When people are at work and they learn that disaster is imminent, what are their responses ? To what degree are there pattern differences in their response profiles because of event variations or structural features of the business firm for which they work? Interviews with employees (n = 406) of 118 businesses impacted by one of seven different recent disasters provide the first answers to these questions. While there were many interdependencies among three areas of constraint, analyses documented that many, but not all, aspects of employee evacuation behavior were patterned significantly by: (1) length of forewarning; (2) organizational size; and (3) organizational mission.
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