Interorganizational Resilience: Networked Collaborations in Communities After Superstorm Sandy

Disaster recovery and response moves in increasingly predictable patterns from immediate after-crisis emergency response to long-term organizational and community recovery. Networked collaborations crossing multiple geographic and organizational boundaries are key parts of social resilience processes that enable effective response and recovery activities. Interorganizational resilience builds upon these networked collaborations and helps create the social infrastructure within communities necessary for response and recovery after disaster. This study analyzes the interorganizational relationships of a small New Jersey coastal community in the three- month period immediately after Superstorm Sandy made landfall. We find two organizations, a municipal agency and an emergent voluntary organization, emerge as key contributors to interorganizational resilience in this community by connecting disparate parts of the local stakeholder network. We place this community stakeholder network within the context of the National Response Framework and suggest that community stakeholder networks should be more fully accounted for in emergency planning and operations.