• Journal of Contemporary Eastern Asia
• /
• v.14 no.2
• /
• pp.45-55
• /
• 2015

This article assesses factors that affect the ability of local fire branch heads in Taiwan to mobilize volunteer organizations in local emergency responses. Data from a survey of local fire branch heads in Taiwan is analyzed by using an OLS model to test three hypotheses regarding the relationship between the dependent variable, perceived ability to mobilize volunteer organizations in emergency response, and three explanatory variables: organizational capacity, quality of communication, and the quality of citizen engagement ex-ante to emergency response. The model indicates a positive relationship between the ability to mobilize volunteer organizations in emergency response, the quality of communications, and the quality of citizen engagement in preparedness. The research suggests that local fire branch heads and volunteer organizations should begin the process of emergency response mobilization in the preparedness stage. The quality of the citizen engagement in preparedness stages should increase the ability of local fire branch managers to mobilize external resources in emergency response.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Hazard Mitigation
• /
• v.9 no.5
• /
• pp.39-46
• /
• 2009

The purpose of this study is to compare and analyze the organizations for responses in disaster fields to cope with large-scaled disasters including Emergency Management Agency, Emergency Response Unit, Emergency Support Center, and Field Command Center (Field Command Office). According to the results of the analysis, the problems of the organizations for responses in local disaster fields are; 1) the scopes of roles among the organizations for responses in disaster fields are ambiguous, 2) the structures of the organizations for responses in disasters are different each other, 3) the integrated management functions among the organizations for responses in disasters are overlapped, and 4) the one who assumes the integrated command is not defined. In order to improve the problems, first, the range of working of each organization for responses in local disaster fields should be definitely established and an agreement in services among the organizations should be settled in advance. Second, similar designs in the structure among the organizations for responses in disasters are necessary for amicable communication. Third, the works for integration and management for each organization for responses should be apportioned. Fourth, the organization in charge and the one who assumes the integrated command for each type of disasters should be appointed in advance for rapid decision-making.

• Journal of the Society of Disaster Information
• /
• v.5 no.2
• /
• pp.50-73
• /
• 2009

This paper is about the establishment of "Initial Response System." Initial response system is most important and should be treated urgently among all preparations for chemical terrorism. The objects of Initial response system are to protect civilians and the first responder who are exposed directly to chemical terrorism. Therefore, this paper suggests two main issues about Initial response system. One is to prepare immediate and exact information service system which assures the safety and survival of exposed people. The other is to build Scene Response System integrated with Command-Control Procedure for early finished situation. Compared to United States, overcoming the Chemical Terrorism requires to improve the contents of two categories: Counter Citizen Response part and Initial Scene Response part. For Counter citizen response part' s sake, the web-sites of Response leader agencies for searching information about chemical terrorism should be modified specifically. These web-sites have to be re-organized in detail. The existing Information service system which has been vaguely informed as "CBRNE Accident" needs to be divided as "CBRNE Accident" and "WMD terrorism." Further, each of them should be specialized in "Chemical', "Biological", and "Radiological" categories. There is a need to rearrange current Emergency Instruction for civilians against chemical terrorism in feasible way. At the same time, it should be applied consistently to all organizations through agreement between experts and related-organizations. For Initial Scene Response part's sake, "Initial scene response procedure (SOP)" and "Operational conception" should be produced through Simulated Exercises and workshops of all organizations related with initial response. These organizations have to cooperate with Ministry of Environment which is the main leader Agency as the center. Next, there is a need to develop a technology and Scene Response Equipments, and to standardize the response equipments which consider the capability of First Responders for chemical terrorism. Especially, improving capability of equipments is required to overcome the vulnerability of Scene Response Equipments.

• Journal of Contemporary Eastern Asia
• /
• v.14 no.2
• /
• pp.5-15
• /
• 2015

A growing number of studies have examined the relevance and impact of social media in building organizational resilience, which the ability to recover from a crisis, in the field of emergency management. However, few studies have assessed how these emergency response organizations perceive their own use of social media in crisis situations. In attempting to fill this gap, this study conducted a structured survey with emergency-response organization representatives in Seoul, South Korea, to examine how such organizations evaluate their utilization of social media in an urban emergency situation and how their social media uses are related to promoting organizational resilience during adverse events such as a flood. Overall, the findings imply that organizations are not yet taking full advantage of social media. Respondent evaluations of their own social media use in all three assessment areas-information provision, information dissemination, and emotional messages-were not satisfactory. However, their perceptions of how well they utilize social media were positively related to how they view their organizational resilience. Therefore, it may be that these organizations realize the powerful role of social media in building organizational resilience but lack the knowledge and experience to make the best use of social media services.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Safety
• /
• v.35 no.1
• /
• pp.116-129
• /
• 2020

Resilience is defined as the intrinsic ability of a system to adjust its functioning prior to, during, or following changes and disturbances, so that it can sustain required operations or functions with the related systems under both expected and unexpected conditions. Resilience engineering is a relatively new paradigm for safety management that focuses on how to cope with complexity under pressure or disturbance to achieve successful functioning. This study aims to develop a quantitative resilience model for severe accident response organizations of nuclear power plants using the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) method. First, we investigated severe accident response organizations based on a radiation emergency plan in the Korean case and developed a qualitative resilience model for the organizations with resilience-influencing factors, which have been identified in the author's previous studies. Then, a quantitative model for entire severe accident response organizations was developed by using the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) method with a tool for System Dynamics. For applying the AHP method, several experts who are working on implementing, regulating or researching the severe accident response participated in collecting their expertise on the relative importance between all the possible relations in the model. Finally, a sensitivity analysis was carried out to discuss which factors have the most influenceable on resilience.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Safety
• /
• v.33 no.1
• /
• pp.54-61
• /
• 2018

In this study, we developed a system for information sharing and cooperation support system among the accident response organizations to enable prompt and efficient response in responding to chemical accidents. In other words, by applying mobile messenger function, it is proposed to improve the chemical accident response system that provides information necessary for accident response promptly and accurately, and facilitates bi-directional communication between accident response organizations and field responders, thereby enabling efficient and organic response. As a result of comparing the information provision time before and after the chemical accident of chemical accident response information sharing system, the ratio of processing of substance information and chemical air diffusion information within 30 minutes was improved by 8% and 32%, respectively. As a result of this study, applying the chemical accident response information sharing system to the chemical accident response is expected to contribute to the improvement of the system and the ability to cope with the accident more effectively.

• Asia-Pacific Journal of Business
• /
• v.5 no.2
• /
• pp.51-64
• /
• 2014

Strategic bundling of Human Resource Management (HRM) practices among themselves works together as an entire HRM system rather than individual HRM practices to achieve organizational objectives. The bundles of HR practices support the effectiveness of one another assuming the effectiveness of any practice depends on other practices in place. It is said that the greater the total degree of bundling among the various components of HRM policies and practices, the more will be the organizational outcomes. Realizing these facts, this study aimed to explore the level of strategic bundling and examined the impact of such bundling on organizational performance to the publicly listed companies of Nepal. This empirical study is based on description and exploratory design for which data collected through the questionnaire based on 5-point liker scale. Total population of the study at the time of data collection are 234 organizations publicly listed in Stock Exchange of Nepal. Questionnaire is distributed to all organizations listed, response received from 105 organizations, as a unit of analysis, which is fairly good response. The study of strategic bundling of HRM practices perhaps the first study in Nepal, found that only 32 percent organizations have followed high bundling HR practices and these high bundling organizations are significantly different with low bundling organizations. Business organizations are trying to practice being close association of HRM policies and practices within them except labor relation with employee participation and business strategies. Supporting to the international literature, strategic bundling of HRM practices among themselves shows statistically significant effects on quality of product or services, labor productivity, financial performance, employee satisfaction, rate of innovation, employee commitment and market share.

• The Journal of Asian Finance, Economics and Business
• /
• v.7 no.12
• /
• pp.365-376
• /
• 2020

This study explores whether the implementation of sustainability disclosure can trigger or stimulate the change in the roles of management accountants in adopting organizations in Vietnam as business partners. To do so, it explores the roles of management accountants in integrated reporting (IR) adopting organizations and sustainability reporting (SR) adopting organizations based on the use of the pragmatic constructivism (PC) theoretical framework. In addition, qualitative semi-structured interviews were used to provide an in-depth investigation of management accountants' work in both IR and SR adopting organizations. The empirical findings suggest that the adoption of the IR framework has triggered changes in management accountant roles toward the new business partner roles to support the decision-making process within their organizations. On the other hand, management accountants from SR adopting organizations still work as traditional "bean-counter" roles. Our paper concludes by indicating several propositions based on our empirical findings that can be tested by future researchers from the domain by collecting relevant data. Our study can be seen as a response to the recent call for a more in-depth examination of the practice of sustainability disclosure from the practitioners' perspectives in adopting organizations.

• Journal of Contemporary Eastern Asia
• /
• v.14 no.2
• /
• pp.69-79
• /
• 2015

Among public organizations, does variation in organizational structure explain variation in public managers' leadership styles (e.g., transformational and transactional leadership)? The study of leadership in public organizations is increasingly an area of scholarly interest partly sparked by movements to reform public organizations, particularly in the context of emergency management. There is, for example, a need for effective leadership that can help organizations respond to disasters (Kapucu et al. 2010; Van Wart and Kapucu 2011; Stern 2013). There are numerous documented cases where the lack of leadership skills has been linked to major social and economic losses as a result of poor disaster response (e.g., Hurricane Katrina in the U.S.). Yet, leadership is a complex concept and numerous theoretical frameworks have been developed to help explain it (Van Wart 2005). Practically speaking, the existence of different theories of leadership suggests that public managers can decide to exercise various styles of leadership. The style of leadership that a public manager exhibits matters because some styles are perceived to be more effective than others (Trottier et al. 2008). While the effects of leadership have been extensively studied, antecedents or predictors of leadership style have received little scholarly attention (Wright and Pandey 2009; Nielsen and Cleal 2011). The purpose of this research note then is to explore the potential causal relationship between the structure of an organization and the ability of a public manager to exercise transformational leadership in the context of emergency management in two Asian countries: South Korea and Japan. This research note consists of three main sections. The following section explores the relationship between leadership and organizational structure. The second section examines how certain concepts of leadership and organizational structure were applied in two case studies of disaster response. The final section presents some directions for future research.

• Journal of Radiation Protection and Research
• /
• v.34 no.3
• /
• pp.151-154
• /
• 2009

The Radiation Emergency Plan (REP) can be divided into a technical and an administrative responses. The domestic NPP's REPs are reviewed from the viewpoint of the administrative response and improvement methods are also suggested in this treatise. The fields of the reviews are the composition of the emergency response organizations, the activation criteria of the organizations, the selection of the staffings and the reasonableness of the REP's volume. In addition, the limitations of the current radiation exercises are reviewed and the improvement method of the exercise is presented. It is expected that the suggested recommendations will be helpful in establishing useful REPs and making practical radiation exercises in Korea.