Prosocial I-O: Quo Vadis

How Can I-O Psychology Assist With the Management of Natural Disasters and Climate Change?

Stuart Carr
Massey University

Here we speak with a globally prominent I-O psychologist breaking new ground into an unfortunately burgeoning global concern.

From his base at the University of Tasmania in Australia, Professor Douglas Paton has worked with colleagues at the National Center for Disaster Psychology and Terrorism (Stanford University) to develop multi-agency and interdisciplinary aspects of disaster response management policy for terror events. In 2004 he was a member of a U.S. General Accountability Office (Washington, DC) working party developing national standards for human resource aspects of disaster business continuity planning. In 2005, he was the Australian delegate to the UNESCO Education for Natural Disaster Preparedness in the Asia-Pacific Program. In 2006, he served on the Defence Science and Technology Organisation task force convened to develop a strategy to develop resilience to natural and terror hazards in Australia. He has been a member of the working party operating under NATO auspices (chaired by Professor Frank Furedi) to develop a European strategy to develop hazard (natural and terror) resilient communities and response organizations. Douglas currently works with the U.S. General Accountability Office on guidelines for disaster resilience in public-sector organizations and with colleagues from the U.S. National Tsunami Program and Emergency Management Australia to develop community preparedness for tsunami hazards across the Pacific. He is an Honorary Research Fellow to the Joint (Geological/Psychological) Disaster Research Centre in Massey University, New Zealand.
 
(1) Tell us a little about your own background and the center.
I work at the interface between I-O and community psychology. Our discipline and profession has a resource of theory for understanding and predicting behaviour in complex multilevel organizations, which can be readily applied to community groups and individuals under duress. My work applies in particular the trust and empowerment literature to building resilience in high-risk emergency and helping professions. I am concerned especially with global issues of climate change, natural disasters, wars, and forced migration. I help to develop stress-resilience training and maintenance in the face of such otherwise overwhelming extreme events.  My work also focuses on the communities these workers serve and the risks that they face.  We are currently working, for example, to identify predictors of adaptability among the general population, especially toward accelerating global climate change and the disasters this will bring.  Most of my work with policy bodies has in fact been focused on climate change, and how I-O psychology can inform policy development, through an evidence-based and interdisciplinary dialogue.

(2) Does the psychology of work play a role in these activities?
Yes, and very much so.  Early work involved using schema theory to understand how disaster and traumatic events increased stress risk in search-and-rescue and emergency services professions. This work led to the development and testing of training programs, designed for officers working in disaster zones. That phase in turn led to developing a research program on occupational traumatic stress and its management. Such work highlighted the need for models to integrate person, team, and organizational processes. Our current work uses the empowerment literature to develop such a model. The model is being tested with fire service, with police, and with prison-officer populations. Developing a sustained adaptive or resilient capacity in fire and police officers is important in the context of growing fears about civilian attacks and climate change. In Australia, climate change is forecast to increase the frequency and intensity of wildfire events. Responding effectively to such events calls for flexible and different approaches to organizing and managing. Because disasters entail prolonged exposure to high risk, it is essential to help officers to operate in high-stress work environments for prolonged periods. In a nutshell, the theory and evidence indicate we need to move from current, essentially autocratic, risk-management processes to more engagement/participative-based processes, if effective community change is to be pursued. 
 
(3) How prominent is I-O psychology in your field?
There are some I-O-trained people working in this area, but nowhere near enough to meet demand.  Although I-O generally has a strong representation within the organizational community, it does not have a strong presence in the important strategic areas of disaster readiness, response, and recovery planning. In business continuity planning and risk management, which come closest to the major disaster planning, there is scope for probing the impact of major disasters on businesses and their staff. For example, research following 9/11 found that some 50% of businesses that had not considered the impact of major catastrophic events on them and their staff folded within 12 months. The foundations are present in risk management and well-being research, but we need to expand our horizons to accommodate the implications of hazard events that exceed by a considerable margin the capacity of systems to respond. Because disasters are sometimes slow onset, many of our stock-in-trade theories and techniques, from job specification and selection to training needs analysis, can be applied directly to helping build capacity to cope once the disaster-in-waiting actually happens.

(4) Could it be more so?
Most work is in the area of decision making. I-Os working in stress are well suited to expanding their research into this area. There is also significant scope for those researching innovation and strategic planning. Work on disaster readiness and response also represents some new challenges for those interested in training, training needs analysis, and organizational development. When dealing with complex, rapidly escalating events, the roles, competencies, practices, procedures, and organizational structures that prevail under normal circumstances are rendered inappropriate by the loss of usual systems as well as the utilities, infrastructure, and societal mechanisms that normally govern social and organizational life. The complexity of disaster response planning also calls for a more integrated I-O response. No one area within the discipline has all the answers, and the development of intra- and interdisciplinary research teams will be essential if progress is to be made. The development of research programs in this area can have other benefits. Large scale disasters can provide a natural laboratory in which all components of business life are stretched simultaneously and over a relatively short period of time. With a well-organized research program in place, the event can provide an “opportunity” to examine many aspects of organizational functioning.
 
(5) From your perspective, and with your experience, how could the profession help, do you think?
We can help by expanding the scope of its policy advocacy and to be more active in promoting long-term, strategic thinking in organizations. Although I-O psychology is well represented in the organizational community, large-scale disasters and the consequences of climate change are a reality for our future. Even if the frequency and intensity of hazards remain unchanged, continuing infrastructure and business development in at-risk areas increases the potential losses that can be incurred if organizations are unprepared for potentially catastrophic events. Growing community reliance on these organizations for their social and economic well-being means that ill-prepared organizations can have significant knock-on effects for communities. A well-prepared society is one that calls for the integrated readiness of organizations and communities in ways that accommodate their interdependence. If I-O is to apply its extensive expertise in this area it needs to be more active in lobbying key policy-making bodies. My own work with, for example, the General Accountability Office, NATO, and UNESCO, demonstrates that such bodies value I-O input and are receptive to the insights that they can bring to the policy-making table. Even more important, I-O psychology brings with it the expertise to convert a substantial body of theoretically rigorous, empirical research into practices that will increase organizational and community capacity to respond to, cope with, adapt to, and even develop from their encounters with the natural and climate change hazards. These are set to be ever-present demands on the organizational horizon, and we can and must respond to them.

Thank you so much for helping us to see more layers to I-O psychology. I am sure that our TIP readers will find much to reflect on from your observations and experiences kindly given.