Breakdowns in Inter-Organisational Information Sharing: The Case of Major Incidents in Bangladesh

This study investigates breakdowns in information sharing among different actors involved in responding to major incidents such as police, fire, local government and NGOs. While previous studies on inter-organisational information sharing and collaboration in a disaster context have largely been undertaken in Europe, Australia and the USA; this study will focus on a developing country, Bangladesh, which faces both organisational and institutional challenges alongside a projected increase in the frequency and intensity of extreme weather-related disasters. The study adopts a qualitative case study approach of multiple organisations comprising observation, interviews and document analysis. Activity theory informs the study. A major contribution of this research will be a better understanding of how actors share information during major incidents and how the arising contradictions are resolved in practice. Theoretically, it will outline the contradictions in inter-organisational information sharing and how actors mitigate these contradictions during major incidents.