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A nature reserve set up in a disaster-stricken area can have various functions, e.g. as a place where biodiversity is favored and sometimes as a memory of a traumatic event. This study presents four different record-breaking disasters during 1992–2014 in Sweden, where the idea of setting up reserves has been advanced in the aftermath, but with slightly different results in relation to attitudes about nature conservation and modes of remembering. The phenomenon is primarily discussed against theory formation around disaster memorials and window of opportunity for change.

This paper uses a comparative case study approach. The cases are described through narratives on the basis of “grey” literature, i.e. documents from Swedish authorities in the form of evaluations, summaries from experience seminars, political decisions on the establishment of nature conservation or information material addressed to the public, and also media reporting.

The nature reserves will be reminiscent of the disasters since the natural regrowth will take decades but may also be accompanied by exhibitions in visitor centers, arts and plays, monuments and bureaucratic documents, all of which contribute to the memory. In all but one case, such artifacts are secondary in relation to the explicit goal of forest conservation. The local population's attitude to the reserve formation plays a big role for the plans to be implemented.

Foundation of nature reserves in the immediate aftermath of a disaster may have different functions for actors, affected people and interested public; some are exemplified and discussed here.

After the catastrophic 2009 bushfires in the state of Victoria, Australia, the State Government provided information and advice, short-term and temporary accommodation as well as financial assistance to bushfire-affected communities. A tension developed between quickly rebuilding housing and re-establishing known social and economic networks versus a slower and more deliberative process that focuses on long-term community outcomes. Whilst there was a widespread assumption that quick rebuilding would be beneficial, resulting in immediate pressure to do so, it became evident that many people were not prepared to, or even did not want to rebuild. Thus it became important to provide time and support for people to consider their options away from the immediate pressures to rebuild that are often inherent in post-disaster recovery processes. This became known as “holding the space” and included the introduction of interim supports such as building temporary villages and other supports which enable people to achieve appropriate interim accommodation without having to rebuild immediately. However, even two years after the bushfires a significant proportion of people remained undecided whether they wanted to rebuild or not. The post-bushfire experience pointed to a number of lessons including the importance of appropriate timing of post-disaster activities, careful targeting of financial assistance, need for developing better and lower cost interim housing options and pre-impact planning. Given the complex nature of rebuilding following a disaster, design professionals should focus not just on the final house, but also look at housing options that blur the distinction between temporary and permanent. Their designs should be quick to build, offer a good quality of life, be affordable for most and be flexible in design for future use.

The purpose of this paper is to provide a nuanced understanding of the complex factors driving the decision of commercial property owners (investors and developers) to stay and rebuild after a major disaster. The study examines what happens in the post-disaster rebuild of a central business district (CBD) from the perspective of commercial property owners in Christchurch, New Zealand.

An interpretive approach is adopted to understand what it takes to rebuild in a post-disaster environment through the lens and experiences of property owners. The study has observed the significant physical changes that have occurred in the Christchurch CBD as a result of the earthquakes. For this study, qualitative data were obtained through semi-structured interviews from 20 purposively identified property owners rebuilding the Christchurch CBD. The interview findings were subjected to a thematic analysis used to provide a factual way of characterising the viewpoints of those interviewed.

The findings have highlighted that the decision-making behaviour of property owners in Christchurch’s CBD post-disaster rebuild has been driven significantly by an emotional attachments to people and place.

The global trend in increasing destruction from natural disasters has raised the need for more efficient and effective post-disaster responses and activities. The paper has developed a knowledge base required to inform public policy and advice all those involved in the rebuilding of cities after a major disaster.

This paper contributes to the property literature and debates about the decision-making behaviour of commercial property owners who are engaged in rebuilding after a major natural disaster. The qualitative methodology used presents a novel approach to property research. The findings challenge the underlying premises of much of the mainstream property literature on normative investment behaviour and decision making.

This paper aims to discern the potential dimensions amid the duality of heritage tourism and peace. Reflecting on the phases of destruction and rebuilding of Seated Buddha of Jahanabad, this study used the content analysis of 40 news sources, to unravel the resultant avenues of heritage tourism and peace.

Following the qualitative research strategy, the interface of NVivo 12 has been used to transcribe the textual and visual content of media news. The media news aired on the incident of destruction phase in 2007, and rebuilding drive in 2012–2016 were the two sets of collected data. A hierarchy of thematic analysis was adopted to identify nodes, subthemes and themes.

Findings of this study highlighted six themes: peaceful imagery, PI; heritage dissonance, HD, vs interfaith harmony, IH; peace allegory through restoration, PAR; precursor of heritage sustainability, PHS; community heritage consonance, CHC; and heritage touristic valuation, HTV.

This study lacks statistical data of the quantitative research domain. Aimed at a single heritage site, it analyzed limited number of news sources.

This study offers implications for industrial, theoretical, managerial and governmental stakeholders in their respective domains. Moreover, it also provides takeouts for common readers.

This study contends a significant research issue and analyzes the destruction and rebuilding of a heritage site in a developing country. Primarily in the sociogeographic context of the research issue, the resultant dimensions are novel and demanding.

This study aims to explore the preparedness and the recovery/rebuilding activities or strategies adopted by the respondents during the phases of natural disaster/crisis in Jammu and Kashmir and Assam, India.

The qualitative research design was chosen for the study. The interview method was adopted in the present research. The respondents were selected purposefully from the representatives of tourism organizations/destinations management organizations and emergency organizations, i.e. disaster management and hotels experienced by natural disasters, i.e. flood 2014 in Kashmir valley 2019 in Assam states of India.

Moderate level of preparedness among the tourism organizations, tourism businesses such as hotels leaves implications for them to enhance the disaster or crisis resilient community. The preparedness programs, efficient social media, communications strategies and development of tourist destinations-specific disaster-related crisis management plans were suggested to enhance disaster resilience.

The present study is widely contributing to the theory of the vital concepts of crisis management at tourism destinations. This study suggests the practical implications for and suggestions to the industry practitioners, government agencies and researchers to rebuild the tourist destinations from the disaster/crisis and enhance global resilience.

The purpose of this paper is to determine how post-disaster legislation can be used to support building back better (BBB) in the horizontal infrastructure sector (roading, water, wastewater and stormwater networks).

A case study approach was taken looking at the rebuild following the Canterbury earthquakes in New Zealand. Data were collected through document analysis and semi-structured open-ended interviews with members of the organization responsible for implementing the horizontal infrastructure rebuild.

The results showed that the post-disaster legislative actions taken in Christchurch were comparable to existing findings on post-disaster legislative best practices in developed countries. This study confirmed that post-disaster legislation is an effective mechanism to support BBB through enforcing BBB concepts such as risk reduction and better implementation, and facilitating the recovery process to improve efficiency.

It is recommended that this study is extended to conduct similar case studies in other countries to further explore legislative implications in different sectors as well as different legislative environments.

This paper makes a valuable contribution to existing research on how post-disaster legislation can be used to support BBB in the horizontal infrastructure sector. The findings also add to wider knowledge on the Canterbury earthquakes recovery process.

Improving the resilience of the construction sector helps countries recover quicker from crises and can assist with improving community resilience and recovery. This study aims to explore ways in which the construction sector might improve its resilience.

This paper examined past disasters and the role construction plays to understand what and how better construction resilience can be built, and the impact this will have on recovery and reconstruction.

The findings showed that after a crisis, the construction sector is called upon to manage building and infrastructure recovery and reconstruction. Construction organisations are needed by the community, as they provide physical resources, people, materials, logistics, management and technical expertise and rebuilding. To ensure that recovery and reconstruction programs are successfully implemented, it is necessary for the construction sector to be resilient. To achieve improved resilience in the construction industry, disaster resilience management needs to become mainstreamed into construction processes.

Although larger organisations have some preparation to respond to crises, including having emergency or disaster plans, smaller companies struggle to achieve a reasonable level of resilience. It appears that senior management and key people in construction organisations are familiar with the procedures but that the majority of staff in organisations lack knowledge and skills.

Understanding the role the construction sector plays in disasters and providing directions for improving construction sector resilience will ultimately improve recovery and reconstruction outcomes.

This paper discusses how communities rely on services provided by construction organisations to enable them to recover from emergencies and crises. Pre-disaster construction company resilience impacts on the ability of construction companies to function post-disaster.

This paper focuses on a number of cases and shows where and how the construction sector has worked in disasters and provides a new analysis of the role the industry plays, and the various disaster stages where the industry has maximum impact.

A new grouping of the eight schools of thought on business management is introduced. Their advancement is initially assessed with the help of a frame of reference, which is based on the principles inherent in Beer’s viable system model. It is proposed that a high degree of systemic advancement is one of the necessary attributes of any business-management concept that will be proven to be highly applicable to managing a firm’s dynamic business in practice. The first assessment reveals that the systemic advancement of the representative concepts varies a lot as follows. Porter’s chained frameworks (representing 1st Porterian school), Barney’s VRIO framework (2nd resource-based school), Sanchez and Heene’s concepts (3rd competence-based school), von Krogh et al.’s concept (4th knowledge-based school), and Hedlund’s heterarchy (5th organization-based school) are fairly systemic, respectively. Martin’s cascade (6th process-based school) is less systemic. Instead, Hamel’s revolutionary concept (7th dynamism-based school) and Brown and Eisenhardt’s competing on edge strategy (8th evolutionary school) are highly systemic. Thus, some promising ways to advance, in particular, the competence-based school of thought on business management are suggested.

The study examines the effects of corruption activities on new product development of firms. The roles of senior managers in the relationship between corruption activities and new product development are also studies.

The data of Indian firms are collected from the Enterprise Survey conducted by World Bank in 2014. Variables on corruption, new product development, and other firm level factors are considered in the study. Logistic regression is used to examine the effect of firm's engagement in corruption activities on new product development.

Corruption activities of firms is negatively related to new product development. Senior manager's industry experience and engagement in regulatory activities weaken the negative relationship between firm's engagement in corruption activities and new products development.

With the increased focus on innovation, organizational managers have to work on the development of new products, and understanding of the negative relationship between engagement in corruption activities and new product development will help them to achieve the desired organizational goals.

The study contributes in three ways. Firstly, the paper extends the theoretical understanding of the implication of a non-market strategy, corruption on new product development. Secondly, the study contributes to the existing literature on the antecedents of new product development. Finally, the roles of senior managers helps to understand the importance of their industry and regulatory experience in the main relationship.

This paper aims to understand the recovery process after the 2018 floods in Kerala, India, and it determines whether the recovery efforts were aligned with Build Back Better (BBB) concepts.

A qualitative approach was adopted to collect the data from the officials of Government and NGOs involved in Kerala recovery. The participants were interviewed on the challenges faced during the recovery process and the actions taken by them to overcome it.

The study identified that the Kerala Government was proactive at making the community resilient from future disasters by – encouraging owner-driven reconstruction among flood-affected households; supporting locals to rejuvenate their business; and by creating a local-level recovery authority. Further, this paper identifies the areas that Kerala was lacking in terms of BBB and where resilience-based plans and actions are needed for the future.

The participants were employees of Government and NGOs at a state level as they were the primary decision-makers to implement any recovery actions. Researchers believe that the authorities at district and village level could have had a different perspective towards implementing the recovery actions.

The best practices presented in this paper for effective BBB will assist the government to build/improve resilience in the community.

The implementation of BBB concepts in the areas of disaster risk reduction, community recovery and effective implementation was never studied extensively. The research provides valuable information on what extent Kerala’s post-disaster recovery and reconstruction activities were in-line with BBB practices.