Stakeholders' approaches towards natural disasters in built environment: A theoretical framework

Built environment is subject to many risks due to the unique features of construction tasks, such as long lead item procurement, complicated design processes, safety, quality and environment, financial intensity, dynamic organization structures and natural disasters. Natural disasters are becoming more frequent, expensive and devastating globally. They also jeopardize society, performance of economy, built environment, and other socio-economic and physical conditions. While natural disasters cannot be eliminated, successful construction projects are those where natural disasters are effectively managed by stakeholders. Little is known about stakeholders' responses towards natural disasters in construction projects and built environment. Furthermore, past theories on shaping stakeholders' approaches towards natural disasters have been shown to be inadequate in terms of their ability to represent real-life practice and measure the stakeholders' responses against disasters. Hence, the aim of this paper is to develop a theoretical framework on stakeholders' approaches towards natural disasters that integrates four theories, namely: (i) stakeholder theory; (ii) macroeconomic theory; (iii) disaster management theory and (iv) decision making theory. With disaster risk management theory providing the practical backbone of the theoretical framework, the other three theories are able to provide the additional explanation of various aspects of stakeholders' decision making process. Through disaster risk management theory, we are able to support the reactive or proactive approaches of stakeholders before, during and after natural disasters. Macroeconomic theory plays crucial role to choose the appropriate socio-economic variables in natural disaster management process. Decision making theory and stakeholder theory altogether pave the way to select the pivotal stakeholders and to manage their behavioural patterns against natural disasters. The paper concludes the anticipated benefits of proposed theoretical framework as (i) direct comparison of different stakeholders' approaches (reactive and proactive) against natural disasters in built environment; (ii) high-level disaster management planning decisions; (iii) contemplating disaster risk analysis and disaster risk response simultaneously.