How shared responsibility is perceived by community sector organisations: insights from a qualitative study following the 2022 Queensland floods.

Studies of how Community Sector Organisations (CSOs) negotiate their role in placebased disaster risk reduction and resilience reveal a fundamental disconnect between the policy aspiration of 'shared responsibility' and its operational reality at a grassroots level. This paper presents findings from an empirical study in South East Queensland about how workers in frontline community sector organisations interpret the concept of shared responsibility. Seven representatives from 6 different community sector organisations were interviewed about what shared responsibility meant to them. The study found that these workers understand this term to involve horizontal service coordination and teamwork between service organisations rather than vertical lines of accountability between government and the community. Study participants described shared responsibility in very context-specific ways and perceived that their role in shared responsibility was often minimised and misunderstood by government agencies. This study also found that the responsibility of property developers and strata scheme operators in risk reduction is confusing and poorly understood. This remains an underexamined area of research. This paper recommends actions that move accountability towards these influential private sector actors. This study demonstrates that despite shared responsibility being a key principle of risk reduction policy, community sector workers are unfamiliar with the term. Reform of policy needs to meaningfully detail how responsibility is shared. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]