Task uncertainty and emergency management task performance: The mediating and moderating roles of knowledge sharing

Each emergency management presents itself with a unique set of characteristics that are hard to determine a priori. Thus emergency management tasks are inherently uncertain, requiring knowledge sharing and quick decision making that involves coordination across different levels and collaborators. While there has been an increasing interest among both researchers and practitioners in utilizing knowledge sharing to improve emergency management performance, little research has been reported about how the role of knowledge sharing mediates and moderates the relationship of emergency management tasks and emergency management task performance (task effectiveness and task efficiency). Using combination of qualitative and quantitative methods, we developed the dimensions and their corresponding measures of emergency management tasks and test the relationships between the various dimensions of management tasks and emergency management performance through the mediating and moderating roles of knowledge sharing purposes.