ABSTRACT
Major disasters have a low probability of occurring, but when they do, they can have devastating consequences. The disaster response manager is looking for variations driving the self-organizing process in a direction that appears to meet his/her immediate goals. This chapter discusses appropriate strategies for the management of nonlinear events such as disasters, and looks at key lessons disaster response managers can learn from chaos theory. Disaster workers are in constant motion at various locations as they simultaneously apply various management systems and develop strategies and tactics to organize and implement their response. Workplace rules refer to rules for interorganizational coordination and communication such as with an emergency operations center. Organizational survival and the emergence of the response system are related to these self-organized adaptive activities. Disaster response organizations and response systems are dynamical systems. The chapter concludes with a presentation of options for future administrative and legislative action in California and elsewhere.
