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Incident sites can be described as the joint work site of the emergency services, where one of their challenges is to interact with the public. The purpose of this paper is to study how this interaction is structured by the emergency personnel's jurisdictional claims.

This paper rests upon qualitative method and in-depth interviews. In total, 28 people have been interviewed, out of which 13 are emergency personnel and 15 are unaffiliated volunteers. The interview material has been analysed qualitatively and thematically by the authors.

The findings show that the interaction between emergency personnel and unaffiliated volunteers can be described in terms of three different boundary practices: cordoning off, division of labour and conversation, varying in degrees of inclusion and exclusion. The result shows that the emergency personnel's relationship to volunteers is ambivalent, as they are both seen as an uncertain element at the incident site in need of control and as a valuable source of information.

While most other studies have been focusing on the interaction between emergency organizations, the authors have investigated the interaction between emergency organizations and a group previously unstudied: unaffiliated volunteers. While sociologists in the field of boundary work normally describe boundary practices in terms of negotiation, sympathizing with the concept of negotiated order, the results point to the fact that boundaries are not necessarily a subject for negotiation.

The main objective of this study is to consider how to benefit efficiently from the significant potential of humanitarian operations by individuals. For this purpose, this study aims to assess failure factors in humanitarian supply chain operations after the Kermanshah earthquake considering the role of all parties, focusing on individuals who did not wish to work with formal organisations on the whole. In the aftermath of the Kermanshah earthquake, which occurred on 12 November 2017, improvised groups of Iranian civilians from all over the country played an important role in humanitarian supply chain operations as individuals. Although most of these groups sincerely intended to help the affected society, victims could not benefit properly from these significant potential humanitarian actions. On the contrary, these potential actions caused some issues during humanitarian operations, such as blocking roads, inappropriate last-mile distribution, wasting resources and so on.

This research study considers mixed methods, including an on-site survey, semi-structured interviewing and a questionnaire designed for statistical analyses. The analysis included 140 responses to the questionnaire, semi-structured interviews with 32 affected families, interviews with 5 emergency managers from the Housing Foundation of the Islamic Republic of Iran and on-site survey reports.

This study presents a framework for humanitarian supply chain management to deal with future disasters in the same area or areas with similar characteristics to the case study. In general, the results of this study demonstrate that the nature of humanitarian supply chain operations makes it impossible to consider that these operations are free of challenges. However, several influential factors, such as training humanitarian actors and integrated management, might considerably increase the efficiency of humanitarian operations by individuals.

This study highlights the influential factors of inappropriate humanitarian operations by individuals, derived from an analysis of the Kermanshah case and literature review. The authors suggest a framework to benefit from the significant potential of individuals with wide-ranging experiences and proficiency, for future cases similar to the case study.

Conflict and violence are the main drivers of globally escalating humanitarian needs. Local grassroots initiatives are pivotal in distributing humanitarian supplies in the acute response phase until more established humanitarian aid organizations can enter. Nevertheless, scant research exists regarding the role of grassroots associations in providing humanitarian assistance during a military conflict. The purpose of this paper is to understand the role of grassroots associations and identify important themes for effective operations.

This paper adopts a case-study approach of three Ukrainian grassroots associations that began operating in the immediate days of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine. The findings are based on analyzing primary sources, including interviews with Ukrainian volunteers, and are supported by secondary sources.

Grassroots associations have local contacts and a contextual understanding of population needs and can respond more rapidly and effectively than large intergovernmental agencies. Four critical themes regarding the operations of grassroots associations emerged: information management, inventory management, coordination and performance measurement. Grassroots humanitarian response operations during conflict are challenged by personal security risks, the unpredictability of unsolicited supplies, emerging volunteer roles, dynamic transportation routes and shifting demands.

Grassroots responses are central to humanitarian responses during the acute phase of a military conflict. By examining the operations of grassroots associations in the early months of the 2022 war in Ukraine, the authors provide a unique perspective on humanitarian logistics. Nonetheless, more inclusive models of humanitarian responses are needed to harness the capacities and resilience of grassroots operations in practice.

The purpose of this paper is to reveal the benefits of organized voluntary emergency services (OVES) in the case of flood events, since such information is mostly not available, but needed to analyze the total effects of disasters and respective responses. Moreover, the efficient allocation of scarce public resources for emergency and risk management should be based on empirical data.

Based on a qualitative framework describing the benefits of OVES, the authors develop different tools for monetizing tangible as well as intangible benefits and apply them for case studies in Austria.

The benefits of volunteer efforts for emergency management cannot be monetized easily, since they are often of intangible character. Nevertheless, we show that the benefits of OVES could be substantial.

As the authors analyze case studies, the results cannot be directly transferred to other regions, but illustrate the empirical dimension of the benefits of OVES. Further research should be undertaken to assess the benefits of avoided losses by OVES using single-object data.

Since many emergency service institutions are involved during/after natural hazards, data availability and exchange should be improved. Objective decisions for investment in emergency services should be based on data of recent hazard events and case studies.

The paper develops a toolbox to evaluate the benefits of OVES and is thus highly valuable for emergency managers, which are responsible for deploying volunteers and non-volunteers in emergency management.

This paper offers an empirical overview of European emergency managers' institutional arrangements and guidelines for using social media in risk and crisis communication.

The authors collected and analysed material including publicly accessible relevant legal acts, policy documents, official guidelines, and press reports in eight European countries – Germany, Italy, Belgium, Sweden, Hungary, Finland, Norway, and Estonia. Additionally, the authors carried out 95 interviews with emergency managers in the eight countries between September 2019 and February 2020.

The authors found that emergency management institutions' social media usage is rarely centrally controlled and social media crisis communication was regulated with the same guidelines as crisis communication on traditional media. Considering this study's findings against the backdrop of existing research and practice, the authors find support for a “mixed arrangement” model by which centralised policies work in tandem with decentralised practices on an ad hoc basis.

Comparative insights about institutional arrangements and procedural guidelines on social media crisis communication in the studied countries could inform the future policies concerning social media use in other emergency management systems.

This study includes novel, cross-national comparative data on the institutional arrangements and guidelines for using social media in emergency management in the context of Europe.

When emergencies occur, ordinary members of the public are often the first to respond. However, their use and integration in emergency response remain a challenge. The purpose of this paper is to explore mechanisms and strategies for integrating unorganized volunteers in emergency response.

This is a qualitative case study. A series of anonymized, semi-structured interviews were conducted with representatives of the key emergency response organizations – the police, ambulance service, fire and rescue service, and the Red Cross, located in the city of Tromsø. In addition, regulatory documents used by these organizations were examined, including laws, contingency plans, procedural handbooks and checklists.

Professional responders acknowledge the resource unorganized volunteers may represent when additional capacity is needed. However, being uncertain about their availability and competence, professional responders find it hard to integrate unorganized volunteers through formal mechanisms as contingency planning and exercises, but rather rely on informal and individual case-by-case considerations. The local Red Cross, who are part of the established response system, are developing procedures to integrate unorganized volunteers through training, exercises and response operations. This provides an innovative hybrid approach to volunteer management.

Available research provides limited information and advice on how to integrate unorganized volunteers effectively in emergencies. This study provides insights in formal and informal mechanisms of integrating unorganized volunteers in emergency response. It also provides lessons from a case of volunteer management through the Red Cross.

Megachurches are thriving in religious markets at a time when Americans are asserting their ability as consumers of religious products to engage in religious switching. The apparent success of megachurches, which often provide a low cost and low commitment path by which religious refugees may join the church, seems to challenge Iannocconne's theory that high commitment churches will thrive while low commitment churches will atrophy. This paper aims to investigate this issue.

This paper employs a signaling model to illustrate the strategy and organizational forms megachurches employ to indicate a match between what the church produces and the religious refugee wishes to consume in an effort to increase their membership. The model illustrates that megachurches expect little in regard to financial or time commitment of new attendees. However, once the attendees perceive a good fit with the church, the megachurch increases its expectation of commitment. Data from the FACT2000 survey provide evidence in support of the model's predictions.

Data from the FACT2000 survey provide evidence in support of the model's predictions.

The paper serves to illustrate the dynamic process by which megachurches attract new attendees and transform those that find a good fit between their needs and what the church offers into full members of the church.

Christian Churches in the United States are facing decline and, just like other organizations, must renew themselves. This study explores the culture of a successful Midwestern church and its climate for innovation in an effort to move this church toward renewal. Through multiple regressionanalysis, support was found for the literature’s claims that a strong adhocracy culture has a significantly positive relationship with climate for innovation. However, the findings offered startling support that a strong clan culture has an even greater significant correlation with climate for innovation. Interestingly, it was found that market and hierarchy cultures have a small inverse relationship with support for innovation, and also that market culture has a small inverse relationship with resource supply. These results have significant implications for churches, ministries, and other nonprofit leaders and their organizations.