How Firm Responses to Natural Disasters Strengthen Community Resilience

Natural disasters challenge a community’s resilience. Prior community resilience research has focused on the responses of public entities, such as emergency services and government agencies. However, for-profit firms are also engaged in responding to natural disasters. This article explores two aspects of how firms participate in building community resilience to natural disasters: First, the article synthesizes research on business continuity management, corporate philanthropy, and emerging evidence that firms engage in the business of disaster response into a coherent typology of for-profit firm responses to natural disasters. Second, the article draws on stakeholder theory to distinguish between firms adopting firm-centric postures (focused inwardly on firm outcomes) versus firms adopting community-centric postures (focused outwardly on stakeholders), with respect to responding to natural disasters. We theorize relationships between firm- versus community-centric postures and different community resilience outcomes. The article concludes by discussing contributions to stakeholder theory and outlines future research directions.

How Firm Responses to Natural Disasters Strengthen Community Resilience Journal Articles