This article offers a conceptualization and measurement of the emergence of organizations to cope with disasters. The authors define an organization as the simultaneous presence of four individually necessary elements: domains, tasks, resources, and activities. Combinations of these elements in various configurations yield a taxonomy of 24 different ways of organizing to meet the demands of emergencies. Using this taxonomy-and organization variables of timing, duration, restructuring, and survival-a model was developed for the life histories of 52 ephemeral organizations that responded to 12 natural disasters throughout the U.S., based on data from the archives of the Disaster Research Center. The model's exogenous variables include characteristics of disaster events, enacting organizations, and affected communities. The authors found that theories offormal organization and collective behavior have mutual relevance for studies of organizing, and discuss the implications of their research for emergency management.
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