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