End-User Oriented Strategies to facilitate Multi-Organizational Adoption of Emergency Management Information Systems Articles uri icon

publication date

  • January 2010

start page

  • 11

end page

  • 21

issue

  • 1

volume

  • 46

International Standard Serial Number (ISSN)

  • 0306-4573

Electronic International Standard Serial Number (EISSN)

  • 1873-5371

abstract

  • Response to large-scale emergencies is a cooperative process that requires the active and coordinated participation of a variety of functionally independent agencies operating in adjacent regions. In
    practice, this essential cooperation is sometimes not attained or is
    reduced due to poor information sharing, non-fluent communication flows,
    and lack of coordination. We report an empirical study of IT-mediated
    cooperation among Spanish response agencies and we describe the
    challenges of adoption, information sharing, communication flows, and
    coordination among agencies that do not share a unity of command. We
    analyze three strategies aimed at supporting acceptance and surmounting
    political, organizational and personal distrust or skepticism:
    participatory design, advanced collaborative tools inducing cognitive
    absorption, and end-user communities of practice.