Collaborative emergency management and national emergency management network

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to analyze scholarly discussions and findings regarding collaborative emergency management (CEM). Several aspects such as leadership, decision making, intergovernmental and interorganizational relations, technology applications in CEM have been investigated. Design/methodology/approach Literature review was conducted using three popular search data bases, Academic Search Premier, Academic OneFile, and Info Track OneFile using the following keywords: CEM, collaborative and emergency and management, collaborative networks, emergency networks, emergency network, interorganizational networks, Interorganizational and networks, intergovernmental and networks, and National Emergency Management Network (NEMN). Findings The paper emphasizes that high expectations of public and stakeholders in emergency and disaster management require effective use of resources by collaborative networks. Practical implications Emergency and disaster managers should be able to adopt their organization culture, structure and processes to the collaborative nature of emergency management. Originality/value The paper focuses on a very important subject in emergency and disaster management using NEMN as example.