Holly T. Goerdel

Social Capital and Emergency Management Planning: A Test of Community Context Effects on Formal and Informal Collaboration

Using a sample of U.S. counties, this article explores the relationships between community level resilience, represented by capacity (social capital), information (uses of technology), and motivation (perception of threats to county,) on the one hand, and county levels of emergency management (EM) collaboration on the other. We hypothesize that the greater relative presence of bridging social capital networks will be associated with greater levels of collaboration in county EM planning, while the greater relative presence of bonding social capital networks will be associated with lower levels of collaboration. Results indicate that first there are two collaborative environments to assess—the formal and informal—and, second, the presence of political networks (seen as predominantly bridging) relative to the presence of religious networks (viewed as predominantly bonding) has a significant and positive effect on informal collaboration levels, but not on formal collaboration levels. These findings provide insight into how community context in the form of network social capital matters for collaborative EM planning efforts. These results add to prior research that focuses primarily on organizational and institutional sources of collaboration and much less on the community level contextual factors at play.

Public Administration and The Political World

This essay discusses future research directions for public administration scholars attracted to the intersection of citizens, public agencies, and politics. The conclusion provides summary recommendations for studying representational capacity of public organizations, political networks, and democratization of performance management.

Understanding the puzzle of organizational sustainability: toward a conceptual framework of organizational social connectedness and sustainability

ABSTRACT Much scholarship on organizational sustainability has focused on organizational survival and strategies aimed at financial independence. However, there is increasing awareness that organizational social connectedness may be equally important for longer-term organizational sustainability. This article bridges theories of organizational survival, social connectedness, and sustainability research, with sustainable management practices from the field of the US culture nonprofits to investigate the questions: What are the antecedents of organizational social connectedness? What role does social connectedness play for the sustainability of organizations? Our analysis results in a conceptual framework of the relationship between the social connectedness and sustainability of cultural nonprofits.