Opening the Black Box: Examining How Public Sector Organizations Interpret and Respond to Extreme Weather Events Risks

This research investigates how public organizations interpret and respond to the threats they face. Drawing on the open interpretative framework and progressing through its stages (i.e., data collection, interpretation, and action-taking), the three studies of the dissertation build on each other to examine how US public transit agencies deal with the risks posed by extreme weather events. The first study analyzes the “data collection” stage and draws on information processing theory to investigate how various sources of information shape public agencies’ risk perceptions. Integrating administrative data with a 2019 survey of US transit managers, results show that reliance on scientific sources of information is positively associated with perceived risk of extreme weather events. The effect of contracting on risk perceptions is contingent upon agencies’ outsourcing strategies. The second study expands on the first one and focuses on the “interpretation” stage, examining how organizations cultivate a shared perception of extreme weather events. Analyzing in-depth semi-structured interviews with public managers employed at four transit agencies, the study identifies and describes three processes that foster the development of intersubjective interpretations: conversation, suppression, and shared experiences. Informed by the findings of the first two studies, the third one examines the role played by organizational interpretative processes in enabling the undertaking of adaptive actions. I test my expectations using data coming from a follow-up 2023 national survey of public transit managers. Findings underscore the importance of “debative cooperation” and cross-agency boundary-spanning activities in facilitating the development of shared cause maps and favoring adaptation. Overall, the dissertation provides an integrated and comprehensive investigation of the organizational and social elements that shape effective risk management and adaptation to extreme phenomena.