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sector, appropriately utilizing the strengths of each sector, and
minimizing the weaknesses of each.
In the EM context, intersectoral collaboration originated
from local communities. In addition, scholars have paid
attention to the influence of public-private partnerships on
increasing community resiliency (Busch & Givens, 2013). For
example, Project Impact, a community-based program initiated
in the 1990s and featuring a four-year life span, was designed to
harness local support from public and private agencies. This
program successfully gave rise to about 250 communities
engaging in public-private collaboration to respond to disasters
and develop local EM (Patton, 2007). Brudney and Gazley
(2009) found a positive relationship between “level of joint
planning with voluntary organizations” and “public managers’
perception of emergency preparedness (at the county level),”
which highlighted the crucial role played by private and
nonprofit voluntary organizations in improving local emergency
preparedness. Recently, Rivera (2016) analyzed a national
survey of county EM agencies and discovered that a public
agency’s autonomy does not influence its choice to work with
voluntary organizations in the development of EM plans,
whereas the type of organization that an EM agency is situated
in does.
V
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The Drivers of Local Emergency Management
Collaboration: Theoretical Framework
This study proposes that local EM collaboration in the U.S.
is driven by EM capacity, organizational internal factors, and
organizational external factors (Chang, 2012). EM capacity is
related to the ability of local governments to deal with all hazard
types. The organizational internal factors cover the perspectives
of resource shortage, organizational attention, mutual
understanding, institution and national standards, emergency