Managing Citizen Relationships in Disasters: Hurricane Wilma, 311 and Miami-Dade County

As recent events have shown, effective knowledge sharing has become important at all political levels, especially when disasters occur. In this paper, we present the case of Miami-Dade County, which implemented a multi-jurisdictional, multichannel environment (311/portal) and successfully utilized it during hurricane Wilma. Drawing from our research on citizen relationship management (CiRM) and literature on absorptive capacity (ACAP), we argue that this setting increases an organization's ability to acquire, assimilate, transform, and exploit information and knowledge regarding the citizen's needs. We shall discuss implications for further CiRM research and managerial insight for emergency management at the end of the paper