy choices. To fill those gaps, this dissertation explores the roles of natural disasters and political institutions on municipal governments' climate change policies. It does this by applying the theory of focusing events to local climate mitigation and adaptation actions. Based on the policy change framework, the political market model, and the institutional collective action frameworks, this dissertation develops and tests hypotheses to examine the effects of natural disasters and political institutions on municipalities' climate mitigation and adaptation policies. The dissertation uses 2010 National League of Cities (NLC) sustainability surveys and the 2010 International City/County Management Association (ICMA) sustainability survey to test the hypotheses. Analytical results show that floods and droughts influence local climate change policies and suggest that local governments …
Date: December 2017
Creator: Kim, Kyungwoo
Object Type: Thesis or Dissertation
System: The UNT Digital Library
Social Vulnerability and Faith in Disasters: an Investigation Into the Role of Religion in New Orleans After Hurricane Katrina (open access)

Social Vulnerability and Faith in Disasters: an Investigation Into the Role of Religion in New Orleans After Hurricane Katrina

Disasters are an ever increasing phenomena in our society, resulting in many people being adversely affected. the social vulnerability paradigm explores the social, economic and political factors which contribute to certain populations being disproportionately affected by disasters. However, the paradigm has not yet begun to investigate the cultural or religious ideologies which may affect a population's behavior in disaster. This study is an exploratory investigation into whether religious ideologies may impact a person's decision to prepare, or not, in the event of a disaster. Specifically, it seeks to investigate whether a person who holds a belief that natural disasters are under God's control will prepare for the hazard? the study undertaken five years after Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans show that religious ideology is closely linked with one's capacity to prepare for the hazard which is closely tied in with social structure. It may appear that a person's 'fatalistic' attitude is tied to economic inability to prepare for a hazard. This does not mean that they will not prepare but that preparation may include prayer as their initial attempt to mitigate.
Date: May 2012
Creator: Herring, Alison M.
Object Type: Thesis or Dissertation
System: The UNT Digital Library
Organizational Learning Capacity As a Predictor of Individuals’ Tendency Towards Improvisation in Nonprofit Organizations in Saudi Arabia (open access)

Organizational Learning Capacity As a Predictor of Individuals’ Tendency Towards Improvisation in Nonprofit Organizations in Saudi Arabia

The study is undertaken for a more compressive understanding for organizational theory and its applicability to tendency towards improvisation during emergency times among individuals in Non Profit Organizations (NPOs) in Saudi Arabia. The analysis involved an examination of direct effect of learning on tendency towards improvisation and possible mediating effects between organizational learning and tendency towards improvisation among individuals in NPOs, while controlling for key demographic differences (e.g. individuals’ age, education level and years in service, number of full-time staff and volunteers). Self-administered questionnaires were distributed to full-time employees in 13 NPOs in three cities in the western area of Saudi Arabia, namely Jeddah, Makkah and Madinah (N= 304). The main statistical method employed to hypotheses examination was Structural Equation Modeling. The hypothesis examination resulted in three out of five hypnotized paths are to be significant. Two direct relations were interpreted as outcomes of organizational learning, with increases in the level of organizational learning is being positively related to individuals’ self –efficacy and agility. The third significant path interpreted as individuals’ agility is positively related to their tendency to improvise during emergency times, which indicates organizational learning has indirect effect on tendency towards improvisation. Finally, the applicability of organizational learning …
Date: August 2015
Creator: Alhumaid, Saleh Mohammad
Object Type: Thesis or Dissertation
System: The UNT Digital Library
The Role of Faith-Based Congregations during Disaster Response and Recovery: A Case Study of Katy, Texas (open access)

The Role of Faith-Based Congregations during Disaster Response and Recovery: A Case Study of Katy, Texas

When governments are unable or unwilling to provide necessary relief to communities, local faith-based congregations (FBCs) step in and fill the gap. Though shown to provide for so many needs following disaster, FBCs have largely been left out of the institutional emergency management cycle. The aim of this study was to explore the role of FBCs in the disaster response and recovery process and investigate how recovery impacts FBCs. The primary objective of this study is to gain a better understanding of FBCs and how to better integrate them into the formal emergency management process.The main questions were as follows: First, what is the role of FBCs during the disaster recovery process? Second, how do FBCs change (temporarily and permanently) during disaster recovery, and what factors may promote or inhibit change? To answer these questions, qualitative semistructured interviews were held to develop a case study of Katy, Texas and its recovery from Hurricane Harvey of 2017. The applied and conceptual implications resulting from this study, which apply to FBCs, researchers, emergency managers, and policy makers, highlight the opportunity to better incorporate FBCs formally into emergency management practices.
Date: December 2020
Creator: Elliott, Julie R
Object Type: Thesis or Dissertation
System: The UNT Digital Library
Saving the Golden Goose: A Dual Exploration into the Organizational Culture of a Family-Owned Firm and the Impacted DIY Customer Experience (open access)

Saving the Golden Goose: A Dual Exploration into the Organizational Culture of a Family-Owned Firm and the Impacted DIY Customer Experience

This thesis investigates the influence of organizational culture on customer experience through a comprehensive study of a global supplier of home repair products. By combining organizational analysis and consumer research, this research draws on anthropological principles to explore the nuances of family governance and their effects on behavior, customer experience, and product design. The results of this study present insightful information on product perception and actionable strategies to improve product design, branding, and messaging in order to enhance customer experience and drive sales. Drawing on organizational anthropology and the utilization of critical reflexivity, this thesis provides a deeper understanding of how family-owned businesses can leverage research to challenge their cultural assumptions about products, consumers, and their organization, in order to effectively implement customer-centric solutions and drive organizational behavior, customer experience, and product development.
Date: July 2023
Creator: Holland, Elizabeth Anglin
Object Type: Thesis or Dissertation
System: The UNT Digital Library
Organizational Identity and Community Values: Determining Meaning in Post-secondary Education Social Media Guideline and Policy Documents (open access)

Organizational Identity and Community Values: Determining Meaning in Post-secondary Education Social Media Guideline and Policy Documents

With the increasing use of social media by students, researchers, administrative staff, and faculty in post-secondary education (PSE), a number of institutions have developed guideline and policy documents to set standards for social media use. Social media platforms and applications have the potential to increase communication channels, support learning, enhance research, and encourage community engagement at PSE institutions. As social media implementation and administration has developed in PSE, there has been minimal assessment of the substance of social media guideline and policy documents. The first objective of this research study was to examine an accessible, online database (corpus) comprised of 24, 243 atomic social media guideline and policy text documents from 250 PSE institutions representing 10 countries to identify central attributes. To determine text meaning from topic extraction, a rotated latent semantic analysis (rLSA) method was applied. The second objective of this investigation was to determine if the distribution of topics analyze in the corpus differ by PSE institution geographic location. To analyze the diverging topics, the researcher utilized an iterative consensus-building algorithm.Through the maximum term frequencies, LSA determined a rotated 36-factor solution that identified common attributes and topics shared among the 24,243 social media guideline and policy atomic documents. …
Date: August 2014
Creator: Pasquini, Laura Anne
Object Type: Thesis or Dissertation
System: The UNT Digital Library
Peeling Back the Layers of Ambidexterity in Multi-Business Firms (open access)

Peeling Back the Layers of Ambidexterity in Multi-Business Firms

There is a dual accountability accepted by top executives of large multi-business firms (MBFs) to both consistently deliver performance in the short term and cultivate scalable opportunities for future growth, which requires that they be able to implement both evolutionary and revolutionary change. Researchers have defined this capability as organizational ambidexterity (OA) and deemed it a crucial requirement for every organization. Literature in the field of organizational ambidexterity (OA) describes the need to simultaneously orchestrate attention and activities along two dimensions of ambidexterity: exploitation and exploration. This dissertation peels back the layers in MBFs to generate a deeper understanding of OA in the MBF, by answering three research questions, using a mixed method approach-qualitative study followed by quantitative study: (1) What is an appropriate specification of OA in an MBF? (2) Are there differences in exploration and exploitation across the three levels within the MBF? and (3) Is there a relationship between exploration and exploitation and MBF performance at each of the three levels within the MBF? Qualitative Study 1 was conducted in December 2017, to investigate and confirm the appropriateness of the three-level operationalization of OA in MBFs. The data comprised eleven semi-structured interviews with senior executives that serve …
Date: December 2018
Creator: Struckell, Beth Maney
Object Type: Thesis or Dissertation
System: The UNT Digital Library
A Mixed Method Approach: The Influence of Military Identity on Person-Organization Fit and Organizational Commitment, and a Proposed System of Military to Civilian Employment Transition (open access)

A Mixed Method Approach: The Influence of Military Identity on Person-Organization Fit and Organizational Commitment, and a Proposed System of Military to Civilian Employment Transition

The evaluation of the transition experiences of veterans to civilian life was conducted. The military to civilian transition (MCT) framework along with theories covering organizational, identity, and systems streams of research situated the study. A mixed methods approach was conducted in two phases: a 28-item survey and 1.5-hour interviews, which helped contextualize and explain survey findings. The multiple regression procedure examined the relationship among three variables: person-organization fit, military identity, and organizational commitment with military identity was included as a moderator. Results indicated a positive relationship between person-organization fit and organizational commitment. Contrariwise, results indicated military identity's relationship between the variables was found to be not statistically significant. Although the moderation effect of military identity was not found to influence the relationships, interviews with veterans indicated a strong connection to their military identity. Veterans shared negative and unpredictable transition stories, positive transition stories, feelings of isolation, and held prevailing military goals, while reporting a lack of backing from support agencies. Veterans perceived differences between the military and civilian environments, veteran turnover and organizational commitment were found to connect and military values and military identity were found to have connections as well. Recommendations for improving military to civilian setting transitions for …
Date: May 2023
Creator: Doyle, Alaina M.
Object Type: Thesis or Dissertation
System: The UNT Digital Library
The Current Status of Hazard Mitigation in Local Emergency Management: an Examination of Roles, Challenges, and Success Indicators (open access)

The Current Status of Hazard Mitigation in Local Emergency Management: an Examination of Roles, Challenges, and Success Indicators

This dissertation used an organizational structure framework to examine the current status of hazard mitigation from the perspective of emergency managers from four organizational structure categories. This study addressed three primary research questions: (1) What is the role of the local emergency management office in hazard mitigation and what is the function of other stakeholders as perceived by local emergency managers? (2) What are the challenges to achieving hazard mitigation objectives and what are the strategies used to overcome them? and (3) How do local emergency managers define hazard mitigation success? Thirty North Central Texas emergency managers were recruited for participation in this study, and data was collected through telephone interviews and an internet survey. A mixed methodology was used to triangulate qualitative and quantitative findings. Qualitative analyses consisted of inductive grounded theory, and quantitative data analyses consisted of independent samples t-test analyses, correlation analyses, and Chi-square analyses. Findings indicate that emergency managers from the different emergency management office categories have six self-identified roles in hazard mitigation planning and strategy implementation; have a similar reported level of involvement in different hazard mitigation-related activities; and perceive stakeholders as having four key functions in hazard mitigation planning and strategy implementation. Second, participants …
Date: December 2014
Creator: Samuel, Carlos
Object Type: Thesis or Dissertation
System: The UNT Digital Library
Community Resilience in Thailand: a Case Study of Flood Response in Nakhonsawan City Municipality (open access)

Community Resilience in Thailand: a Case Study of Flood Response in Nakhonsawan City Municipality

Natural disasters such as flooding often affect vast areas and create infinite demands that need to be addressed in the same time. The wide scopes and severe impacts of such catastrophes often exceed, if not overwhelm, capacity of the national government to handle. In such a situation, communities such as cities and neighborhoods need to rely on their own capacity (resources, strategies, and expertise) to respond to disaster impacts at least until external assistance can be reached. Thus, studying how communities can be resilient to the impacts of natural disasters is important because this would enhance their ability to respond to the next disaster better. Within the context of great flooding in Thailand in 2011, this dissertation investigated the factors that generated or enhanced resilience of flood stricken-communities in Thailand. Nakhonswan City Municipality was selected as the research site. Qualitative research methods were employed in this study. Data were collected using in-depth interview and focus group. Thirty-six participants (28 for in-depth interview and 8 for focus group interview) from various organizations were recruited using snowball and purposive sampling strategies. Interview data from the field research were transcribed, translated from Thai language to English, and then analyzed using open coding and …
Date: May 2013
Creator: Khunwishit, Somporn
Object Type: Thesis or Dissertation
System: The UNT Digital Library
Understanding the Floodplain Administrator: Measuring and Analyzing Perceived Competence with Implications for Training (open access)

Understanding the Floodplain Administrator: Measuring and Analyzing Perceived Competence with Implications for Training

Utilizing survey data gathered from local local level floodplain administrators (FPAs) operating within Federal Emergency Management Agency Region 6, this study provides a more nuanced understanding of perceived competency among FPAs across key floodplain management topics through the use of a principal component analysis (PCA). PCA identified six distinct components related to perceived competency among FPAs including; Modification and Update Process, General Knowledge, Grants and Programs, Analysis, Development and Real Estate, and Administration and Outreach. The study then employed regression analyses to identify organizational and individual level characteristics that predict perceived competency. Data analyses identified several organizational variables as significant positive predictors of perceived competency including working within an urban community, full-time job status and overall workload percentage dedicated to floodplain management. Additionally, several individual characteristics such as educational attainment, professional certification, previous disaster experience, and years of experience working as an FPA were also identified as significant positive predictors of perceived competency. Based on these findings the study makes several recommendations about improvements to training and educational materials for practitioners and students.
Date: August 2022
Creator: Keys, Chad A
Object Type: Thesis or Dissertation
System: The UNT Digital Library
High Risk Occupations: Employee Stress and Behavior Under Crisis (open access)

High Risk Occupations: Employee Stress and Behavior Under Crisis

The purpose of this study is to analyze the relationships between stress and outcomes including organizational citizenship behavior (OCB), job satisfaction, and burnout in high-risk occupations. Moreover, how personality, emotions, coping, and leadership influence this relationship is investigated. Data were collected from 379 officers in 9 police organizations located in the Southern and Southwest United States. The primary research question addressed within this dissertation is: What is the relationship between stress and behavioral and affective outcomes in high-risk occupations as governed by coping, leadership, and crisis? The majority of the hypothesized relationships were supported, and inconsistencies center on methodological and theoretical factors. Findings indicate that occupational stressors negatively influence individuals in high-risk occupations. Moreover, crisis events exacerbate these influences. The use of adaptive coping strategies is most effective under conditions of low stress, but less so under highly stressful circumstances. Similarly, transformational leader behaviors most effectively influence how individuals in high-risk occupations are affected by lower, but not higher levels of stress. Profiles of personality characteristics and levels of emotional dissonance also influence the chosen coping strategies of those working in high-risk occupations. Prescriptively, it is important to understand the influences among the variables assessed in this study, because negative …
Date: August 2011
Creator: Russell, Lisa M.
Object Type: Thesis or Dissertation
System: The UNT Digital Library
A Construct of Organization for Higher Education (open access)

A Construct of Organization for Higher Education

In developing a construct of organization for higher education, this study is designed to describe the historical development of college and university organizational structures and supporting theory, to describe higher education's contemporary organizational structures and supporting theory, to determine from writings on complex organizations their applications to organizational structures and supporting theory in higher education, to synthesize from the search of literature a consistent theory of organizational structures and supporting theory for higher education institutions, and to develop a higher education organizational construct composed primarily of principles of organizational structure. This study explores theory of organization as it pertains to colleges and universities. Heuristically conceived, the study is reflective and developmental in nature.
Date: August 1974
Creator: Hull, Don M.
Object Type: Thesis or Dissertation
System: The UNT Digital Library
An Investigation of the Impact of Social Vulnerability Research on the Practice of Emergency Management (open access)

An Investigation of the Impact of Social Vulnerability Research on the Practice of Emergency Management

This dissertation examines the extent to which social vulnerability, as studied by researchers across multiple disciplines, has influenced the practice of emergency management at the local level. This study addresses two major research questions to accomplish this goal. First, how do local emergency managers perceive and define social vulnerability? Second, what strategies do local emergency managers employ to reach and meet the needs of socially vulnerable populations? Semi-structured interviews were conducted in person or by phone with a sample of local emergency managers, city managers, and American Red Cross personnel from the Houston - Galveston and the South East Texas regions as defined by the respective Councils of Government. A modified grounded theory approach was used with a constant comparative method to identify themes for each research question. Triangulation was accomplished through secondary census data and supplemental interviews. The interview data reveal that social vulnerability research has had an indirect influence on the practice of emergency management at the local level. This influence is facilitated through state and federal policy, training, and plans development. Based on the interview data, four themes were identified that capture the various ways in which local emergency management officials perceive and define social vulnerability. These …
Date: August 2017
Creator: Williams, Brian Don
Object Type: Thesis or Dissertation
System: The UNT Digital Library
The Impact of Cloud Based Supply Chain Management on Supply Chain Resilience (open access)

The Impact of Cloud Based Supply Chain Management on Supply Chain Resilience

On March 2011 a destructive 9.0-magnitude earthquake and tsunami along with nuclear explosions struck northeastern Japan; killing thousands of people, halting industry and crippling infrastructure. A large manufacturing company operating outside of Japan received the news in the middle of the night. Within a few hours of the tsunami hitting Japan, this manufacturer’s logistics team ran global materials management reports to communicate the precise status of the products originating from Japan to their entire global network of facilities. With this quick and far reaching communication the manufacturer was able to launch a successful contingency plan. Alternative suppliers, already existing as part of their global network, were evaluated and used to mitigate Japan’s disruptive impact. The resiliency of this manufacturer’s trusted network of supply chain trading partners allowed for minimum disruptions, saving countless money and maintaining continuity for its end-to-end supply chain. This manufacturer was part of a cloud-based supply chain that provided the catalyst to quickly shift its resources to allay the impact of no longer being able to receive product from Japan. Today's supply chains are global and complex networks of enterprises that aim to deliver products in the right quantity, in the right place, and at the right …
Date: August 2015
Creator: Kochan, Cigdem Gonul
Object Type: Thesis or Dissertation
System: The UNT Digital Library
An Analysis of the Determinants of Recovery of Businesses After a Natural Disaster Using a Multi-Paradigm Approach (open access)

An Analysis of the Determinants of Recovery of Businesses After a Natural Disaster Using a Multi-Paradigm Approach

This study examines the recovery process of businesses in Homestead, Florida after Hurricane Andrew in 1992. The goal of this study was to determine which organizational characteristics were useful in predicting the level of physical damage and the length of time to reopen for affected businesses. The organizational characteristics examined were age, size, pre-disaster gross sales, ownership of the business location, membership in the Chamber of Commerce, and property insurance. Three-hundred and fifty businesses in the area were surveyed. Because of the complexity of the recovery process, the disaster experiences of businesses were examined using three paradigms, organizational ecology, contingency theory, and configuration theory. Models were developed and tested for each paradigm. The models used the contextual variables to explain the outcome variables; level of physical damage and length of time to reopen. The SIC was modified so that it could form the framework for a taxonomic examination of the businesses. The organizations were examined at the level of division, class, subclass, and order. While the taxa and consistent levels of physical damage, the length of time needed to reopen varied greatly. The homogeneous level of damage within the groups is linked to similarity in assets and transformation processes. When …
Date: December 1996
Creator: Flott, Phyllis (Phyllis L.)
Object Type: Thesis or Dissertation
System: The UNT Digital Library
Hurricane Katrina: Survivors’ Perceptions of a Social Disaster (open access)

Hurricane Katrina: Survivors’ Perceptions of a Social Disaster

Paper discusses research attempting to identify communication gaps between survivors and the response to Hurricane Katrina.
Date: 2009
Creator: Gregory, Sarah
Object Type: Article
System: The UNT Digital Library