Xiaoli Lu

This paper describes internet users' information communication behaviors at the very onset of the catastrophic 2008 Sichuan earthquake in China. Firstly, we examine how crisis communication environment changes in cyber times both in and out of China, and we identify the challenges for crisis communication managers in the network society. Secondly, Chinese netizens' behaviors in the 2008 Wenchuan earthquake are documented based on a survey conducted immediately after the shock. We find that internet was one of the channels to acquire information during the Wenchuan earthquake, and netizens used it as a supplement to confirm information comparint to other traditional channels. Professional portals played important role in information dissemination among internet users. Governmental official agency websites were trusted by most internet users, and multiple channels were used to confirm earthquake information. Instant messengers was the primary channel for information reposting by netizens.

China built a new National Emergency Management System (NEMS) after the 2003 SARS crisis to cope with the challenges of crisis and disaster management, particularly the challenge of joint sense-making. This article investigates how the NEMS addresses joint sense-making challenges in crisis management. It explores several recent crises in China to uncover factors that undermine or facilitate joint sense-making. Our study unearths a low degree of professionalization, plans that do not match crisis events, a lack of accountability, and the absence of unified leadership. These critical factors make it hard for the newly built NEMS to establish a common understanding of a crisis. This article concludes with lessons for China's NEMS that may also be useful for other large countries.

Paired Assistance to Disaster-Affected Areas (PADAA) is a mutual
disaster aid and recovery program with Chinese characteristics, which has shown its
effi ciency after the 2008 Wenchuan Earthquake in restoring and reconstructing the
expansive disaster-impacted regions. This chapter aims to describe how PADAA
works in China. The chapter provides an overview of the history of PADAA, and
depicts the process by which PADAA incrementally developed from local experi-
ments to a national policy and fi nally became a planned and institutionalized politi-
cal mobilization in the Chinese emergency management system after several
decades. We adopt the concept “campaign-style governance” to explain how
PADAA works in the Chinese administrative system. China’s central government
was able to require provincial and local governments from more economically
developed areas to provide necessary assistance to devastated areas for post-disaster
restoration and reconstruction. This was effective because of the Chinese system’s
stringent vertical controls and the practices of local accountability that gave provin-
cial and local offi cials from donor provinces strong incentives to perform effectively
in reconstruction work. We use the 2008 Wenchuan Earthquake as a case to demon-
strate how PADAA works in reality, and discuss the challenges of PADAA in its
implementation process.

This book studies the variety of organizational strategy selection when coping with critical uncertainties during a crisis. In dealing with uncertainties, some organizations rely on organizational routines developed over time, while some others analyze uncertainty in an ad hoc way to provide a workable interpretation of that uncertainty. However, we do not know why some organizations select a rule-based strategy to cope with uncertainties whereas others follow a more ad hoc-based strategy. This study addresses this question by formulating and applying an institutional sensemaking model to explain the selection of strategies to cope with uncertainties during a crisis. This study builds on the insight that organizational sensemaking might vary in different organizational contexts, which are defined by different levels of institutionalization. This research explores how different levels of institutionalization influence the selection of organizational sensemaking strategies during a crisis, thus explaining the selection of different strategies to cope with uncertainty in crises. The empirical chapters describe four major crises in the US and the major response organizations in these four major crises. The organizations are selected based on the level of institutionalization, and they are: the Federal Emergency Management Agency in the 2005 New Orleans Flood, the National Aeronautic Space Administration in the 2003 Space Shuttle Columbia Disaster, the Los Angeles Police Department in the 1992 Los Angeles riots, and BP in the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill in 2010.

The dissertation finds that the level of institutionalization does not make a difference for strategy selection in the initial phase of responding to crises; three rigidity effects exist in the selection of sensemaking strategies after organizations had faced the failure of their selected strategies; the discontinuities in the feedback loop of sensemaking do not necessarily cause the switch of sensemaking strategies, but interact with institutionalization to contribute to the switch of sensemaking strategies

This book provides a clear understanding on how organizations coped with uncertainties in crises and the role institutionalization plays in this process. It will apeal to scholars studying sensemaking, institutionalization, crisis management, as well the wider community of public administration students, organization analysts, and political sciencitists. It offers crisis managers working in public and private organizations valuable insights into coping with uncertainties in crises.

The need for a well-prepared response to hurricanes and typhoons2 has become increasingly evident given the catastrophic impacts. While much research has focused on how American governmental and non-governmental organizations operate in response to hurricanes, the response in developing countries has received less attention. This article describes the progress and challenges evidenced in Chinese local government operations during typhoon evacuations, and is based on field research in Wenzhou City in September 2008, which includes historical official document analysis, on-site observation of the 2008 Typhoon Sinlaku response process and face-to-face interviews with one NGO director and 16 officials. Mass evacuation response in China has changed: there are basic shelters, emergency plans and legislation supports. But there are still problems that block effective and efficient response.