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The Morgan Library at Colorado State University in Fort Collins suffered catastrophic flooding as the result of a historic rain storm and flood that swept through the town on July 28, 1997. This study examines this single library's organizational disaster response and identifies the phenomena that the library's employees cited as their motivation for innovation.

Purpose – This study provides an example of a library where a pre-disaster and post-disaster organizational environment was supportive of experimentation. This influenced the employees’ capacity and motivation to create a new tool meant to solve a temporary need. Their invention, a service now called RapidILL, advanced the Morgan Library organization beyond disaster recovery and has become an effective and popular consortium of libraries.

Design/methodology/approach – This is an instrumental case study. This design was chosen to examine the issues in organizational learning that the single case of Morgan Library presents. The researcher interviewed employees who survived the 1997 flood and who worked in the library after the disaster. The interview results and a book written by staff members are the most important data that form the basis for this qualitative research.

The interviews were transcribed, and key phrases and information from both the interviews and the published book were isolated into themes for coding. The coding allowed the use of NVivo 7, a text analysis software, to search in employees’ stories for “feeling” words and themes about change, innovation, motivation, and mental models.

Three research questions for the study sought to learn how employees described their lived experience, how the disaster altered their mental models of change, and what factors in the disaster response experience promoted learning and innovation.

Findings – This study investigates how the disruptive forces of disaster can influence and promote organizational learning and foster innovation. Analysis of the data demonstrates how the library employees’ feelings of trust before and following a workplace disaster shifted their mental models of change. They felt empowered to act and assert their own ideas; they did not simply react to change acting upon them.

Emotions motivate adaptive actions, facilitating change. The library employees’ lived experiences and feelings influenced what they learned, how quickly they learned it, and how that learning contributed to their innovations after the disaster. The library's supervisory and administrative leaders encouraged staff members to try out new ideas. This approach invigorated staff members’ feelings of trust and motivated them to contribute their efforts and ideas. Feeling free to experiment, they tapped their creativity and provided adaptations and innovations.

Practical implications – A disaster imposes immediate and often unanticipated change upon people and organizations. A disaster response urgently demands that employees do things differently; it also may require that employees do different things.

Successful organizations must become adept at creating and implementing changes to remain relevant and effective in the environments in which they operate. They need to ensure that employees generate and test as many ideas as possible in order to maximize the opportunity to uncover the best new thinking. This applies to libraries as well as to any other organizations.

If library leaders understand the conditions under which employees are most motivated to let go of fear and alter the mental models they use to interpret their work world, it should be possible and desirable to re-create those conditions and improve the ability of their organizations to tap into employees’ talent, spur innovation, and generate meaningful change.

Social implications – Trust and opportunities for learning can be central to employees’ ability to embrace change as a positive state in which their creativity flourishes and contributes to the success of the organization. When leaders support experimentation, employees utilize and value their affective connections as much as their professional knowledge. Work environments that promote experimentation and trust are ones in which employees at any rank feel secure enough to propose and experiment with innovative services, products, or workflows.

Originality/value – The first of its kind to examine library organizations, this study offers direct evidence to show that organizational learning and progress flourish through a combination of positive affective experiences and experimentation. The study shows how mental models, organizational learning, and innovation may help employees create significantly effective organizational advances while under duress.

An original formula is presented in Fig. 1.

Natural disasters occur all around the world, in the last two decades these natural disasters have brought sever damages to the world economy. Mostly developing countries bear severe consequences due to these natural disasters. In July 2010, Pakistan faced a massive flood, which affected almost all the countries. The disaster affected all sectors like daily life, transportation, infrastructure, etc., of the country. GOP did not have enough resources to cope with this giant disaster and called for international help. Local and international NGOs participated with GOP in the early phases of recovery. Millions of dollars were given away as the initial impact of this disaster, and GOP and other relief agents have spent other million to provide initial recovery and relief. GOP will need billions of dollars further to continue recovery from the disaster of 2010.

Purpose – This study seeks to identify the factors that made Hurricane Katrina the worst disaster in American history. Although the inefficiency of the centralized government is often cited as the primary reason for failure in disaster mitigation and recovery, more fundamental reasons are left unexplored.

Design/methodology/approach – This study points out that comparative case analysis is inadequate to substantiate the claim that private actors are better responders to disaster than public agents. Instead, it takes a single case study approach of hurricane response in New Orleans. This method allows for two things: first, extending the temporal scope helps to understand that disaster management is not a single event but a cumulative result of the past responses. Second, one can trace the interplay between public and private agents rather than their separate reactions.

Findings – A series of legal conditions within the federalist framework have discouraged effective disaster management by the federal government. Using both legal and extralegal means, local actors tried to avoid the federal government's involvement in land use and building control that may prohibit local economic activities. Instead, the federal government was pressured into providing structural protection such as levee construction, which is costly yet ineffective in preventing a mega-disaster like Hurricane Katrina.

Originality/value of paper – This study warrants caution in conducting a comparative case analysis in evaluating the role of the federal government in disaster response and recovery. By conducting an in-depth case study of New Orleans hurricane response over the past 50 years, it reveals that the current government failure stems from structural and legal conditions rather than bureaucratic inefficiency.

The objective of this chapter is to discuss how different techniques in Regional Science and Peace Science and the emerging techniques in Management Science can be used in analysing Disaster Management and Global pandemic with special reference to developing countries. It is necessary for me to first discuss the subjects of Disaster Management, Regional Science, Peace Science and Management Science. The objective of this chapter is to emphasise that the studies of Disaster Management should be more integrated with socioeconomic and geographical factors. The greatest disaster facing the world is the possibility of war, particularly nuclear war, and the preparation of the means of destruction through military spending.

This chapter focuses on the experiences and processes of earthquake recovery to discuss the general state of disaster recovery in Japan. In this way, it is expected that the outcome and discussion can provide effective insights for both domestic and international disaster-related efforts. First, the characteristics of natural disasters in Japan are summarized using statistical data. Quantitative and qualitative methods are flexibly used to analyze published data, materials, and semistructured interview data. Published data and materials are collected from various sources. Interview data were gained from diverse interviewees. Then, four case studies of earthquake recovery are introduced and the application of their recovery experiences to future disaster risk reduction is proposed. Finally, conclusions have been drawn from these case studies to show the practical influence of disaster-recovery experiences to regions that are currently experiencing or are likely to experience natural disasters in the future. More specifically, the chapter illustrates what challenges and influences past earthquakes can have on our present preparedness against a Nankai Trough Earthquake, which is predicted to occur in the near future.

The purpose of this chapter is to report on the effects of a natural disaster on the tourism sector of Grand Bahama Island (GBI). This chapter explores the process of tourism destination recovery. Tourism destination recovery has become an important area of study in Small Island Developing States (SIDs). SIDs have been subject to increasing external shocks based on the state of the natural environment including climate change. GBI is the northernmost populated island in The Bahamas and the island has been impacted by several hurricanes within recent times including Hurricane Matthew in 2016 and Hurricane Dorian in 2019. A review of the tourism literature revealed that tourism destination recovery is an underresearched area in the Caribbean. Data were collected from stakeholder interviews to determine the process of tourism destination recovery. Findings revealed the importance to focus on product development, marketing, and coordination aspects of a tourism destination in recovery. This chapter offers a path towards tourism destination recovery by highlighting some of the challenges of the process, with consideration of a recovery framework for tourism destinations.

This chapter introduces Building Back Better Libraries (BBBL) as a critical concept for improved library planning both prior to and following a disaster or other emergency. Building Back Better, an idea widely discussed in the disaster recovery literature, seeks to use the difficulty of a disaster as an opportunity to go beyond the status quo and to promote changes that result in stronger, more resilient communities. The authors will define BBB elements and frameworks, building upon those to create a model for library disaster planning and recovery, and applying it to cases involving space and facilities, collections, services, and people.

Literature on the Building Back Better concept and frameworks, as well as library emergency response, was reviewed. This source material was used to develop a modified framework for improved library disaster planning and recovery. The Building Back Better Libraries framework is discussed and applied to cases involving library facilities and spaces, collections, and services, and its implementation through a disaster planning team is reviewed.

Though all libraries hope to avoid disaster, few succeed. One survey found that as many as 75% of academic library respondents had experienced a disaster or emergency. Evidence also suggests that few libraries are prepared, with as many as 66–80% of libraries reporting that they have no emergency plan with staff trained to carry it out. Even when plans are in place, the rush to respond to immediate needs following a disaster can overwhelm the ability to pursue effective long-term planning. Building Back Better, when framed for libraries, provides a planning tool to balance short-term response with long-term recovery and resilience. The Building Back Better Libraries framework focuses on the areas of risk assessment for library collections and spaces; recovery and rejuvenation for facilities, collections, and services; and implementation and monitoring, with particular discussion of the human element and the role of a library disaster planning team.

The proposed framework, Building Back Better Libraries (BBBL), can be used to strengthen disaster planning in a manner that balances meeting immediate needs with implementing longer term plans to create stronger and more resilient libraries.

Although aspects of BBB ideas are present in existing library literature, the concept is not formally defined for the library context.

This chapter summarizes the growing theoretical and empirical literature on the role of education in disaster risk reduction with a focus on Southeast Asia. Education and learning can take place in different environments in more or less formalized ways. They can influence disaster vulnerability in direct and indirect ways. Directly, through education and learning, individuals acquire knowledge, abilities, skills and perceptions that allow them to effectively prepare for and cope with the consequences of disaster shocks. Indirectly, education gives individuals and households access to material, informational and social resources which can help reduce disaster vulnerability. This chapter highlights central concepts and terminologies and discusses the different theoretical mechanisms through which education can support disaster risk reduction. Supportive empirical evidence is presented and discussed with a particular focus on the role of inclusiveness in education and challenges in achieving universal access to high-quality education. Based on a situation analysis and best practice cases, policy implications are derived that can inform the design and implementation of education and learning-based disaster risk reduction efforts in the region.