Explaining effectiveness of coordinated crisis and disaster control by security regions in the Netherlands

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Issue Date
2015-07-07
Language
en
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Abstract
In the Netherlands, a couple of crisis situations showed that coordination between several emergency services had to be improved in order to increase public safety. The Security Regions Act in 2010 is the legal and formal creation of a network that deals with, among other tasks, multidisciplinary coordination in crisis and disaster control. The emergency services that are primarily involved in this network are the firefighting force, the police force, medical assistance (represented by the Regional Medical Assistance Organization (GHOR)), the municipalities, the military and the water boards. Since crisis and disaster control became a network form of organization it appeared more difficult to determine effectiveness. Two cases were studied closely on their network effectiveness. The central question of this thesis is “How can effectiveness of coordinated crisis and disaster control in Security Region Brabant-Noord and Security Region Gelderland-Zuid be explained?” Network theory provided academic knowledge on the definition of a network, its structure and complexities, and finally also on measuring network effectiveness. The research into network effectiveness of Security Region Brabant-Noord and Security Region Gelderland-Zuid is twofold: determining a certain degree of effectiveness and finding factors that can explain network effectiveness. Twelve interviews were held and both organizational documents and evaluation studies provided the data. Both security regions were found to be moderately effective as a network. Both were able to innovate and sustain the network, but they failed to achieve the goals that were set for 2013. The two security regions had ten variables in common that explained successes and failures. These ten factors could also have the same effect in other security regions. More research has to be done to prove this. Furthermore, the categories of factors were not recognized to have an exclusive positive or negative influence on network effectiveness. However, contextual factors were most positively related to network effectiveness in both the regions. Overall, focusing on the categories of factors the results were mixed, so further research should address all factors individually. The functioning factors best explained the difference in network effectiveness between Security Region Brabant-Noord and Security Region Gelderland-Zuid.
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Faculteit der Managementwetenschappen