Hazard Mitigation Investment Decision Making: Organizational Response to Legislative Mandate

L.A. Arendt, D.J. Alesch and W.J. Petak

MCEER-07-0002 | 04/09/2007 | 94 pages

Keywords: Extreme events.  Hazard mitigation.  Organizational responses.  Decision-making models.  Transaction cost economic theory.  Institutional theory.  Regulatory theory.  Upper-echelons theory.  Organizational strategy theory.  Hospitals.  Health care centers.  Disaster management.  Spending.  Costs.

Abstract: This is the third in a series of three reports resulting from a project on overcoming obstacles to implementing hazard mitigation policies against extreme events.  The focus of this report is on decision processes made by organizations expected to implement and pay for actions to enhance seismic safety.  An organizational decision-making model is proposed based on five streams of organizational decision-making theories: transaction cost economic, institutional, regulatory, upper-echelons, and organization strategy.  The authors present a series of descriptive cases drawn from interviews with hospital executives conducted after the theoretical model was developed.  The report concludes with a discussion of implications of the model and initial findings, and by outlining next steps.