A multi-agency collaboration in Washington State's tsunami workgroup: Functional inter-group dynamics

Collaboration between groups is a critical component in community resilience. Yet, memorable disaster mismanagements illustrate the difficulty of collaboration. Historically, it was thought that poor interoperability between communications equipment was to blame, but as technology differences were resolved, collaboration efforts continued to suffer. Recently, experts and practitioners are turning to group culture to explain collaboration failures. However, the literature is disjointed and dispersed with many gaps. The purpose of this research was to better understand the essential culture aspects important to good collaboration. A survey was utilized to examine the culture of a long-standing, successful collaboration: The Washington State and Local Tsunami Workgroup. The Workgroup endeavors to balance both Home Agency and Workgroup identities, utilize a flat hierarchy to its full advantage, and value openness and diversity as a means to reach the goal of mitigation of tsunami damage. Resulting themes centered on identity, commonality, structure, and attitudes.