doing global research on crisis management
DESCRIPTION
Presented at the ISCRAM Doctoral Colloquium by Tung BuiTRANSCRIPT
Doing global research on crisis management:
Opportunities and challenges
Tung [email protected]
ISCRAM Doctoral Consortium
Seattle, 5-2010
2© T. Bui, 2010
Vérité au deçà des Pyrénées, erreur au delà
Blaise Pascal, 17th Century
3© T. Bui, 2010
ISCRAM2010 Doctoral Consortium Participants
An attempt to extend current research proposals to a global context
(order based from zip file received)
4© T. Bui, 2010
Babajide Osatuyi
• Subject: Collaborative Information Behavior under conditions of time constraints and level of crisis severity
• Global context: How would cross-border DMs seek and handle information?
• Issues at hand: Language, cultural bias, information sharing attitudes
5© T. Bui, 2010
Burack Cavdaroglu
• Subject: Restoring Infrastructure Systems - A multi-network Interdependent Critical Infrastructure Program for the Analysis of Lifelines (MUNICIPAL)
• Global context: Global ICT and social political contexts and supra-nationality
• Issues at hand: Cross-border data quality, trust interoperability, nationalism-related conflicts of interest
6© T. Bui, 2010
Cindy Nikolai
• Subject: Designing a Net-centric emergency operations simulator for emergency managers – ENSAYO
• Global context: Understanding and adoption of a international approach to crisis management
• Issues at hand: Digital divide, trust and mistrust, resource allocation, training scope
7© T. Bui, 2010
Fredrik Bergstrand
• Subject: ICT requirements to improve sense-making, situation awareness and decision making in crisis situation
• Global context: cultural and national impacts on cognition
• Issues at hand: Interoperability, cross-border HCI, information sharing and use, centralization vs. decentralization
8© T. Bui, 2010
Gyu Hyun Kwon
• Subject: Identify dimensions of communication interoperability in public safety work domain
• Global context: Organizational and institutional structures, power and politics, presence of supra-national entities
• Issues at hand: Difference is org. structures (flat vs. hierarchical), power influence and relationship ties, communications protocols and local legal constraints, languages, perceptions of security
9© T. Bui, 2010
Joaquin Lopez-Silva
• Subject: Using scenario analysis to analyze cross-impact risks related to complex and possibly unknown emergency responses
• Global context: Global responses are typically uncoordinated, and unspoken sense of competition; assessment of impacts is influenced by national interests
• Issues at hand: cross impacts more convoluted, cross-border meta-analysis
10© T. Bui, 2010
Marcus Vogt
• Subject: Requirements analysis, task-technology fit, value creation, adoption for ICT alignment in emergency management
• Global context: Global strategy, multiple stakeholders, wide spectrum of ICT literacy
• Issues at hand: Multiple and conflicting objective analysis, role of leaders and followers in IT governance, inter-organizational mega collaboration, scalability
11© T. Bui, 2010
Robert Baska
• Subject: Continuous auditing to help track the effectiveness of decisions to help improve decision making process
• Global context: Diversity in core values (political vs. financial), conflicting prioritization influenced by national interests
• Issues at hand: Buy-ins, meta-modeling, data quality
12© T. Bui, 2010
Thomas Heverin
• Subject: Micro-blogging for crisis information sharing
• Global context: nationalism, national attitude w/ regard to crises, privacy
• Issues at hand: local vs. global space, physical vs. virtual space, privacy and security, national differences in emerging behavior
13© T. Bui, 2010
Yasir Javed
• Subject: Emergency Decision Making for Mass Evacuation
• Global context: National differences in decision making process
• Issues at hand: National characteristics that impact decision-making process – intelligence, design, choice, implementation and monitoring, emotion and social responsibilities
14© T. Bui, 2010
Opportunities for global research
• Crises w/ global impacts have become more regular
• IS-centric research on crisis management, HA/DR is young, and has lots of unresolved/untapped issues
• Much research is needed to fill missing pieces in the global puzzle
15© T. Bui, 2010
Examples of global research phenomena
• Haiti/Chile: Two major earthquakes to governmental attitudes. Why did one government asked for help and the other one did not? Nationalism?
• Haiti and Facebook discussion groups: Why emergent behaviors expressed in French seemed more compassionate than those expressed in English? Ethnocentrism? Local behaviors vs. global behaviors?
16© T. Bui, 2010
Examples of global research questions
• Iceland volcano ash: Why did the Swiss decided to fly low below the ash clouds and the Germans to fly above them? What drove their decision-making processes?
• Hawaii tsunami warning on 2/27/10. Known by the world to be a perfect textbook drill. What would be the critical success factors for an International Early Warning Program (IEWP)?
17© T. Bui, 2010
Some research framework that you could use for crisis management
studies
18© T. Bui, 2010
Self-organizing systems (Steel)
• Connectivity
• Diversity
• Rate of information flow
• Lack of inhibitors
• Good boundaries
• Intentionality
• Watchful anticipation
19© T. Bui, 2010
Culture (Hofstede)
• Five dimensions of national culture
– Small vs. large power distance– Individualism vs. Collectivism– Masculinity vs. femininity (quantity vs. quality of life)– Weak vs. strong uncertainty avoidance– Long vs. short-term orientation
20© T. Bui, 2010
Social political system
• Cultural multipolarity: Homogenization of global culture vs. robust local cultures (Ballentine, 96)
• Infrastructure trends
• Inter-connected world
• Rising mobility
• Value trends
• Transparency
21© T. Bui, 2010
Some research design considerations
22© T. Bui, 2010
Country-Of-Origin
• COO stereotyping (Colyer, 2005) (Swiss dog must be good) / Russia-US: cold war heritage
• COO debate (Usumier, 2006), people pay little importance to the country (exploiter behavior can be found anywhere)
• How does COO impact the design and effectiveness of ERS?
23© T. Bui, 2010
Cross-cultural negotiations
• Nations in darkness phenomenon (Stoesinger, 1971): pervasive misperceptions affecting information processing
• Relax internal consistency in favor of creative exploration of alternative explanations
• Convert confusion into predictable irrationality
• E.g., national rescue teams competed in Indian tsunami
24© T. Bui, 2010
Negotiation and national characters
• National self-images and images of the other party (e.g., French locked in history of imperialism; America’s self proclamation of world police)
• Difference in ethics: (e.g., Americans tend to be dogmatic; Japanese practice situation ethics)
• How to design an argumentation system for int’l ERS
25© T. Bui, 2010
Cultural Cognition
• Differences in reasoning process
– US: base on hard facts; France: known for Cartesian logic; Mexico/Japan: emphasis on contemplation and intuition
• Implications on persuasion styles
26© T. Bui, 2010
A global research framework
Bui et al. (1999, 2001, 2005)
27© T. Bui, 2010
Factors affecting HA/DR operations factoring in national characteristics
Acceptance Level of Risk
InferiorTechnology
Education level
Insufficient infrastructure & Transportation
Cultural Difference
Availability of Resource
Political and Administrative Stability
Quality ofDecision
Outcomes
Quality ofCrisis MgtProcess
ProblemFormulation
Group-think
CognitiveAbilities
HA/DR AgencyUnit Isolation
Stress
OrganizationalMemory
InformationQuality/Overload
Degree of Org.Readiness
Coordination LevelBetween Units
28© T. Bui, 2010
Issues related to HA/DR (1)
• Importance of information exchange (facts and analyses)– Quality – Timeliness
• Coordination complexity– No single organization has all resources – Each organization wants to show its special value – May hinder cooperation
29© T. Bui, 2010
Issues related to HA/DR (2)
• Short-term vs. long-term perspectives – Short-term rescue vs. long-term development
• Communication incompatibilities– Different languages, incompatible devices, cultural diversity
• Information standardization needs– Information overload, how to interpret data
30© T. Bui, 2010
Negotiation issues in HA/DR
• Source of conflicts– Different interpretations of the same information.– Violating norms of others due to cultural differences– Short-term rescue vs. long-term development– The very existence of organization (inherent nature of the org.
decision making process)
• Negotiation issues– Mutual agreement with needs assessment– Need to negotiate for the action priority– Agreement about means and ends– Negotiation of resource allocation
31© T. Bui, 2010
Some research process considerations
32© T. Bui, 2010
“Lost in translation”
• The “silent language” phenomenon
– Chinese/Mexican: avoid saying “no”
• Body language misinterpretations
– Asian: smiling sometime used to hide shyness or embarrassment
– American’s direct style and open expression of emotion perceived by mistrust/lack of sincerity
• Extra layer of noise in data analysis
33© T. Bui, 2010
Some research design considerations
• Survey instrument (Harzing, 2004, 2009): For studying cross-national differences,
– 7-point Likert scale seems better than 5-point (higher confidence)
– Ranking seems to be better than rating– Use of English questionnaires by foreigners might lead to
bias related to cultural accommodation
• Back translation (Brislin, 1980)
34© T. Bui, 2010
Trusting translators and interpreters
• Limitations in translating ideas, abstract concepts and nuanced reasoning (e.g., democracy)
• Some concepts do not exist in another cultures (e.g., fair play)
• Interpreter’s personal bias (nationalism, own sense of justice)
• Subject prefers to express in English even if broken and confusing
• Use local, native co-researchers as much as possible
35© T. Bui, 2010
Some concluding remarks
• Crisis and crisis management have increasing taken an international dimension
• International collaboration has become a necessity, yet much research is needed to figure out how to do it
• Design of global research design is quite complex
• Barely addressed some of intriguing issues
• Each of the aspects covered here could be a relevant topic to “dig in”
• No pain, no gain – but rewarding
36© T. Bui, 2010