Putting policy initiatives into practice : adopting an “honest broker” approach to adapting small businesses against flooding

Ingirige, Bingunath; Wedawatta, HG

Abstract

Purpose: Amidst the current economic climate, which places many constraints on expensive flood
defence schemes, the policy makers tend to favour schemes that are sympathetic to the needs
of small and medium
-sized enterprises (SMEs) and which promote empowering local
communities based on their individual local contexts. Research has shown that although
several initiatives are in place to create behavioural change among SMEs in undertaking
adaptation approaches against flooding, they often tend to delay their responses by means of a ‘wait and see’ attitude.
Design/methodology/approach: This paper argues that unless there are conscious efforts in the policy making community to
undertake explicit measures to engage with SMEs in a collaborative way, the uptake
of adaptation measures will not be achieved as intended. With the use of the ‘honest broker’
approach the paper provides a conceptual way forward of how a sense of collaboration can be
instigated in an engagement process between the policy makers and SMEs, so that the scientific knowledge is translated in an appropriately rational way, which best meets the
expectations of the SMEs.
Findings: The paper proposes a conceptual model for engaging SMEs that will potentially increase the
uptake of flood adaptation measures by SMEs. This could be a useful model with which to
kick start a collaborative engagement process that could escalate to wider participation in
other areas to improve impact of policy initiatives.
Originality/value: The paper lays the conceptual foundation for a new theoretical base in the area, which will
encourage more empirical investigations that will potentially enhance the practicality of some
of the existing policies.

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Publication Date: May 6, 2014
• Deposit Date: Nov 29, 2013
• Publicly Available Date: Oct 4, 2018
• Journal: Structural Survey
• Print ISSN: 0263-080X
• Electronic ISSN: 1758-6844
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 32
• Issue: 2
• Pages: 123-139
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1108/SS-01-2013-0011
• Keywords: Flooding, SMEs, policy, FCERM
• Publisher URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1108/SS-01-2013-0011
• Related Public URLs: http://www.emeraldinsight.com/journals.htm?issn=0263-080x
• Additional Information: Additional Information : Putting policy initiatives into practice: Adopting an 'honest broker' approach to adapting small businesses against flooding published in Structural Survey has been selected by the journal's editorial team as a Highly Commended Paper of 2014.