Disaster Insurance Reimagined: Protection in a Time of Increasing Risk

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This book examines the growing role and importance of 'Protection Gap Entities' (PGEs), not-for-profit entities providing insurance protection that would otherwise be unavailable within a purely private sector context. Around the world, PGEs and the insurance instruments they use are becoming increasingly crucial in making sure that funds are available to rebuild after disasters. These PGEs, typically developed as collaborations between governments and the insurance industry, enable insurance to continue at a time when climate change, urbanization, global interdependence, and geo-political instability are making disaster insurance increasingly expensive or unavailable.

Given their growing importance, understanding the role of PGEs in both insurance protection and their potential to create a more resilient society is critical. Disaster Insurance Reimagined uses practical examples from different countries to explain how PGEs step in to maintain disaster insurance and how their work can, but does not always, improve financial and physical resilience to disaster. Drawing on 5 years of research into 17 entities that provide insurance cover in 49 countries, the authors examine the strengths, limitations, and evolution of PGEs in providing disaster protection in the face of a growing insurance crisis. They provide an accessible discussion of disaster insurance, its complexities, and the transformation it needs to undergo in order to remain relevant and to contribute to meaningful disaster protection. PGEs and their work offer a path to re-imagining disaster insurance as a key tool in an ecosystem that has societal protection from disaster at its heart.

Paula Jarzabkowski, Professor of Strategic Management, University of Queensland and City, University of London,Konstantinos Chalkias, Senior Lecturer in Management, Birkbeck, University of London,Eugenia Cacciatori, Senior Lecturer in Management, Bayes Business School, City, University of London,Rebecca Bednarek, Associate Professor, Victoria University Wellington

Paula Jarzabkowski is a Professor of Strategic Management at the University of Queensland and City, University of London. Her research examines the practice of strategy and markets in complex, pluralistic, and paradoxical contexts and she is noted for her innovations in large-scale qualitative, ethnographic methods. She is the co-author of Making a Market for Acts of God (OUP 2015) and co-editor of The Oxford Handbook of Organizational Paradox (OUP 2017; paperback 2019).

Konstantinos Chalkias is a Senior Lecturer in Management at Birkbeck, University of London. He studies strategizing within organizations and markets, and is also interested in interorganizational contexts that are described by paradoxical tensions. His research has been published in journals such as The British Journal of Management and Strategic Organization.

Eugenia Cacciatori is Senior Lecturer in Management at Bayes Business School, City, University of London. Her research explores the organizational processes of innovation, with a focus on organizational solutions - particularly digital technologies - that allow diverse expertise to be brought to bear on complex problems within and across organizations. Her work has been published in journals including Journal of Management Studies and Organization Studies.

Rebecca Bednarek is Associate Professor at Victoria University Wellington. She studies strategic tensions (or paradoxes) and strategizing practices and has explored these in the global reinsurance market as well as in the science sector; she is also an expert in qualitative methods. She is the co-author of Making a Market for Acts of God (OUP 2015).