School Districts and Disaster Expertise

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School Districts and Disaster Expertise: What

Types of School Districts Consult Emergency

Management Professionals?

Scott E. Robinson

Bush School of Government and Public ServiceInstitute for Science, Technology, and Public Policy

Texas A&M [email protected]

DRAFT: PLEASE DO NOT QUOTEWITHOUT THE AUTHORS PERMISSION

January 6, 2011

Abstract

Emergency management calls for collaboration among a wide rangeof organizations. Many of these organizations are involved in mattersof emergency management by statute or organizational mission. Other

organizations, however, participate in emergency management as atask secondary to some other core mission. Why, and to what extent,these organizations collaborate with emergency management profes-sionals are key questions in out attempt to build a broad coalitionof organizations to support emergency management activities. Schooldistricts have limited internal capacity to prepare for emergencies anddisasters. Some collaborate with other organizations to overcome thiscapacity deficit. Others rely, instead, on their limited internal capaci-ties. This article examines the relative importance of structural char-acteristics and perceived vulnerability in predicting which districts are

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likely to consult with external emergency specialists. The results showthat the most persistent force behind the decision to engage an emer-gency management specialist in preparing for emergencies is the sizeof the school district.

1 Introduction - School Districts and Pre-

paredness Collaboration

It is now widely accepted that emergency management involves the collabo-ration of a broad range of actors. The capacity to prepare for and respondto emergencies and disasters does not reside within any one organizationor even one level of government. Such an insight has led many to studycollaborative practices in emergency management including the the role offederalism in emergency management (Waugh Jr 1994, Kapucu, Augustin& Garayev 2009) and collaboration between government emergency man-agement organizations and nonprofit organizations (Kapucu 2006, Simo &Bies 2007, Brudney & Gazley 2009). An understudied element of this newly

collaborative vision is the incorporation of organizations in emergency pre-paredness and response that do not have a traditional role in emergency man-agement. This article looks at the behavior of a type of organization that isincluded in many emergency management activities but is not primarily anemergency management organization itself: public school districts.

Using data from two surveys (one conducted immediately following Hur-ricanes Katrina and Rita and one conducted nearly two years later - withthe Virginia Tech shootings taking place early in the administration of thesurvey) of Texas public school districts, this article assess the factors relatedto collaboration between school districts and emergency managers in emer-gency planning activities. The results provide insight into the factors thatfacilitate collaboration between a non-emergency oriented organization andprofessional emergency managers. Larger school districts are more likely toreport the inclusion of professional emergency managers in their planningprocesses. Perceived likelihood of a disaster also increases the probability ofreported inclusion of emergency management professionals, but only in thesurvey immediately following the hurricanes of 2005.

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1.1 Disaster Preparedness Collaboration

Disasters are, by their very definition, events that cross jurisdictional bound-aries. A prominent textbook states the point clearly.

The term disaster is reserved for events that produce more lossesthan a community can handle. A community struck by disastercan cope only with the help of other communities, state govern-

ment, or the federal government (emphasis in original) (Lindell,Prater & Perry 2007, 3).

Hazards do not respect jurisdictional boundaries and thereby may affectmultiple jurisdictions 1 As a result, preparing for and responding to disas-ters and emergencies are wicked problems (Rittel & Webber 1973). Suchwicked problems defy simple solutions, especially those implemented by sin-gle organizations or institutions. The evolving nature of the problem alongwith the breadth of their effects requires the participation of a broad rangeof actors to implement any solutions. Such wicked problems call for collab-orative solutions.

In part motivated by the complex nature of disasters and emergencies,collaboration has become a popular term in emergency management and dis-aster policy. The FEMAs Emergency Management Institute popularized aseries of principles to guide emergency managers. These principles empha-size elements such as collaboration, coordination, and integration (FederalEmergency Management Agency 2008a). Specifically, its discussion of col-laboration emphasizes the importance of broad and sincere relationshipsin an environment that facilitate(s) communication. Policy documentsincluding the National Incident Management System (NIMS) also empha-size collaboration through the integration of a broad range of organizations

through Emergency Support Function (ESF) annexes (Department of Home-land Security 2008, Federal Emergency Management Agency 2008b)

The complexity of the broad range of actors involved in emergency man-agement in the US is well illustrated by Kapucu in his study of the NationalResponse Plan (the predecessor of the current National Response Framework)(2005). Kapucu mapped the National Response Plan in terms of the vari-ous organizations named and given responsibility within the document. He

1See Kapucu (2008) for a dramatic example of how a series of hurricanes crossed county jurisdictions within Florida.

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found eight organizations (in addition to FEMA) that play a primary role indisaster operations and 25 others that play roles in emergency support func-tions (38). Interestingly, all of these units are governmental organizationsexcept for the American Red Cross in its role related to mass care. Kapucusanalysis of the connectivity between the various actors reveals a great dealof interdependence and complexity in the federal emergency managementsystem.

It is important to note that this is a conservative statement of the com-

plexity of the system. There are many other actors involved in any particu-lar activity that were not mentioned by name within the National ResponsePlan. Most obviously, state and local actors are specific to the location of aparticular event. A large hazard may impact many jurisdictions with each ju-risdiction bringing its own array of emergency management actors. Kapucusanalysis of the 2004 hurricane season in Florida illustrates the breadth of lo-cal activation (Kapucu 2008). He found 151 public (meaning: governmental)organizations as well as 18 nonprofit and 63 private organizations mentionedwithin his mixed method assessment of survey, interview, and document anal-ysis (of situation reports) (249). This study provides a broader (and more

realistic) assessment of how complex emergency management operations canbecome.

1.2 Secondary Disaster Organizations

What is often neglected in the burgeoning research into emergency manage-ment collaboration is that some of the participants are not primarily emer-gency management organizations (Robinson 2007). Collaboration between alocal emergency management office and their local Red Cross office involvesparties whose primary responsibilities involve preparedness for and responseto emergencies and disasters. This collaboration is quite important, to besure. However, it may be of a different character than those organizationswho play important roles in emergency management but are not, themselves,primarily focused on emergencies and disasters.

These organizations that are often involved in emergency managementbut are not primarily emergency management organizations are secondarydisaster organizations. The term secondary is not intended to belittle therole these organizations play but, rather, to refer to the status of emergencypreparedness and response within the organizations mission. There are manyexamples of such organizations. The church who volunteers to house evacuees

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or send members to assist with feeding operations is such an organization.While this church plays a valuable role in sheltering and feeding, most of thetime the focus of the organization is not on emergencies or disasters. Suchactivities are simply a secondary role the organization fills in times of need.Other examples may include housing organizations, transportation agencies,or the subject of this study schools.

Schools play a number of important roles in emergency management.First, schools provide an important point of access to households. Commu-

nicating with these households, particularly on matters of preparedness edu-cation for the community, requires just this sort of access. Efforts to educatechildren about appropriate protective behaviors in the case of a householdfire (such as stop, drop, and roll) serve as one important example of theuse of schools to promote preparedness behaviors. Schools are also involveddirectly in various emergency response activities, primarily through theirfrequent role as local shelters. In many jurisdictions, local school facilitiesrepresent the core of shelter stock in case that the community needs to openshelters in the event of severe weather or otherwise must absorb an evacu-ating population. Finally, schools are involved in evacuations even if their

facilities are not directly used as shelters. When large numbers of evacueesenter a community (as was the case in many communities following Hurri-cane Katrina), one of the first points of contacts that the evacuees make withlocal officials is with local school districts. Evacuated parents seek to placetheir children in schools close to their shelter. Following Hurricane Katrina,some Texas school districts had hundreds or even thousands of students seekenrollment after the relocated (whether to a public shelter or to personallyarranged housing).

Given the emphasis on networking and collaboration in emergency man-agement activities, it is interesting to ask why some school districts engage

emergency management professionals in their emergency planning activitiesand why some do not. Schools will be affected by local disasters and emer-gencies. However, these organizations are not primarily oriented towardsemergency management activity. Their nature as secondary disaster organi-zations makes their participation voluntary rather than a constitutive part oftheir mission. The question is whether they will integrate emergency manage-ment professional in the creation or revision of the districts own emergencyplans given their nature as secondary disaster organizations. The next sec-tion will review some of the theoretical expectations related to collaborationthat may explain why schools collaborative behaviors (or their absence).

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ethnicity, and income). If one has recently experienced a hazard, one is morelikely to think that one is vulnerable to a hazard in the future, etc. Onceadapted to the context of a school district official making a decision relatedto protective action, this leads to a hypothesis to address our core researchquestion:

School district officials who perceive that they are vulnerable toa hazard are more likely to work with emergency management

professional in the development of their emergency plans.

Lindell & Hwang (2008) conclude with a discussion of the importance ofa second consideration: hazard intrusiveness. The amount of discussion andinformation about the hazard in an actors environment may influence theactors decisions to prepare (Lindell & Prater 2000). Lindell & Prater (2000)found the effect of hazard intrusiveness to be independent of personal risk andthus warrants its own consideration. We will look at survey responses in twotime periods: one in the immediate aftermath of a prominent hazard and oneremoved from such events. In the immediate aftermath of Hurricane Katrina,

hurricane hazards were quite intrusive in the general media environment.This leads to a final proposition inspired by the Protective Action DecisionModel.

School district officials are more likely to work with emergencymanagement professional in the development of their emergencyplans when hazards are more prominent in the media environ-ment.

With our pair of surveys, there were intrusive disasters close to both sur-veys. Neither survey represents a baseline state. Instead, we have one

survey (2005) that represents attitudes and reported intentions in the im-mediate aftermath of a pair of hurricanes that dramatically affected schooldistricts across the state through storm related closures and a massive evac-uation of students into the schools. In the other survey, we have an event(the Virginia Tech shootings) that was distant and did not directly effect theschool districts in the sample but was specific to a school setting. We willassess the relative propensity to collaborate in the two surveys to comparethe impact of these two decision environments.

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2.2 Structural Expectations

The literature in organization theory and public administration emphasizesfactors independent of the context of collaboration. This makes sense giventhe aspiration of the literature to speak to collaborative practices across avariety of policy domains, sectors, and even countries.

While there are a variety of schools of thought on what induces orga-nizations to collaborate, this model will focus on structural explanations of

collaboration. The structural school of collaboration deemphasizes the role ofindividual leaders and focuses instead on semi-permanent characteristics ofthe organization including the nature of the organizations technology (howthe organization carries out its mission not limited to specific technologieslike computer technology), affluence (how many resources the organizationhas access to), and size (the raw number of individuals involved in the orga-nizations operations). This approach sees collaborative activity as a costlyactivity that is only possible when the organization has both the need andthe capacity to collaborate.

A prominent example of this theoretical approach to collaboration isThompsons rational choice theory of organizational collaboration(2003 (1967)). Thompson argued that organizational structure is the prod-uct of rational choice on the part of those that manage the organization. Theinternal operations of the organizational will depend on the core task of theorganization. Thompson also argued that inter-organizational connectionswill be the product of rational choice on the part of the organizations man-ager. When the organization sees a rational purpose for collaboration, theywill create boundary spanning units. There are a variety of purposes for theseboundary spanning units, but one of primary concern for Thompson and forour current purposes is their capacity to buffer the organization. When out-side forces can disrupt the core operations of an organization, Thompson

argues that the organization may create boundary spanning units to protectthe core operations from these potential disruptions. This is very much thepurpose of emergency management planning and collaboration.

It is important to note that Thompson sees such collaboration as a costlyactivity. Managers will only create boundary spanning units when such unitsgenerate a benefit for the organization. Implicitly, such activities have a cost.Thompson argued that you are likely to see these investments, then, whenthe organization has the slack to invest in such protective behavior. Twocomponents stand out as generating slack. First, organizations with access

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to a great deal of capital are likely to invest in such boundary spanning ac-tivity. This may be the case because either (A) the opportunity cost of theinvestment is low due to the access to slack resources or (B) the resources arein the environment and a boundary spanning unit will improve access to theseexternal resources. Second, larger organizations have access to economies ofscale such that they can invest in boundary spanning operations and spreadthe costs of the unit across a larger organization. This hypothesis is con-sistent with prior research into collaboration between school districts and

various emergency management organizations (Kano & Bourque. 2007) butcontrasts with findings of no relationship in studies at the campus level (Kano& Bourque 2008).

The rational choice perspective on collaboration, then, generates two hy-potheses to answer our core research question:

School districts with access to more resources are more likelyto collaborate with emergency management professional in thedevelopment of their emergency management plans

Larger school districts are more likely to collaborate with emer-gency management professional in the development of their emer-gency management plans

3 Data and Methods

To test the hypotheses reviewed in the previous section, we analyze the re-sponses from two mail surveys of Texas K-12 school superintendents. Thefirst was in the Fall of 2005 - following Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. Thesecond was in the Spring of 2007, approximately eighteen months later. Early

in the administration of the second wave of surveys, the Virginia Tech shoot-ings shocked education administrators across the country. This section willprovide details on the surveys themselves and the statistical model we usedto test the various hypotheses.

3.1 Survey Methods

In the weeks following Hurricanes Katrina and Rita in the Fall of 2005, chil-dren from evacuated areas sought enrollment in school districts across Texas.In some cases, pairs or dozens of students sought enrollment a couple of weeks

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into the school year. In some cases, districts were asked to admit hundreds ofstudents. School districts, not often focusing on emergency response, foundthemselves confronting needs with which they had little familiarity. As aresult, many school districts sought to collaborate with other organizations.

The uncertainty in the period immediately following the hurricanes pro-vided an opportunity to study partner selection among these school districts.To whom did these districts turn for assistance? With the support of theNational Science Foundation, we sent a survey to every K-12 school district

in Texas within weeks of Hurricane Katrina (with Hurricane Rita occurringin this gap). The survey included a variety of questions about each districtsexperiences during the post-Katrina/Rita period as well as general ques-tions about collaboration with other organizations and the superintendentsbeliefs about the districts disaster vulnerability. The Fall 2005 survey ofapproximately 1200 school districts in Texas ended after three waves of self-administrated mail instruments for a response rate of approximately 60%.

The second survey was administered approximately 18 months later of thesame sample. This survey repeated the questions about disaster vulnerabilityand organizational collaborations. After three waves of mail surveys, the

second survey had a response rate of approximately 50%.2

We focus on a specific question included on both of the administrationsof the survey: reported intent to consult with an emergency managementprofessional during the next revision of the districts emergency plan. Thequestion allowed superintendents to report who among many options theyintend to include in the process of reviewing their emergency plans. Thespecific question wording follows.

Which groups do you anticipate will be involved in the reviewof your disaster/emergency plan? (check all that apply)

o police, fire, first responders

o district officials

o campus officials

o government officials

o parents

o emergency planningspecialists or consultants

o teachers

o other

2Assesment of the comparability of respondents to non-responding districts in eachsurvey shows that responders are slightly larger than non-responders, but not by a sub-stantively large amount.

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We will focus only on whether superintendents reported that they plan toinclude emergency planning specialists/consultants in the review of their dis-tricts emergency plan. Overall, 39% of superintendents reported such plansin 2005 while 45% reported such plans in 2007. Such percentages reassureus that indicating an intention to consult with emergency management spe-cialists was not so trivial that everyone would report such intention. We areinterested in what distinguished the districts whose superintendents reportedthe intention to consult from those those reported no such intention.

3.2 Statistical Model

The survey responses only indicate the presence or absence of an intentionwhich make the data somewhat complicated to analyze. One ought notsimply apply simple linear regression models because the dependent variableof interest can only take on values of 0 or 1. Application of a linear regressionmay result in predictions for individual districts of greater than 1 or lessthan 0, which would be nonsensical. We can instead imagine that there is anunderlying, unobserved propensity to consult with emergency management

specialists. We dont observe the propensity directly. Instead, we imaginethat there is a threshold above which we will observe a 1 and below whichwe will observe a 0. The result is a simple probit regression model with onlya constant term.

P(Y = 1)i = ( + i) (1)

This is a very simple model that assumes that all school districts have thesame propensity to consult. The hypotheses suggest that this is not the caseat all. Instead, we assumed that some school districts will have a greaterpropensity to consult. First, we hypothesized that school districts whose

superintendent reported a higher likelihood of experiencing an emergency aremore likely to consult with emergency management specialists. We wantedto test this hypothesis by including a term in the probability model thataccounts for these vulnerability assessments (i).

P(Y = 1)i = ( + i + i) (2)

The data for this variable come from the same surveys as the reportedintentions to consult based on a question about whether the district is highlylikely, somewhat likely, somewhat unlikely, or highly unlikely to experience

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a disaster in the next 12 months. This question indicates how vulnerablethe actor sees their district is to hazards. Due to low numbers of schooldistricts reporting that disaster were highly unlikely, we collapsed theseresponses with responses of somewhat unlikely. The result is a three pointscale increasing from unlikely to highly likely.3 We also considered othercomponents of the Protective Action Decision model but were limited to thequestions available within the survey. There were no questions related totenure expectations or enough variation to differentiate perceived hazard vul-

nerability from hazard proximity and hazard information. Given that Lindell& Hwang (2008) found that perceived personal risk mediate the relationshipof the other variables and had the strongest direct connection to hazardadjustment, we opted to limit our model to perceived hazard vulnerability.

We also wanted to assess whether organizational structure was related tothe propensity to consult with emergency management specialists. We havemeasured the size of each school district based on the number of full timeequivalent employees. This measure is highly correlated (at > .98) with otherpotential measures of district size including budgets and student enrollment(due, in part, to efforts to equalize funding per pupil across the state). The

raw measure of FTEs is highly skewed so we use the natural log of the totalFTEs of the district. The result is a near normally distributed variable. Weincluded the impact of organizational size in the propensity equation.

We also included a variable for the affluence of the school district based onthe logged taxable property value per pupil within the school district. Thisvariable represents access to resources in the school districts environment.These structural factors are included in a vector of influences represented by1.

P(Y = 1)i = ( + i + 1 + i) (3)

Finally, it is likely that the propensity to report an intention to consultin 2007 is related to the propensity to have reported a similar intention in2005. To account for this relationship between reported intentions in thetwo samples, we included a term (i) to incorporate this pattern into theprobability model.

3We considered also including a variable to control for the degree of impact that thedistrict felt in the 2005 hurricanes. This variable was so highly correlated with perceivedvulnerability in 2005 that it created substantial collinearity problems. We have decided toretain only the perceived vulnerability as the theoretical construct with greater theoreticalrange and note that it is tied to related concepts such as disaster experience.

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P(Y = 1)i = ( + i + 1 + 1 + i) (4)

We performed a series of probit regression analyses in STATA to test thepreceding models (Statacorp 2009). 4.

4 Results

We will report the results of three core models. First, we considered theresults of the survey in the immediate aftermath of Hurricanes Katrina andRita based on equation 3. Second, we tested two models using data from the2007 survey. The first of the 2007 models replicated the 2005 analysis basedon equaiton 3. The second of the 2007 model includes a term for the impacton having reported an intention to consult in 2005 (as in equation 4.

4.1 2005 Survey Results

The first model, based on equation 3, tests the impact of the perceived vul-

nerability and organizational structure on the probability of reporting anintention to consult with an emergency planning specialist in future revi-sions of the districts emergency plan. The results are reported as Model 1in Table 1.

The basic results are easy to interpret. As expected, larger school dis-tricts and districts whose superintendents reported a greater likelihood ofexperiencing a disaster were significantly more likely to report an intentionto consult with an emergency planning specialist. The model is a significantimprovement over the baseline model including only a constant term (likeequation 1) as indicated by the likelihood ratio test.

The model performs relatively well by improving the percent of casescorrectly predicted over the baseline model by just over 16%.While we are confident of the statistical significance and direction of the

effects of perceived likelihood of disaster and organizational size based on thedata, post-estimation analysis of the results can provide a visual demonstra-tion of the size of each effect. We employed the Clarify statistical packagewithin STATA to simulate the effect of each independent variable (King,Tomz & Wittenberg 2000, Tomz, Wittenberg & King 2003). As a result,

4All regressions used robust standard errors to account for heteroskedasticity

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Table 1: Regression Results

Variable Model 1 Model 2 Model 3

ln(Size) 0.216*** 0.144** 0.122*(4.86) (3.44) (2.19)

ln(Affluence) 0.0270 -0.003 0.077(0.27) (-0.03) (0.67)

Disaster 0.173* -0.083 -0.077Likelihood (2.08) (-1.03) (-0.73)

Consultation 0.317*

in 2005 (2.26)

Constant -1.846* -0.819 -1.432(-2.21) (-1.20) (-1.43)

N 513 548 354

p of LR Test 1.23e-08 0.0005 0.0022

% Correct 65.9 58.8 60.5

Improvement in% Correct 16.3 8.9 17.2(Z-statistics in parentheses)

(p < 0.05, p < 0.01, p < 0.001)

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we can simulate the expected probability of a reported intention to consultwith an emergency manager for each value while holding other variables attypical values (the mean for continuous variables and median for categoricalvariables). Figure 1 illustrates the effect of organizational size.

0

0.1

0.2

0.3

0.4

0.5

0.60.7

0.8

0.9

0 0.1 0.2 0.3 0.4 0.5 0.6 0.7 0.8 0.9

Prob.ofConsu

lting

Quantile of District SizeFigure 1 - The Effect of Size in the 2005 Survey

Figure 1 shows that expected probability of a school district that is typicalin terms of reported likelihood of disaster and local affluence but is only inthe 10th quintile of size (that is, only about 10% of districts are smaller thanthis district) is approximately 25%. The expected probability of reportingan intention to consult with an emergency planner rises above 50% for thosedistricts above about the 85th quintile. The dotted lines represent 95%confidence intervals around these expected probabilities.

The effect sizes of the perceived likelihood of experiencing a disaster areeasier to represent. If a district is otherwise typical (with size and affluenceat their sample mean values), a district with a superintendent who reported adisaster highly or somewhat unlikely were 6% less likely than those thatreported a disaster is somewhat likely to report an intention to consult. Adistrict whose superintendent reported that their district is highly likely toexperience a disaster were 7% more likely to report an intent to consult thanthose whose superintendents reported a disaster was somewhat likely.

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4.2 2007 Survey Results

The analysis of the 2007 survey produces some surprising results. The typ-ical expectation is that preparatory activities will be affected by a greaterdegree by a local hazard (like the hurricanes and the evacuation associatedwith them) then by a distant hazard. What the survey reflects, however,is an increase in the likelihood of reporting an intention to consult with anemergency planning specialist from 39% to 45% in the 2007 sample. The

base rate reflects a greater effect of the Virginia Tech shootings, taking placewithin an educational setting. Furthermore, the impact of perceived likeli-hood of experiencing a disaster is no longer statistically significant. Largerdistricts are still significantly more likely to report an intention to consult,as in the 2005 survey. This effect of size remains even when controlling forwhether the district had a superintendent who reported an intent to consultin 2005, as in model 3. The full model (model 3) performs relatively well.The model correctly predicts 61% of the cases and improves on the predictivecapacity of the baseline model by 17%.

Figure 2 illustrates the impact of size for districts who had a superinten-dent who had or had not reported an intention to consult in 2005.

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0.3

0.4

0.5

0.6

0.7

0.8

0.9

0 0.1 0.2 0.3 0.4 0.5 0.6 0.7 0.8 0.9

Prob.ofConsulting

Quantile of District Size

Figure 2 - The Effect of Size in the 2007 Survey

The impact of size is similar, though of a smaller magnitude, as that foundin the 2005 survey results. The solid line represents the expected probabilities

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for districts for which a superintendent reported an intent to consult in 2005.The dashed line represent the expected probabilities for those districts forwhich there was no reported intent to consult in 2005 . The gap between thelines illustrates the impact of previous reported intentions to consult. Theslope of each of the lines is not quite as steep as in Figure 1 reporting on the2005 sample. 5. Figure 2 demonstrates that the size effect remains in theperiod removed from the salient disaster event while the impact of perceivedvulnerability has faded.

5 Discussion and Conclusion

The results are somewhat surprising but generally support established expec-tations related to structural determinants of collaboration generally. There isconsiderable variation among school districts as to whether their superinten-dents report intentions to consult with emergency management professionalsin reviewing their emergency plans. Whether the middling percentages areencouraging or not depends on the expectations one brings to the results.The percentages went up in the period associated with the Virginia Techshooting but the process became decoupled from perceived likelihood of vul-nerability to a hazard. The difference in these two periods suggests that therewe need to further investigate the mechanism of hazard intrusiveness. In thissample, the hazard that occurred exclusively within an educational settingwas associated with a higher level of reported intentions to collaborate withemergency management professionals. It may have been the close connec-tion between the exclusively educational setting of hazard at Virginia Tech.It may have been the broad nature of the hurricane hazards and their im-pact on a broad range of social institutions. Future work should investigatehow hazards intrude in decision making in ways independent on perceived

vulnerability to those hazards.The impact of organizational structure is interesting and can direct our

attention to potential strategies to increase preparedness in schools. Mostdirectly, understanding the relationship between organizational size and in-tentions to collaborate with emergency management professionals may helpus target efforts to encourage these collaborations. If we want to see morecollaborations, we may most efficiently target efforts at those districts least

5We have omitted the confidence intervals on Figure 2 to avoid clutter (with fouradditional lines that overlap at points

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likely to do so without intervention. This correlation also raises questionsof mechanism. Thompsons structural explanation related to organizationalslack. It may be that larger organizations are simply better able to affordsuch efforts by spread costs over a larger revenue pool. It could, however,be that the larger school districts more often situated within urban en-vironments have greater access to emergency management professionals.Depending on the operative mechanism, different intervention strategies arelikely to work to encourage collaboration.

In terms of the academic literature, there are alternative theories of col-laboration that are not tested within this model. A particularly popularapproach neglected here are personality and leadership oriented approachesto collaboration (Waugh & Streib 2006). This school of thought emphasizesthe personal nature of collaborative practices. In this view, collaborative ac-tivity is the product of the predispositions of individual leaders (Miles, Snow,Meyer & Coleman Jr 1978). A collaborative leader that is, one who pos-sess a specific array of beliefs that predispose the leader to seek partnershipswith other organizations will direct an organization to act collaboratively.Collaboration is seen as the product of a leadership style. Proponents of this

school tend to emphasize how this style can be taught or voluntarily adoptedlike other organizational strategies. Such proponents see the path to a morecollaborative policy area as one of education and awareness raising. Thisstudy has not included measures of leader attitudes towards collaborationfor two reasons. First, the data are not available within the disaster plan-ning surveys used here. The integration of surveys of Texas school districtsthat included measures of leader attitudes related to collaboration broughtthe number of respondents with responses to all three surveys (the 2005 and2007 surveys used here plus a 2005 survey on managerial attitudes) to anunacceptably low number and response rate. Furthermore, previous research

has suggested that the attitudinal variables do not significantly contribute toan explanation of other measures of collaboration related to disaster planningin school districts (Robinson 2008).

The generalizability of the results to other types of secondary organi-zations is still an open question. Will organizational size and field specificdisaster intrusiveness have a similar impact on local food banks supportingemergency management operations as they do schools? Will these factorsplay as important a role in explaining preparedness consultation on the partof private sector organizations? This questions remain open. However, thisstudy of a specific type of secondary organization is a start to addressing

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the vital question of why some organizations choose to engage emergencymanagement organizations and others do not.

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School Districts and Disaster Expertise