| This qualitative research study explored key factors and themes impacting legislative decision-making on South Dakota's emergency management operations, e.g., during the U.S. federal government shutdown that occurred October 2013. The central research question used to guide this case study was as follows: What key factors impact legislative decision-making on emergency management operations in South Dakota? Toward this end, 10 one-on-one, semi-structured, investigative interviews with South Dakota legislators were conducted to discover potential themes impacting legislative decision-making using the following three key factors: (a) leadership style, (b) tenure, and (c) financial support. Through coding and inductive analysis, the research identified and validated three emerging themes: (a) partisan control exists regardless of a legislator's leadership style ; leadership is controlled primarily by the Republican Party as they are the majority, (b) tenure is not as important as experience or leadership style when making legislative decisions, and merit in making emergency management decisions more so falls on the type of individual, and (c) experience with emergency management operations affects a legislator's ability to make better decisions. These results revealed that leadership is inherently important when managing bipartisan agreements, including emergency management operations, and if state- or federal-level legislators do not possess former emergency management experience or tenure regarding emergency management operations, they risk poor decision making.;Keywords: decision-making, qualitative research, legislation, government, compromise, complexity theory, adaptive leadership theory, case study, data coding. |
