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The purpose of this paper is to describe leadership, decision making and other community characteristics that support community resiliency following disasters.

Literature review and case study based on participant observation in nine years post-Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans.

Effective leaders promote community resiliency using democratic, diffused decision making, stressing intra-dependence and promoting individual agency and locally-informed decisions. They build upon local networks and cultural bonds – not waiting for disaster but continuously, with flexible readiness framework infused in all efforts.

The paper uses New Orleans’ experiences following Hurricane Katrina to explore how leadership, decision making and other community characteristics can promote resiliency post-disaster – case study extrapolating from one disaster and relevant literature to understand role of leaders in community recovery/re-design.

Changes in global economic and environmental conditions, population growth and urban migration challenge capacity of communities to thrive. Leadership and decision making are hub of wheel in crises, so understanding how leaders promote community resiliency is essential.

Disasters create breakdowns as functioning of all systems that maintain community are overwhelmed and increased demands exceed wounded capacity. Eventually, immediate struggle to limit impact gives way to longer process of re-designing key systems for improved functionality. What contributes to differing abilities of communities to reboot? How can we use understanding of what contributes to that differential ability to prepare and respond more effectively to disasters?

Hurricane Katrina was a uniquely devastating urban event – causing re-design and re-building of every major system. Almost ten years post-hurricane, rebuilding process has provided key lessons about effective leadership and community resiliency post-disaster.

Service failures are common and companies must decide how best to respond to these incidents. The purpose of this study is to examine service recovery efforts that incorporate a donation component, in addition to financial compensation. More specifically, the relative effectiveness of these recovery efforts was explored according to the regulatory focus framing (i.e. prevention- or promotion-focused) of the donation message.

Three experiments are conducted to test the hypotheses.

Drawing from regulatory focus theory (Higgins, 1997), the authors determined that prevention framing (e.g. highlighting the negative outcomes avoided by a donation) leads to better service recovery outcomes compared to promotion framing (e.g. highlighting the positive outcomes of a donation) the donation message. Furthermore, warmth (e.g. perceptions of caring and helpfulness) and competence (e.g. perceptions of capability and usefulness) underlie this effect and message trust moderates the effect of regulatory framing on warmth.

This study offers several theoretical and managerial implications. First, a novel recovery approach that benefits multiple stakeholders was illustrated, particularly when the donation message is prevention (vs promotion) framed. The authors focused on donations in particular, but future researchers should explore other corporate social responsibility activities such as those pertaining to sustainability, ethical labor practices or educational training.

Companies should consider incorporating donations into service recovery efforts. Moreover, companies should use prevention as opposed to promotion frames in their donation messages. Using a prevention frame enhances perceptions of company warmth and competence.

Very little research has explored the effectiveness of donations following service failures despite evidence that companies use donations in this context. This research highlights the importance of regulatory focus framing and demonstrates how a donation, paired with financial compensation, is more/less effective according to the framing of the communication. Thus, this research demonstrates a novel effect, identifies its underlying mechanism through warmth and competence and establishes an important boundary condition according to message trust.