Vulnerability management: Proposing a quintessential subdiscipline for emergency management

The essential recommendation of this paper is that vulnerability management should become the primary, quintessential subdiscipline within the study and application of emergency management. This paper, steeped in the premise that emergency management still learns from public administration, makes connections on how public management became-and may continue as-the primary and quintessential subdiscipline for the major discipline of public administration. Moreover, the reader realizes how public management and public administration coexist, with the same said about vulnerability management and emergency management in relation to each other. For instance, characteristics of vulnerability management are tied together with foundational principles of emergency management to justify vulnerability management's coexistence as a quintessential subdiscipline of emergency management-not as a replacement for the emergency management discipline but as a valid, logical, integrative, and holistic paradigmatic expansion that helps scholars and practitioners better know what and how emergency management activities, strategies, and tactics assist them with all aspects of disasters and catastrophes. The latter is even more true when vulnerability management's focus is on averting disasters before they occur. Finally, a major recommendation and a conclusion that tie the paper together demonstrate why vulnerability management is a quintessential subdiscipline that supports emergency management, just as has been the case, to date and likely into the future, with public management in support of public administration.