"The Four Cs of Disaster Partnering: Communication, Cooperation, Coordination and Collaboration"

Abstract

International public and nonprofit organizations respond to large-scale disasters. Critics of these assistance efforts, and those involved, often cite poor interorganizational coordination as an obstacle to successful disaster response. We identify four different types of interorganizational activities often used interchangeably: communication, cooperation, coordination, and collaboration – the 4 Cs. We derive definitions of the 4Cs from the literature and test them in a case study of the Haiti earthquake response. We suggest that these activities are distinct and represent a continuum of interorganizational actions.