While there have been studies focused on digital transformation (DT) in industry, we lack an understanding of how it materializes in disaster management (DM). This research provides a literature review of IT-enabled and digital initiatives in DM and examines the potential for DT in the field. We analyzed 254 articles from six different disciplines on the use of digital technology in DM and then developed a framework that organizes the central concept of DT in DM around five key areas. Using this framework, we explain the key digital capabilities necessary in DM to develop and implement authority- or public-driven initiatives, articulate and demonstrate DT differences in the industry setting, and provide avenues for future research in this area.

Strategic social media use positively influences organizational goals such as the long-term accrual of social capital, and thus social media information governance has become an increasingly important organizational objective. It is particularly important for humanitarian nongovernmental organizations (HNGOs), whose work relies on accurate and timely information regarding socially altruistic behavior (donations, volunteerism, etc.). Despite the potential of social media for increasing social capital, tensions in governing social media information across an organization's different operational levels (regional, intermediate, and national) pose a difficult challenge. Prominent governance frameworks offer little guidance, as their focus on control and incremental policymaking is largely incompatible with the processes, roles, standards, and metrics needed for managing self-governing social media. This study offers a notion of dynamic and co-evolutionary process management of multi-level organizations as a means of conceptualizing social media information governance for the accrual of organizational social capital. Based on interviews with members of HNGOs, this study reveals tensions that emerge within eight focus areas of accruing social capital in multi-level organizations, explains how dynamic process management can ease those tensions, and proposes corresponding strategy recommendations.

Abstract To effectively manage a crisis, most decisions made by governments, organizations, communities, and individuals are based on “shared situational awareness” (SSA) derived from multiple information sources. Developing SSA depends on the alignment of mental models, which “represent our shared version of truth and reality on which we can act.” Social media has facilitated public sensemaking during a crisis; however, it has also encouraged mental model dissonance, resulting in the digital destruction of mental models and undermining adequate SSA. The study is concerned with the challenges of creating SSA during the COVID‐19 pandemic in Australia. This paper documents a netnography of Australian public health agencies' Facebook communication, exploring the initial impact of COVID‐19 on SSA creation. Chaos theory is used as a theoretical lens to examine information perception, meaning, and assumptions relating to SSA from pre to post‐pandemic periods. Our study highlights how the initial COVID‐19 “butterfly effect” swamped the public health communication channel, leaving little space for other important health issues. This research contributes to information systems, information science, and communications by illustrating how the emergence of a crisis impacts social media communication, the creation of SSA, and what this means for social media adoption for crisis communication purposes.

Disasters present us with dynamic and emergent multi-stakeholder scenarios. Complex decision-making is supported by Emergency Management Organisation (EMO) ‘command and control’ disaster response systems that if pushed to failure, present problems in the development and monitoring of situational awareness. Nowhere is this more evident than when the general public use social media platforms to report crisis incidents when the official emergency management hotline (e.g. Triple Zero (000) in Australia) is overwhelmed or not available. This causes a number of issues for EMO as it is difficult to verify and determine the accuracy and veracity of social media posts and how to best incorporate the information within them into situational awareness for the assessment of and response to, an emergency incident. This paper analyses interview data from five Australian EMO that outlines and discusses these issues in detail. As a result of this analysis, we suggest that developing a supplementary ‘repertoires of collaboration’ approach to incorporating social media posts into the development of situational awareness during a disaster event, would help improve disaster response outcomes. We then recommend a way forward through the application of the Negotiated Arrangements for the Common Operating Picture (COP) in Extreme Events framework.

While environmental collaboration is being revolutionised by the widespread use of cloud-based collaborative technologies such as wikis, social networking media, and conferencing tools, freely available via the internet, the diffusion of electronic collaboration (e-collaboration) in developing countries remains poorly understood. In order to address this research need, our study examines how Environmental Non-Governmental Organisations (ENGOs) in two developing countries use collaborative technologies to co-ordinate and collaborate with diverse and distributed stakeholders towards achieving shared environmental goals. This paper explores how collaborative technologies can transform eco-collaborative efforts and influence the achievement of environmental objectives. Our investigation is viewed from an Actor-Network Theory (ANT) perspective which reveals the emerging roles and limitations of collaborative technologies as mediators of eco-collaboration in Thailand and Lebanon.

Organisations have shown a significant interest in the adoption of cloud computing environment for managing the needs of their complex adaptive business and system environments. While many organisations are interested in adopting a cloud computing environment suitable to their local circumstances, there is little guidance available on how to do so. This paper proposes the development and application of a context-aware cloud adoption (CACA) framework by using an iterative constructive development process. This framework, whilst still under development, may be useful in assisting organisations to develop self awareness of cloud issues, while at the same time being able to assess, select, adopt and improve an appropriate cloud computing environment for their business by obtaining, modeling, processing and managing contextual information for their economic and competitive advantage. This paper presents a position i.e. argues for a certain view of cloud computing, and conceptualizes this position via a framework based on an initial empirical study, which looked at complex event processing, context-awareness and self-adaptation approaches for the cloud adoption and improvement. This paper presents our ongoing research in this emerging area of cloud computing and investigates how businesses can best deal with the challenge of context-aware cloud adoption and improvement.

Financial services organisations have shown a significant interest in the adoption of emerging cloud, mobile, social networks and green computing environments for managing the needs of their complex business processes and systems. How will these emerging technologies affect and be embraced by financial services organizations in practice? This paper presents empirical exploratory research on the applicability of emerging cloud, mobile, social and green technologies in these organizations. We investigate how these emerging technologies will affect the IT strategy and enterprise architecture of the financial services organisations by analyzing recent interviews of fifteen senior technology executives and CIOs from this sector. The outcomes of this study suggest that the sector perceives these emerging technologies both as a challenge and opportunity for their businesses. In order to meet their business objectives they do, however, require a phased, systematic, people-oriented, business-focused and low risk approach that combines both business and technology impacts to the assessment, selection, consolidation and adoption of these technologies for specific business services without putting their customers' information at risk.