Integrating Adaptation Strategies of Businesses with Community Resilience: A Case from Turkey

Abstract

In developing countries bounded by traditional approaches of disaster management, post-disaster policies may not lead to resilience at aggregate level. Turkey exemplifies the case with its experience in the 1999 Izmit earthquake. The policies applied following the 1999 trajectory to create a safer built environment incorporated resettlement and reconstruction efforts, yet businesses were largely unregulated by local and national governments during the recovery process which leads to development of their own adaptive strategies to survive after the disaster. This paper aims to analyse the adaptation strategies of private enterprises in the face of disasters. In this respect, a case study research was undertaken in Adapazari, Turkey to inquire their adaptive strategies after the disaster with respect to the independent variables of business size and occupancy status. This paper contributes to the field of disaster studies by showing businesses’ adaptive capacities that enable them to survive following a disaster. The key findings of this study present that businesses adapt for survival after a natural disaster in accordance with their business size and occupancy status. Although small firms and lease-holder firms challenge with organizational and financial problems, they are able to develop locational strategies which increase their survival change and adaptability against their larger and owner occupied counterparts.