NC_OLD1030: Family Firms and Policy in Times of Disruption (NC1030)
(Multistate Research Project)
Status: Inactive/Terminating
Homepage
The focus of NC 1030 has been on family firms and policy. Committee members have broken new ground in business research by demonstrating the role of interactions and exchanges of resources between firm, family and community. The team has conducted a panel study that enabled the tracking of businesses over a 10 year period. The results of this work has led to important understandings about the interaction of family and family firm, new insights into survival and demise of firms, and the development of the Sustainable Family Business Theory, based on systems theory. NC 1030 is ready to take another step in the development of family firm theory by studying the family and firm as they respond to non-normative disruptions such as natural disasters. These non-normative disruptions are usually significant events that originate outside the family and business system. Because these disrupting events are not usual and are external in origin, they disrupt the family, the firm and community simultaneously. Natural disasters afford an ideal laboratory for studying the impact of disruptions and consequently the adaptive strategies of family firms, their owning families and the communities in which they live and do business.
Family owned firms comprise the majority of firms in the United States (Heck & Stafford, 2001). The economy depends on them. Small firms represent 99.7% of all employer firms and employ more than half of all private sector employees. They have generated 64% of net new jobs over the past 15 years and over half of the nonfarm private gross domestic product (Kobe, 2007).) Family owned firms have a disproportionate impact on the economy of the Midwest and South, especially in rural areas where most firms tend to be family operated in the agriculture and non agriculture sector. For the purposes of NC 1030, small firms are those with 200 or fewer employees. Small firms generally have a lower success rate than larger firms and are inherently riskier enterprises. Rural communities are more dependent on small enterprises than are urban communities, therefore ascertaining what is associated with family owned firm sustainability is particularly important for rural America and conversely, the well being of rural communities and their citizens is closely linked to the health of locally owned family firms. The challenge in rural areas is not convincing rural Americans to start firms, but understanding what helps to grow these firms and prevent business closures. On average these firms have a short life span and the majority are small or very small in size. Thus, it is vital to identify predictors of family firm survival and success and understand the role policy can play.
Understanding the successful survival of owning families and businesses is an important key to the successful survival of a community. One major weakness of previous research on survival and demise after natural disasters is that only survivors have been studied. It is also important to include owners of businesses that did not successfully survive in order to determine the factors that led to the demise of their businesses. In what ways were they less able to recover? Did they have barriers to recovery that were different than those of businesses that survived? Was the demise of their businesses a choice? What role did the family and community of the owner play in business survival and demise? Another major weakness of past research is that the owning family was left out of the survival equation, yet may play an important role that is not being considered in disaster recovery efforts and policy. Understanding survival and demise after a significant disrupting event such as a disaster is unique in that it stresses families, businesses and communities simultaneously. Simultaneous stress on systems the family firm habitually depends upon may be an important contributor to business demise. If that is the case, perhaps policy supporting family disaster recovery may be more important than policy supporting business recovery, or at least an important component of it.
Significant disruptions such as natural disasters offer an important opportunity to assess the role of policy in firm survival and demise and Hurricane Katrina has certainly pushed public policy disaster support to the forefront of controversy. Much attention has been focused on local evacuation orders, shelter conditions and other pre-hurricane preparations, timing and actions in New Orleans. Certainly community preparations and actions at the time of a crisis are important policy inputs and practical decisions that have impact on the survival of individuals, families and businesses in the community.
There are also important post-crisis policies that impact survival and demise such as provision of shelter and subsistence for individuals and families, emergency financial assistance to families and financial assistance to small businesses to enable them to bridge the gap between crisis and recovery. Both Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and Small Business Administration (SBA) have been accused of significant failures in serving the victims of Katrina. It is important to understand where federal, state and local assistance can be most effective and how it can be managed in the best interests of recipients and with the greatest transparency and understanding of local conditions that impair the ability of people and businesses to respond to requirements in the wake of a disaster. After Katrina, for example, impacted residents and businesses were given extended time by the IRS to submit tax returns, yet they were held to unusually strict deadlines for submission of applications to SBA for assistance. In addition, post-crisis policies such as rezoning, lengthy multi-layered approval processes for community infrastructure repair and replacement, and changes in flood insurance eligibility zones may play a role in the ability of small businesses to recover after a crisis.
NC 1030 is well positioned to seek answers to some of the questions raised above. In the past, Regional Research Project NC 1030 has demonstrated the feasibility of finding and interviewing a random sample of family owned firms using a household sampling frame and obtaining a high response rate. NC 1030 also successfully interviewed a stratified random sample of 708 family firm owners. As Heck and Trent (1999) noted, the response rate was over 70%, even though the interviews were 45 minutes long. For 673 families, two interviews were obtained, one for the business owner and one for the household manager. That project also obtained a relatively large number of interviews from rural locations. NC 1030 also successfully re-interviewed participating business owning families in 2000 and 2007 (Winter, Danes, Koh, Fredericks & Paul, 2004; and Danes, Stafford, Haynes & Amarapurkar, 2009).). The 2007 data collection was supported by a grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) for the purpose of understanding the impact of disasters on family firms. The group has recently received a second NSF grant to extend its work by collecting additional data. NC 1030 is now focusing on further testing the Sustainable Family Business Theory by studying family firms within the context of a disaster event that simultaneously stresses family, firm, and community.
Studies of business recovery from disaster have suffered from three key limitations. First, they have often focused on pre-disaster preparation (e.g. buying insurance, boarding up, evacuation planning) rather than on post-disaster factors. Few studies have assessed post-disaster problems such as loss of customers and suppliers, loss of business property including inventories, location decisions, cash flow problems, and loss of critical infrastructures. Second, prior research has focused on business characteristics and rarely included factors such as disaster impacts on the owners family and community, patterns of owner adjustment to disruption, owners assessment of the risks of business ownership, owners risk aversion and impacts of disaster relief. According to Alesch et al (2001), what happens after the disaster, including the decisions an owner makes at that time may well have more impact on survivability of the business than the preparations done in advance. Those decisions will clearly be impacted by a variety of factors including family matters, owner attachment to community, neighborhood and community infrastructure, customers and suppliers, and local government decisions. Third, previous studies have included almost no businesses that ultimately failed, but for the most part have studied survivors. Understanding what factors contribute most to demise of businesses after natural disasters can help fill key knowledge gaps for business owners, and increase the likelihood of longer survival for their businesses. This understanding needs to come from the owners of those demised businesses.
Another limitation of previous research is that community issues that impact business operation are not addressed. Loss of key resources such as utilities and roadways affects the ability of businesses to operate and generate revenue. However, the relative impact of community resources on business survival or demise, such as loss of utilities and other infrastructure, damage to residential structures, or community population return after evacuation has not been addressed in research. Other factors (such as the nature and degree of damage suffered by the business and its suppliers and customers; the length of time closed; the size, age and industry of the business; the nature of business pre-planning; what decisions had to be made post-disaster) have been sometimes shown to affect business recovery, but a series of studies reported by the University of Delaware Disaster Research Center demonstrate that survival factors dont come in a neat package that permits one to predict what business will or wont survive based only on business variables. While there are some general predictors such as business size, industry and length of time closed, there is still much to learn. The following areas are among those that have not been studied and deserve attention: owners family situation as a result of disaster, private and public disaster relief funding, owners resiliency and attachment to community, disaster impact on community infrastructure.
To date, the role family factors play in an owners business decisions post-disaster, has not been studied. In a study of reasons for small business discontinuation, Olson, Zuiker, Danes, Stafford, Heck & Duncan (2003) reported that business success was impacted more by family factors than the family was impacted by the business. Winter, Danes, Koh, Fredericks, & Paul (2004) reported that business discontinuation occurred not only because of failure of a business, but also because of positive and conscious choices on the part of owners. Clearly, family decisions have an impact on business continuity. This seems even more likely in a disaster situation when both family and business are under duress. Tatsuki and Hayashi (2002) showed that business owners who had damaged houses were the group most likely to display vulnerability after a disaster. In Hurricane Katrina, for example, 65,000 family residences were destroyed in Mississippi alone and 134,000 were damaged (Mississippi Governors Commission on Recovery&, 48). It seems intuitive that the impact on consumers and owners families would have a significant impact on businesses and perhaps have led to business demise that might otherwise not have occurred. Furthermore, disaster relief financial support is offered to family households as well as to business owners. Resolving residential damage and settling household financial matters may well contribute to the ability of an owner to remain in business. In order to examine this possibility, the NC 1030 project includes family and customer factors to a greater extent than seen in other research.
The support of family firms for their communities has been established by the work of Besser and the work of NC 1030. Both lines of work demonstrate that a normative partnership exists between firm and community. Bessers (1999) study of small town business owners found that the owners of older businesses and those with more employees were more likely to be committed, and provide leadership to the community. Further, the owners education and age were positively related to leadership. Owners were also more likely to demonstrate community commitment than business managers. In another study of small town business operators, Besser (1998) found operator education, business age, and collective community action to be significant predictors of community leadership. NC 1030 researchers have established that family businesses are not only engines of economic growth but they are also critical players in the social and political development of communities. One measure of the impact of family owned firms on the community is leadership the owners provide and the donation of time, goods, and services to local institutions. Nearly 75% said they volunteered at least 12 hours a month. In the National Family Business Study 2000 Panel, 41% of rural family firm owners had served in a community leadership position. Between 1997 and 2000, at least 65% of rural owners had contributed financial or technical assistance to community development efforts. In that same time interval, 91% provided donations to local schools and youth programs. These contributions on the part of family firms and their owners are an indication of connectedness to the community that increases the likelihood of post-disaster recovery and return to the community.
After significant events such as natural disasters, many people assume that government will come to the rescue. However, research demonstrates that civil society plays an important role in achieving disaster recovery. Where, civil society refers to organizations such as registered charities, development non-governmental organizations, community groups, women's organizations, faith-based organizations, and coalitions and advocacy groups according to the London School of Economics Centre for Civil Society.
Aldrich theorizes that communities and neighborhoods where residents are better connected will recover faster from disasters (2008). The normative ties of firm and community play a role in recovery and resiliency after a non-normative event that affected both firm and community. Aldrich cites examples of communities in Kobe, Japan where residents had strong networks of previous connections as well as friends and relatives and resources outside the community that increased their ability to recover and their resolve to remain in the community. Owner resiliency and owner attachment to community are two elements of civil society that have not been assessed at the individual business level to determine whether these owner assets result in greater likelihood of business survival or might influence decisions about continuing or relocating their businesses. If they do play a role in recovery from non-normative events such as disasters then resiliency and commitment can be enhanced in communities pre-disaster as a means of preparation. In addition, post-disaster recovery needs to capitalize on resiliency and attachment to community in ways not much utilized in the U.S. As Bill Stallworth (a city councilman in Biloxi, MS) pointed out in a recent interview, Governments do a lot of things sometimes well. They do streets, they do drainage, they may do some economic development. But they dont do people at all. And unfortunately, thats what needed to be done right after Katrina. (Elliott, NPR interview, downloaded 8-25-10). Resiliency and attachment to community are variables about people. Niehm, Swinney and Miller (2008) found that commitment to community significantly influenced business success in rural areas. Fitzgerald et al. (in press) demonstrated that firms contribute in their communities in significant ways and these contributions are influenced by the success of the firm and its owner.
In addition to family, business and community factors, disaster experiences and the post-disruption decisions of families are also important to businesses. Olson, et al. (2003) reported that for family businesses, how the owning families respond to disruptions had more impact on business income and perceived business success than did family resources, constraints and processes. Just as planning and preparation prior to a disaster is not enough to ensure survival, what happens to owners families after a disaster may not only contribute to income and perceived success of the business, but also to its survival or demise. Some possible influences on business survival and demise may include disaster impacts on family, family response to disruption, availability of alternative employment or income sources, use of disaster relief loan and grant programs, delays in insurance settlements and infrastructure repairs, household property damage, loss of property that is uninsured or underinsured, and loss of customers (neighboring families), loss of suppliers, etc. Turner, Lee, Gurenko, Itigen, Varghese & Walker (2008) reported that the areas affected by Hurricane Katrina demonstrated rising indebtedness and improved credit performance from 2005 to 2006. Lower income households exhibited greater increases in indebtedness than those with higher incomes, and homeowners and married couples demonstrated lower increases in indebtedness than renters and singles.
What makes for a resilient business? Successfully completing the proposed research will provide useful information on resiliency of family firm owners and their firms. This information will be useful for economic and community development officials, and policy makers. The results of this research will provide information to business-owning families that will enable them to improve their management practices and prepare for and respond to the unexpected. Results will also provide economic and community development officials with estimates of the impact of these businesses on their communities and will allow more effective assessment of the costs and benefits of proposed community actions. Policy makers will additionally gain estimates of the impact of a select set of policies on family firms and, indirectly, on communities and economies. The current objectives, in particular, address the management practices of disaster preparation, response and recovery and the policy impacts of federal disaster relief funding, SBA disaster loans, and local community decisions such as rezoning and infrastructure rebuilding.
The objectives of this five year plan of work for NC 1030 are focused on examining small and family business survival and demise in the context of a major disruptive event (natural disaster) in their individual histories. The systems based approach requires a comprehensive look at the family, business and community.
Family owned firms comprise the majority of firms in the United States (Heck & Stafford, 2001). The economy depends on them. Small firms represent 99.7% of all employer firms and employ more than half of all private sector employees. They have generated 64% of net new jobs over the past 15 years and over half of the nonfarm private gross domestic product (Kobe, 2007).) Family owned firms have a disproportionate impact on the economy of the Midwest and South, especially in rural areas where most firms tend to be family operated in the agriculture and non agriculture sector. For the purposes of NC 1030, small firms are those with 200 or fewer employees. Small firms generally have a lower success rate than larger firms and are inherently riskier enterprises. Rural communities are more dependent on small enterprises than are urban communities, therefore ascertaining what is associated with family owned firm sustainability is particularly important for rural America and conversely, the well being of rural communities and their citizens is closely linked to the health of locally owned family firms. The challenge in rural areas is not convincing rural Americans to start firms, but understanding what helps to grow these firms and prevent business closures. On average these firms have a short life span and the majority are small or very small in size. Thus, it is vital to identify predictors of family firm survival and success and understand the role policy can play.
Understanding the successful survival of owning families and businesses is an important key to the successful survival of a community. One major weakness of previous research on survival and demise after natural disasters is that only survivors have been studied. It is also important to include owners of businesses that did not successfully survive in order to determine the factors that led to the demise of their businesses. In what ways were they less able to recover? Did they have barriers to recovery that were different than those of businesses that survived? Was the demise of their businesses a choice? What role did the family and community of the owner play in business survival and demise? Another major weakness of past research is that the owning family was left out of the survival equation, yet may play an important role that is not being considered in disaster recovery efforts and policy. Understanding survival and demise after a significant disrupting event such as a disaster is unique in that it stresses families, businesses and communities simultaneously. Simultaneous stress on systems the family firm habitually depends upon may be an important contributor to business demise. If that is the case, perhaps policy supporting family disaster recovery may be more important than policy supporting business recovery, or at least an important component of it.
Significant disruptions such as natural disasters offer an important opportunity to assess the role of policy in firm survival and demise and Hurricane Katrina has certainly pushed public policy disaster support to the forefront of controversy. Much attention has been focused on local evacuation orders, shelter conditions and other pre-hurricane preparations, timing and actions in New Orleans. Certainly community preparations and actions at the time of a crisis are important policy inputs and practical decisions that have impact on the survival of individuals, families and businesses in the community.
There are also important post-crisis policies that impact survival and demise such as provision of shelter and subsistence for individuals and families, emergency financial assistance to families and financial assistance to small businesses to enable them to bridge the gap between crisis and recovery. Both Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and Small Business Administration (SBA) have been accused of significant failures in serving the victims of Katrina. It is important to understand where federal, state and local assistance can be most effective and how it can be managed in the best interests of recipients and with the greatest transparency and understanding of local conditions that impair the ability of people and businesses to respond to requirements in the wake of a disaster. After Katrina, for example, impacted residents and businesses were given extended time by the IRS to submit tax returns, yet they were held to unusually strict deadlines for submission of applications to SBA for assistance. In addition, post-crisis policies such as rezoning, lengthy multi-layered approval processes for community infrastructure repair and replacement, and changes in flood insurance eligibility zones may play a role in the ability of small businesses to recover after a crisis.
NC 1030 is well positioned to seek answers to some of the questions raised above. In the past, Regional Research Project NC 1030 has demonstrated the feasibility of finding and interviewing a random sample of family owned firms using a household sampling frame and obtaining a high response rate. NC 1030 also successfully interviewed a stratified random sample of 708 family firm owners. As Heck and Trent (1999) noted, the response rate was over 70%, even though the interviews were 45 minutes long. For 673 families, two interviews were obtained, one for the business owner and one for the household manager. That project also obtained a relatively large number of interviews from rural locations. NC 1030 also successfully re-interviewed participating business owning families in 2000 and 2007 (Winter, Danes, Koh, Fredericks & Paul, 2004; and Danes, Stafford, Haynes & Amarapurkar, 2009).). The 2007 data collection was supported by a grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) for the purpose of understanding the impact of disasters on family firms. The group has recently received a second NSF grant to extend its work by collecting additional data. NC 1030 is now focusing on further testing the Sustainable Family Business Theory by studying family firms within the context of a disaster event that simultaneously stresses family, firm, and community.
Studies of business recovery from disaster have suffered from three key limitations. First, they have often focused on pre-disaster preparation (e.g. buying insurance, boarding up, evacuation planning) rather than on post-disaster factors. Few studies have assessed post-disaster problems such as loss of customers and suppliers, loss of business property including inventories, location decisions, cash flow problems, and loss of critical infrastructures. Second, prior research has focused on business characteristics and rarely included factors such as disaster impacts on the owners family and community, patterns of owner adjustment to disruption, owners assessment of the risks of business ownership, owners risk aversion and impacts of disaster relief. According to Alesch et al (2001), what happens after the disaster, including the decisions an owner makes at that time may well have more impact on survivability of the business than the preparations done in advance. Those decisions will clearly be impacted by a variety of factors including family matters, owner attachment to community, neighborhood and community infrastructure, customers and suppliers, and local government decisions. Third, previous studies have included almost no businesses that ultimately failed, but for the most part have studied survivors. Understanding what factors contribute most to demise of businesses after natural disasters can help fill key knowledge gaps for business owners, and increase the likelihood of longer survival for their businesses. This understanding needs to come from the owners of those demised businesses.
Another limitation of previous research is that community issues that impact business operation are not addressed. Loss of key resources such as utilities and roadways affects the ability of businesses to operate and generate revenue. However, the relative impact of community resources on business survival or demise, such as loss of utilities and other infrastructure, damage to residential structures, or community population return after evacuation has not been addressed in research. Other factors (such as the nature and degree of damage suffered by the business and its suppliers and customers; the length of time closed; the size, age and industry of the business; the nature of business pre-planning; what decisions had to be made post-disaster) have been sometimes shown to affect business recovery, but a series of studies reported by the University of Delaware Disaster Research Center demonstrate that survival factors dont come in a neat package that permits one to predict what business will or wont survive based only on business variables. While there are some general predictors such as business size, industry and length of time closed, there is still much to learn. The following areas are among those that have not been studied and deserve attention: owners family situation as a result of disaster, private and public disaster relief funding, owners resiliency and attachment to community, disaster impact on community infrastructure.
To date, the role family factors play in an owners business decisions post-disaster, has not been studied. In a study of reasons for small business discontinuation, Olson, Zuiker, Danes, Stafford, Heck & Duncan (2003) reported that business success was impacted more by family factors than the family was impacted by the business. Winter, Danes, Koh, Fredericks, & Paul (2004) reported that business discontinuation occurred not only because of failure of a business, but also because of positive and conscious choices on the part of owners. Clearly, family decisions have an impact on business continuity. This seems even more likely in a disaster situation when both family and business are under duress. Tatsuki and Hayashi (2002) showed that business owners who had damaged houses were the group most likely to display vulnerability after a disaster. In Hurricane Katrina, for example, 65,000 family residences were destroyed in Mississippi alone and 134,000 were damaged (Mississippi Governors Commission on Recovery&, 48). It seems intuitive that the impact on consumers and owners families would have a significant impact on businesses and perhaps have led to business demise that might otherwise not have occurred. Furthermore, disaster relief financial support is offered to family households as well as to business owners. Resolving residential damage and settling household financial matters may well contribute to the ability of an owner to remain in business. In order to examine this possibility, the NC 1030 project includes family and customer factors to a greater extent than seen in other research.
The support of family firms for their communities has been established by the work of Besser and the work of NC 1030. Both lines of work demonstrate that a normative partnership exists between firm and community. Bessers (1999) study of small town business owners found that the owners of older businesses and those with more employees were more likely to be committed, and provide leadership to the community. Further, the owners education and age were positively related to leadership. Owners were also more likely to demonstrate community commitment than business managers. In another study of small town business operators, Besser (1998) found operator education, business age, and collective community action to be significant predictors of community leadership. NC 1030 researchers have established that family businesses are not only engines of economic growth but they are also critical players in the social and political development of communities. One measure of the impact of family owned firms on the community is leadership the owners provide and the donation of time, goods, and services to local institutions. Nearly 75% said they volunteered at least 12 hours a month. In the National Family Business Study 2000 Panel, 41% of rural family firm owners had served in a community leadership position. Between 1997 and 2000, at least 65% of rural owners had contributed financial or technical assistance to community development efforts. In that same time interval, 91% provided donations to local schools and youth programs. These contributions on the part of family firms and their owners are an indication of connectedness to the community that increases the likelihood of post-disaster recovery and return to the community.
After significant events such as natural disasters, many people assume that government will come to the rescue. However, research demonstrates that civil society plays an important role in achieving disaster recovery. Where, civil society refers to organizations such as registered charities, development non-governmental organizations, community groups, women's organizations, faith-based organizations, and coalitions and advocacy groups according to the London School of Economics Centre for Civil Society.
Aldrich theorizes that communities and neighborhoods where residents are better connected will recover faster from disasters (2008). The normative ties of firm and community play a role in recovery and resiliency after a non-normative event that affected both firm and community. Aldrich cites examples of communities in Kobe, Japan where residents had strong networks of previous connections as well as friends and relatives and resources outside the community that increased their ability to recover and their resolve to remain in the community. Owner resiliency and owner attachment to community are two elements of civil society that have not been assessed at the individual business level to determine whether these owner assets result in greater likelihood of business survival or might influence decisions about continuing or relocating their businesses. If they do play a role in recovery from non-normative events such as disasters then resiliency and commitment can be enhanced in communities pre-disaster as a means of preparation. In addition, post-disaster recovery needs to capitalize on resiliency and attachment to community in ways not much utilized in the U.S. As Bill Stallworth (a city councilman in Biloxi, MS) pointed out in a recent interview, Governments do a lot of things sometimes well. They do streets, they do drainage, they may do some economic development. But they dont do people at all. And unfortunately, thats what needed to be done right after Katrina. (Elliott, NPR interview, downloaded 8-25-10). Resiliency and attachment to community are variables about people. Niehm, Swinney and Miller (2008) found that commitment to community significantly influenced business success in rural areas. Fitzgerald et al. (in press) demonstrated that firms contribute in their communities in significant ways and these contributions are influenced by the success of the firm and its owner.
In addition to family, business and community factors, disaster experiences and the post-disruption decisions of families are also important to businesses. Olson, et al. (2003) reported that for family businesses, how the owning families respond to disruptions had more impact on business income and perceived business success than did family resources, constraints and processes. Just as planning and preparation prior to a disaster is not enough to ensure survival, what happens to owners families after a disaster may not only contribute to income and perceived success of the business, but also to its survival or demise. Some possible influences on business survival and demise may include disaster impacts on family, family response to disruption, availability of alternative employment or income sources, use of disaster relief loan and grant programs, delays in insurance settlements and infrastructure repairs, household property damage, loss of property that is uninsured or underinsured, and loss of customers (neighboring families), loss of suppliers, etc. Turner, Lee, Gurenko, Itigen, Varghese & Walker (2008) reported that the areas affected by Hurricane Katrina demonstrated rising indebtedness and improved credit performance from 2005 to 2006. Lower income households exhibited greater increases in indebtedness than those with higher incomes, and homeowners and married couples demonstrated lower increases in indebtedness than renters and singles.
What makes for a resilient business? Successfully completing the proposed research will provide useful information on resiliency of family firm owners and their firms. This information will be useful for economic and community development officials, and policy makers. The results of this research will provide information to business-owning families that will enable them to improve their management practices and prepare for and respond to the unexpected. Results will also provide economic and community development officials with estimates of the impact of these businesses on their communities and will allow more effective assessment of the costs and benefits of proposed community actions. Policy makers will additionally gain estimates of the impact of a select set of policies on family firms and, indirectly, on communities and economies. The current objectives, in particular, address the management practices of disaster preparation, response and recovery and the policy impacts of federal disaster relief funding, SBA disaster loans, and local community decisions such as rezoning and infrastructure rebuilding.
The objectives of this five year plan of work for NC 1030 are focused on examining small and family business survival and demise in the context of a major disruptive event (natural disaster) in their individual histories. The systems based approach requires a comprehensive look at the family, business and community.