Abstract:

Under similar emergency institutional environments and organizational structures, why do grassroots emergency management activities exhibit significant differences in effectiveness? Existing studies focusing on emergency management systems and processes have struggled to answer this question. By comparing the flood prevention and preparedness processes in counties A and B in China’s southern E Province, we found that, contrary to existing explanations, the differences in grassroots emergency effectiveness are not solely determined by the completeness of emergency management systems and mechanisms. Instead, they are influenced by the government's attention allocation regarding the structure of multitasking. Through the government's attention allocation, two task structures, parallel execution and nested execution, have emerged within organizations. The former may exacerbate organizational emergency risks and lead to poor emergency outcomes by decentralizing responsibilities. Conversely, the latter reshapes task division and emergency processes, guiding hierarchical organizations to focus on core tasks and achieve better emergency outcomes. This paper not only supplements the meso-level explanation of differences in government governance effectiveness during non-routine situations but also provides action strategies for improving grassroots governance task structures and enhancing emergency performance.

Key words: attention allocation, task structure, grass-roots behavior, emergency management, emergency effect