Towards a Collaborative Cross-border Disaster Management: A Comparative Analysis of Voluntary Organizations in Taiwan and Singapore

Abstract

Abstract This paper analyzes the voluntary involvement of two Red Cross organizations engaged in post-disaster cross-sector collaborative efforts for the 2004 Asian Tsunami and the 2008 Wenchuan Earthquake. Using Bryson, Crosby, and Stone's expanded model for nonprofit collaboration as a framework, I compare and contrast the disaster management collaborated by both voluntary organizations. The findings illuminate the strengths of voluntary involvement in disaster collaborative management, as well as its limitations during extreme events. Implications of the findings for cross-border voluntary contributions are discussed. Acknowledgment The author would like to thank Professor Louise Comfort and participants in the ICPA-workshop for Disaster Resilience at University of Pittsburgh on April 22–24, 2010 for their useful feedback, as well as the journal's editor and three anonymous reviewers for their insightful and constructive advice on this study. Dr. Chen Charng-Ven, Dr. Lucia Lu, Daniel Chen, and the Taiwan Red Cross Staff also provided much-appreciated support during the fieldwork and the writing of this paper. Additional informationNotes on contributorsAllen Yu-Hung Lai Allen Lai is a doctorate candidate at Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, National University of Singapore, Singapore, and a senior medical consultant for Health Promotion Bureau and Taiwan Association of Andrology. He has published widely in the fields of public policy, public health, infectious disease and emergency medicine