A stakeholder is a person who under the interest of gaining or losing something. Stakeholder in emergency management can be defined as an individual who is affected by the decisions that are made by the emergency manager. However, it varies how stakeholders will be affected by the policies that are made by the emergency management or the time in which they will be affected. It is different in ways the time at which the stakeholders are affected and the extent of how much impact the policies will have on the stakeholders. Stakeholders in terms of Emergency Management, within the community can be divided into three broad categories that include Social, Economic, and Political groups. Social group is the base and has in it the households living in a particular society (Lindell et al, 2006). Emergency Management is aimed at providing emergency services to the household and along with them the whole society. Economic groups include businesses that can be affected by disasters and may need emergency management. Interruption caused by hazards and emergency scenarios does not only affect a single business entity but whom stakeholders attached to a business can be effected. Lastly, among the community political groups form other important stakeholders, as they are the regulators and may include municipality or county level authority makers who are engaged in dealing with emergency scenarios.
Emergency managers should be concerned about the stakeholders who belong to the primary group or the secondary group that are affected positively or negatively (Haddow et al, 2013). Directors of some organization can also be the key stakeholders or the line of staff as they are the ones who carry out the work. The key stakeholders can be viewed as the funders or the appointed government officials who hold a momentous amount of weight. In emergency management exercises, the stakeholders who are directly affected by the efforts made or not made should hold emergency manager’s concern.
Emergency management decisions are conducted by the key stakeholders who are appointed by the government or the ones who have a direct influence. Stakeholders who can make emergency management decisions can use the power to influence or create an impact that can affect social groups in different ways (Yu and Lai, p. 307-315). As the stakeholders are divided differently, different stakeholders can come up with different decisions in accordance to the power they hold.
As an emergency manager, one should know about ways how they could involve stakeholders in the emergency planning process (Frazier et al, p.506-517). In order to obtain resources from different stakeholders an emergency manager should know ways to network with stakeholders. The involvement of all vital stakeholders can be done by coordinating with the stakeholders and ensuring that they are a part of the emergency management planning process. While conducting emergency exercises you can coordinate with the stakeholders to ensure their involvement.
Stakeholders vary in types and the type of powers they can bring to the emergency management processes. The described are six bases of power, which are reward, coercive, legitimate, expert, referent, and information (Jones et al, p. 78-90). Different stakeholders having different powers can propose different solutions to emergency management. The emergency managers are supposed to have a solution before exercising as it might affect the policy formation. With different stakeholders at hand, different options will emerge. Goal of emergency manager is to identify the hazards, consider the possibilities of every threat and the seriousness of it and define the targets.
Depending upon the magnitude of disaster and knowing how much of impact destruction could cause, the government-to-government aid could be a sensible arrangement. Involving the government agencies can be beneficial to aid and work on the mitigation (Kusumasari et al, p. 438-451). It is vital to be involving every kind of power you can find to focus on stopping disasters before they happen whether the national taxpayers could or could not afford.
In order to create a balance government do need assistance as that is a way towards development and can increase the flow of money which leads to inflation for better disaster management program, which we know that it cannot be done without progress. Public assistance money is required for further developments.
Works Cited
Frazier, Tim G., Nathan Wood, and Brent Yarnal. "Stakeholder perspectives on land-use strategies for adapting to climate-change-enhanced coastal hazards: Sarasota, Florida." Applied Geography 30.4 (2010): 506-517.
Haddow, George, Jane Bullock, and Damon P. Coppola. Introduction to emergency management. Butterworth-Heinemann, 2013.
Jones, Samantha, et al. "Governance struggles and policy processes in disaster risk reduction: A case study from Nepal." Geoforum 57 (2014): 78-90.
Kusumasari, Bevaola, Quamrul Alam, and Kamal Siddiqui. "Resource capability for local government in managing disaster." Disaster Prevention and Management: An International Journal 19.4 (2010): 438-451.
Lindell, Michael K., et al. Fundamentals of emergency management. Washington, DC: FEMA, 2006.
Yu, Lean, and Kin Keung Lai. "A distance-based group decision-making methodology for multi-person multi-criteria emergency decision support." Decision Support Systems 51.2 (2011): 307-315.
