| Due to the major shortcomings frequently found in post-disaster reconstruction projects, practitioners and academics agree that important improvements are required in order to help affected families recover and to optimise the use of available resources. As the number and impact of natural disasters increase every year, the performance of reconstruction projects is increasingly a major concern for various disciplines in both developing and developed countries. However, the efforts to improve the performance of these projects (mostly for developing countries) have been obsessively concentrated on arguing for the importance of community participation (particularly in construction activities, through self-help programs) and on the importance of using local resources and technologies while rejecting the use of imported and foreign solutions.; This study demonstrates that, very often, organisations working in post-disaster reconstruction in fact act strategically, both as promoters and builders of the initiatives. Consequently, they are in a situation where the projects are (or should be) less influenced by the tactical decisions made in regard to the actual building process (e.g. on the role of builder) and more by the organisational system adopted for the project and by the influence of the broader environment on the activities of promotion. Building up on this hypothesis and within the framework of qualitative research, four reconstruction projects are analysed in detail and are compared with other cases reported in the literature. After responding to the challenge of determining the performance of the projects (and for this a method of evaluation has been expressly developed), the research identifies important organisational decisions that can greatly contribute to improve the way we help affected communities recover after natural disasters. |
