Coproduction Design of Contingency Planning in Emergency Governance Structure: Qualitative Metasynthesis of Chinese Local Government

Abstract

Contingency plans increasingly highlight the importance of coproduction design in improving the effectiveness of interactive emergency governance. However, most extant studies on this topic adopt different perspectives and are extremely fragmented to provide novel insights into interorganizational coproduction. This study draws metaphors, themes, and concepts from existing literature on emergency governance structure. The relationships among these concepts are also analyzed. This study performs quantitative metasynthesis to develop a reference framework for contingency planning coproduction in an emergency governance system. A total of 18 contingency plans from Shanghai are used to examine and refine this framework in the Chinese context. New insights are integrated into the theoretical framework via textual analysis. This approach examines emerging interorganizational interactions in contingency plans and explores the coproduction design of contingency planning that fits into the emergency governance structure. In addition, a new coproduction anticipation effect is identified from the emergency governance structure of China. Findings reveal that the emergency governance structure is not consistently considered in the process of coproduction design, which results in failure to achieve desired results. Therefore, the coproduction design of contingency plans should be formulated based on emergency governance structure.