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Purpose – The purpose of this study is to understand the effectiveness of national crisis response networks (NCRN) in a broad sense, including the domains of governance, and strategic and tactical management. The chapter thus moves beyond views considering crisis response a reactive, tactical level effort. Specifically, it focuses on the role of military organizations in NCRNs.

Methodology/approach – After building a research framework based on organization and military studies, this case study examines the organizational response to the disaster that was caused by the tropical cyclone “Katrina”; the data used are qualitative.

Findings – The results highlight the ex-ante lack of preparedness of organizations to cooperate in a NCRN. Once Katrina hit in 2005, confusion and tensions permeated interorganizational relationships for a number of days.

Research limitations/implications – Implications for researchers and practitioners center on the NCRN's backbone organizations and communities potentially affected. Through tension management and network-level investments in knowledge and routines they can contribute to effective crisis response. The framework could be applied to other national crises. Case studies can be generalized in a conceptual sense.

Originality/value of paper – Katrina has been studied quite extensively yet from a crisis response perspective. This chapter offers a reflection that broadens the scope of our understanding of NCRNs, with an emphasis on the military.

Purpose – The chapter compares gift and market exchange in Hawaiian and New Zealand fisheries.Methodology/approach – The chapter draws upon a combination of original ethnographic fieldwork and literature pertaining to fisheries in both New Zealand and Hawaii.Findings – The privatization of fishing rights in New Zealand, in conjunction with a social policy directed toward Maori addressing colonial dispossession, has resulted in the dominance of market exchange, the creation of a purified version of indigenous gift exchange, and the attempted elimination of any hybrid activities. This has not been a positive outcome for the majority of coastal Maori. Fisheries development in Hawai’i has taken a different path. The flexibility that inheres in Hawaiian fisheries enables ongoing participation in both gift and cash economies.Originality/value – Over the last few decades western economies have witnessed a rapid extension of market approaches to many commonly owned environmental goods, a movement which has been entrenched as global policy orthodoxy. The social consequences of this development have been under researched. This chapter challenges the neoliberal model of using market mechanisms and property rights as “the way to do” natural resource management.