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ORGANIZING FOR DISASTER: LESSONS FROM THE MILITARY
Michael R. Weeks
United States Air Force Academy
mrw@weeks2000.com
Citation: Weeks, Michael R. (2007) “Organizing for Disaster: Lessons from the
Military.” Business Horizons, forthcoming.
Abstract
Recent global events have highlighted the need for disaster planning by leaders in all
types of organizations—civilian and military. This article illuminates lessons learned
during relief operations for the 2005 earthquake in Pakistan from an academic and
personal viewpoint. The author provides guidance for designing resilient and robust
organizational structures that can deal with the uncertainties of a disaster environment.
Organizations frequently form temporary command centers to improve information flow
in a crisis. Managers are advised to create temporary organizational structures with a
common cognitive map to improve sense-making for employees. Other lessons presented
include the establishment of a nuanced priority system for assessing potential courses of
action and the need to eliminate bureaucratic barriers to action to improve the speed of
response when lives are at stake. The article concludes by pointing out that proper
organizational structures need to be considered prior to the disaster for an organization to
be effective and efficient during the course of a disaster mitigation effort.
Keywords: Disaster Management, Organizational Structure, Military, Planning
Disaster operations have received a great
deal of attention in the last few years, both in the
U.S. and globally, due to high profile events such
as the Asian tsunami and Hurricanes Katrina and
Rita. These events resulted in a massive human
toll and property damage measured in the billions
of dollars. In addition to the human suffering,
many corporations in the disaster areas have been
crippled financially by these tragedies.
In the wake of these catastrophes, a
number of authors have provided guidance on
dealing with disasters for organizations in the
practitioner literature (Barrett, 2005; Myers, 2005)
as well as the academic literature (Alexander,
2004; Lagadec, 2004). Planning for disasters
involves two factors: mitigation of damage
through advance actions, and planning for the
response to the event once the damage is done.
This article focuses on the latter factor to
illuminate how leaders of all types of
organizations might learn lessons from military
organizations involved in disaster relief and
therefore better prepare their processes and
personnel for a disaster situation.
MILITARY EXPERIENCE WITH DISASTER
OPERATIONS
The response to many recent disasters has
a common thread—significant involvement of the
U.S. military. The military provided critical
resources and expertise in both the tsunami and
Hurricane Katrina disasters and President Bush
has indicated that he would like to see an even
larger role for the military in domestic disaster
response (Anonymous, 2005a). The military
continues to provide its resources for disaster
relief in any corner of the world even as the
discussion about increased roles progresses. One
of the most recent examples is the humanitarian
relief operation for the Pakistan earthquake. The
current author participated in the Air Force relief
effort for the earthquake in late 2005. This article
presents lessons from an academic and personal
