This study examines the recovery process of businesses in Homestead, Florida after Hurricane Andrew in 1992. The goal of this study was to determine which organizational characteristics were useful in predicting the level of physical damage and the length of time to reopen for affected businesses. The organizational characteristics examined were age, size, pre-disaster gross sales, ownership of the business location, membership in the Chamber of Commerce, and property insurance. Three-hundred and fifty businesses in the area were surveyed. Because of the complexity of the recovery process, the disaster experiences of businesses were examined using three paradigms, organizational ecology, contingency theory, and configuration theory. Models were developed and tested for each paradigm. The models used the contextual variables to explain the outcome variables; level of physical damage and length of time to reopen. The SIC was modified so that it could form the framework for a taxonomic examination of the businesses. The organizations were examined at the level of division, class, subclass, and order. While the taxa and consistent levels of physical damage, the length of time needed to reopen varied greatly. The homogeneous level of damage within the groups is linked to similarity in assets and transformation processes. When examined using the contingency perspective, there were no significant relationships between the level of physical damage and the contextual variables. Only predisaster gross sales and level of physical damage had moderate strength associations with the length of time to reopen. The configuration perspective was applied by identifying clusters of organizations using the contextual variables. Clusters were identified and examined to determine if they had significantly different disaster experiences. The clusters varied significantly only by the length of time to reopen. The disaster experience of businesses is conceptualized as a process of accumulation-deaccumulation-reaccumulation. The level of physical damage is driven by selection while the lenght of time to reopen is determined by both adaptation and selection.

The purpose of this investigation was to examine the characteristics of the successful small black-owned enterprises in Dade County, Florida. A descriptive and correlational research approach was employed in this study, in which there were two phases: an initial questionnaire study of 353 small black-owned businesses, and an interview study of 20 randomly selected most successful and 20 least successful small black entrepreneurs. The main conclusions in the study are (1) the characteristics are not the same for all successful small black-owned firms, (2) success factors are not identical for all small black-owned firms, (3) the majority of small black-owned firms are deficient in critical successs factors, (4) the relationship between staff development, leadership styles, HRD skills and success is significant, (5) the majority of small black entrepreneurs are not extremely aware of the value of staff development to the success of their firms. The recommendations for further research are (1) experimental studies need to be carried out to analyse further the relationship between HRD skills and success in black-owned firms as the findings of this study should be treated as exploratory, (2) to confirm or disconfirm the findings as, unlike this study, other studies have reported a significant relationship between certain selected critical factors and success in small firms, (3) to test the relationship between the awareness of staff development (as a success factor) and success in small black-owned firms, and (4) to examine further the relationship between leadership styles and success in small black-owned firms.