Inter-Organizational Problem Solving Among Disaster Managers: The Role of Common Ground

Abstract

Despite disaster managers’ best efforts, inter-organizational disaster management suffers from varying levels of success. One factor that is likely to account for these variations is team mutual understanding, also known as common ground. To validate the potential effect of common ground in disaster management, the thesis investigates common ground in several interviews with disaster managers and in an experimental study involving an inter-organizational disaster event scenario. Analysis of interviews revealed that disaster managers perceived gaps in understanding between responders, the importance of mutual understanding, and perceived common ground similarly to depictions in theory with a few exceptions. Analyses of the experimental study indicated that contextual factors of Team composition, Problem solving approach and Type of tasks differently impacted measures of performance and implicit coordination, and that implicit coordination partially mediated and supressed the relationship between contextual factors and decision quality. Findings suggest the variation in disaster managers’ performance can be ascribed to common ground, implicit coordination, and contextual factors. Moreover, results showed the satisfaction with outcome did not correlate with expert rated quality of decision; and that while satisfaction related to consensus and quality of the decision was linked to generating alternative ideas and debate. Collaboration proved to be more effective in public communication tasks, especially for homogenous team composition. The findings support initiatives for more cross-training and further lab and field experiments.