Organizational Crisis Research Articles

Navigating among islands of certainty: Coordinating as communicative practices of temporary organizations experiencing crisis

This research explores temporary organizing in crisis. Recognizing crises in temporary organizations as involving the existential loss of meaning for plans and prospects, we present a qualitative study of the complex negotiation between integration and fragmentation of a temporary organization experiencing crisis. Embracing communication as constitutive of organization (CCO) theorizing, we analyse the real-time, digital communication during the crisis as episodes of temporary organizing. Our analysis reveals three interdependent communicative practices for coordinating—framing, co-creating, and connecting—that constitute “islands of certainty” or ephemeral instances of integration providing orientation for otherwise fragmented coordinating. These findings contribute to understanding coordinating as a sophisticated communicative practice of meaning negotiation about the possible future of a temporary organization in crisis. Specifically, this study reveals increased integration communication when the integrity of a project's future is contested, yet high degrees of communicative fragmentation when there is a shared prospection of the project's future.

Contingency Theory and Public Emotions in Crisis Communication –A Conceptual Study

Aim. Problems are inevitable in the subtleties of organizational communication, but it does not mean confronting them is uncontrollable. This paper aims to offer a conceptual structure for investigating contingency theory in Public Relations (PR) during an organizational crisis. The research investigates PR practitioners’ use of advocacy and accommodation in contingency theory to intervene in crisis communication. It also offers insights into the public’s emotional response and coping mechanisms during a crisis, as well as how understanding these emotions (such as anger, anxiety, fear, and grief, among others) could aid PR professionals in developing more effective crisis communication methods. Method. Empirical research was conducted on the basis of literature reviews by observing and analyzing the existing literature on contingency theory, crisis communication in organizations, and public emotions. Results. This conceptual paper proposes and empirically tests a few propositions. The implications for future studies are included in the paper. Findings promote the adopting a dual-continuum strategy that might assist public relations professionals in preferring superior crisis management strategies for obtaining desired organizational outcomes. Conclusion. The authors assert that PR professionals must move from embracing Grunig’s four models of excellence to contingency theory for communicating strategically with the public. The authors propose to adopt a dual-continuum approach that varies from advocacy to accommodation and might provide practical guidance to choose a better stance adopted by the organization towards the public during a crisis. The negative emotions of the public influenced by a crisis along with their emotional coping approaches are also discussed.

Third sector crisis management and resilience: Reflections and directions

AbstractThis paper examines the challenges posed to third sector organizations by major external crises that from time to time beset national and global communities. In so doing, it unpacks the multiple characteristics and complexities of concepts and related issues involved in organizational crisis management and resilience. This reveals the importance of shared sensemaking, issue identification, response types and implementation, organizational coping and adaptation, exploiting strategic opportunities, and conditioners of organizational resilience. Related insights are drawn from selected empirical studies involving non‐profit organizational crisis responses to a range of major crisis events. Accountability and management control implications are induced, and a relevant ongoing agenda for accounting research is presented.

Using Social Media in Response to COVID-19 Crisis in Health-Related Organizations in Iran: Short Communication.

Using Social Media in Response to COVID-19 Crisis in Health-Related Organizations in Iran: Short Communication.

Behind the scenes: A critical discourse analysis of Botswana government power plays on Facebook during two post-millennial state-owned organizational crises

This article examines Facebook posts in Botswana to determine how government public relations (PR) practitioners used language to help protect the reputation of two state-owned agencies during times of crisis. For insufficiently prepared PR practitioners, crises can quickly become complex owing to the proliferation of social media which has dramatically reshaped crisis communication in non-Western, multicultural contexts. While crisis communication has drawn more scholarly interest, the way the Botswana Government use language to maintain power and legitimacy during emergencies represents a fresh case study. We use Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) in our scrutiny of the Botswana Development Corporation (BDC) crisis of 2011, and the Botswana Railways (BR) crisis of 2019. The analysis reveals a corporate ideology of economic development used as an underlying manipulative and propagandistic form of organized persuasive communication (OPC) strategy aimed at establishing and maintaining power. The article also demonstrates how, via this strategy, the government uses state power to galvanize support and mobilize audiences to rally behind state-owned organizations.

Crisis communication for public organizations: Examining Pakistan Railways' use of information technology and social media for image repair

AbstractThis study examines the induction of information technology and the use of image‐repair focused crisis response strategies on social media by Pakistan Railways amid a recent crisis. A mix‐method based content analysis (i.e., qualitative and quantitative) to investigate whether and if so, how Pakistan Railways used Benoit's suggested image restoration strategies on social media to repair its image among customers and in print media. Our results show that Pakistan Railways predominantly used reducing the offensiveness of event (40%), followed by corrective action (34.6%), evasion of responsibility (10.6%), denial (8%) and mortification (6.4%) strategies, respectively. In addition, the use of image‐repair focused crisis response strategies significantly varied by social media platform. An analysis of the publics' emotions found in their online comments reveals that, during the course of the organizational crisis communication, negative public emotions gradually subsided into ambivalent ones; and contrary to a highly negative newspaper coverage tone in the beginning of the crisis, the introduction of the Twitter handle has associated with more positive media coverage afterward. Theoretical and practical implications, especially the need for advancing social‐mediated crisis response effectiveness in developing countries, are discussed.

Hybrid Hunter–Prey Optimization with Deep Learning-Based Fintech for Predicting Financial Crises in the Economy and Society

Financial technology (Fintech) plays a pivotal role in driving contemporary technology, society, economies, and many other fields. The new-generation Fintech is Smart Fintech, mainly empowered and inspired by data science and artificial intelligence (DSAI) technologies. Smart Fintech combines DSAI and transforms finance and economies for driving automated, intelligent, personalized financial and economic businesses, services and systems, and the whole of business. The strength and growth of the country’s economy were evaluated with the accurate prediction of how many companies will succeed and how many will fail. Financial crisis prediction (FCP) has a considerable effect on the economy. Prior research focuses mainly on deep learning (DL), machine learning (ML), and statistical approaches for forecasting the financial health of a company. Thus, this study presents a hybrid hunter–prey optimization with a deep learning-based FCP (HHPODL-FCP) technique. The objective of the HHPODL-FCP algorithm lies in the effective identification of the financial crisis in enterprises or organizations. To accomplish this, the HHPODL-FCP method makes use of the HHPO algorithm for the feature subset selection process. In addition, the HHPODL-FCP technique employs the gated attention recurrent network (GARN) model for the identification and classification of financial and non-financial crises. The HHPODL-FCP method exploits a sparrow search algorithm (SSA)-based hyperparameter tuning process to enrich the performance of the GARN model. The simulation results of the HHPODL-FCP method are tested on different financial datasets. A wide range of experiments highlighted the remarkable performance of the HHPODL-FCP method over recent techniques under various measures.

Uncanny Organization and the Immanence of Crisis: The public sector, neoliberalism and Covid-19

This paper uses the psychoanalytic concept of the uncanny to develop a new perspective on crisis, one that challenges its associations with turning points and opportunities. The study highlights the immanence of crisis in organizational life. Crises under consideration include the historic Covid-19 global pandemic, and examples of crisis in public sector organizations shaped by neoliberalism. Engaging with the work of Julia Kristeva, the uncanny is explored as an integral part of our subjectivities, one which disrupts our social stabilities and patterns of organizing. A montage of autoethnographic vignettes is assembled to illustrate the eruption of the uncanny unconscious, a dynamic that unsettles our routine impositions of order and control. Examining crisis through the lens of the uncanny brings to the fore the elusive and affective aspects of socio-political and organizational life. This perspective draws us away from an understanding of crisis as a passing phenomenon or as an opening that can be instrumentalized for cunning managerial purposes. Instead, it suggests the more radical insight that crisis is a condition of organizing.

Psychological Safety as an Enduring Resource for Employees Amid Organizational Crisis

Psychological Safety as an Enduring Resource for Employees Amid Organizational Crisis

Cognitive Responses to a Shock-induced Organizational Crisis: Exploring Inertia and Changes

Cognitive Responses to a Shock-induced Organizational Crisis: Exploring Inertia and Changes

In Integrity We Trust: Organizational Crisis Elevates the Importance of Leader Integrity

In Integrity We Trust: Organizational Crisis Elevates the Importance of Leader Integrity

Leader–follower (dis)similarity in resilience, relational demography and absenteeism: a test of two competing perspectives

PurposeThis study sought to test two competing sets of hypotheses derived from two different theoretical perspectives regarding (1) the effects of leader–follower similarity and dissimilarity in psychological resilience on the follower's absenteeism in times of organizational crisis and (2) the moderating effect of relational demography (gender and age similarity) in these relationships.Design/methodology/approachPolynomial regression and response surface analysis were performed using data from 510 followers and 149 supervisors in a financial firm in Canada.FindingsThe results overall support the similarity–attraction perspective, but not the resource complementarity perspective. Dissimilarity in resilience was predictive of followers' absenteeism, and similarity in surface-level conditions (gender and age) attenuates the relational burdens triggered by resilience discrepancy.Practical implicationsThe findings reiterate the importance of developing employees' resilience, while shedding light on the importance for managers of being aware of their potential misalignment with subordinates resilience.Originality/valueThe results (1) suggest that it is the actual (di)similarity with the leader, rather than leader's degree of resilience, that shapes followers' absenteeism and (2) add nuance to the resilience literature.

A Dual-Process Model of Promoting Employee Mental Health in Crises: Impacts of Leadership Health Support and Organizational Leaders’ Crisis Communication in COVID-19

ABSTRACT This study examined how organizations may promote their employees’ mental health in difficult times. Drawing from organizational crisis communication and organizational health promotion research, it proposed and tested a dual-process model that links leadership health support, an essential dimension of organizational health culture, with organizational leaders’ crisis communication (i.e. use of ethical-base responses) and workers’ self-care awareness and perceived stress in a crisis. Through a survey of 502 full-time U.S. employees conducted during COVID-19, we found that organizational leaders’ use of ethical-base responses predicted employees’ enhanced self-care awareness and decreased stress levels. Further, leadership health support provided a double-buffer effect to sustain employee mental health by directly bolstering employees’ self-care awareness and organizational leaders’ use of ethical-base responses. The findings of this study bridge the gaps in organizational health promotion and crisis communication literature and offer practical suggestions for organizations seeking to foster employees’ mental health challenges during crises.

INTRAPARTY COMMUNICATION AND PERMEABILITY IN THE SPÖ FROM THE PERSPECTIVE OF LOCAL POLITICAL ACTORS

ABSTRACT The Austrian Social Democratic Party (SPÖ) has seen its electorate steadily decline in recent years. As the party struggles to communicate clear messages to voters, debates about the internal party’s communication and leadership are increasingly being played out in the media. This study examines the perceptions of local political actors of the SPÖ regarding intra-party communication between organizational levels. The research methodology includes problem-centered interviews and group discussions with 12 local SPÖ actors from Lower Austria and Vienna. The results of the study shed light on key issues such as the need for improved intra-party communication and better transition structures for activists within the party organization. The recent success of the Communist Party (KPÖ Plus) in the federal state of Salzburg in April 2023 underscores the challenges facing the SPÖ in the current situation. Two of the three candidates for the membership referendum from April 24-May 10, 2023, in which the party base will make a preliminary decision on the future leadership of the SPÖ in order to end internal strife, argue for breaking through elitist bubbles and creating a grassroots participatory party that reflects the grassroots sentiment surveyed in this study. Keywords: social democracy, organizational communication, organizational crisis

Visualizing Crisis Management: Crisis Experience, Concern, and Training in China

China’s increasing international prominence has prompted additional research on how Chinese firms manage organizational crises. The purpose of this paper is to identify patterns of concerns and experiences with crises in China. We report on a survey of 105 managers and non-managers in China about their experience and concern with crises in their firms. Our analysis underscores three key findings. First, one's concern about a crisis is strongly associated with one's experience involving that crisis. Second, views about crisis experience and concern differ between employees in state-owned enterprises (SOEs) and non-SOEs. Finally, despite these differences, perspectives on crisis training among SOE and non-SOE firms are similar. This paper augments the literature by identifying relationships among crisis experience, crisis concern, and training in Chinese organizations.

Entrepreneurial Orientation, Commitment to Learning and Family Business Resilience– Exploring the Moderating Effect of Family-to-Firm Identity Fit

The ability of an organisation to endure in the face of critical changes in the business environment and resist disruptions and catastrophic events is a key factor explaining how to be able to manage organisational crises. The resilience of family firms is considered a major capacity that allows them to pass through difficult times and to be sustainable (Miller and Le Breton-Miller, 2005). Although the academic literature argues that family firms are more resilient than non-family firms, the reasons for this presumed superiority are still not clearly identified. In addition, while family firms are a significant component of the economic landscape, research has evidenced variations in this organisational form such that some family firms seem to be more resilient than others. In this research, we highlight two entrepreneurial features that may explain why family firms are resilient in times of crises (and why family firms are heterogeneous in terms of their resilience capacity). We propose a model that aims to test the effect of entrepreneurial orientation and commitment to learning on a family firm’s resilience while considering the moderating effect of a family-to-firm identity fit. More precisely, we first hypothesize that entrepreneurial orientation and commitment to learning positively influence a family firm’s resilience capacity. Then, we suggest that family-to-firm identity fit would negatively moderate these relationships. The empirical investigation is based on a sample of 76 Tunisian family firms. Data were collected through a survey and analysed through Smart PLS modelling. Findings show that the family firm’s commitment to learning is positively associated with family firm’s resilience. However, contrary to expectations, entrepreneurial orientation has no significant effect on family firm’s resilience. Finally and unexpectedly, we found that the more the family is oriented towards preserving family members’ identification with the firm the more commitment to learning would positively influence a family firm’s resilience.

Victim, villain, or scapegoat? Mediating organizational crises embedded in social problems and the transformation of order

ABSTRACT Western crisis communication theories focusing on individual attribution and stable underlying norms fail to account for crises embedded in larger social problems that lead to regulatory changes. By analysing three cases that Chinese crisis managers initially identified as “commission”, “control” and “agreement” situations (Bradford & Garrett, 1995) but ended up as crises involving “absent standards”, “bad standards” and “overrated standards”, in which the first two resulted in normative changes, we highlight the deliberative potential of crisis communication embodied in the “standards situation”. When neither journalistic narratives portraying the accused as a “villain” nor organizational accounts foregrounding a “victim/scapegoat” self-perception can contain attribution at individual levels, the society enters a deliberative mode that interrogates actors’ collective guilt complicit in a crisis.

Cultivating crisis research in project studies: Insights from management and organisation studies by Christine Pearson

There is an increasing discussion on the role of projects and temporary organising in the face of global and local crises. Categorically, the temporary, non-linear and complex nature of crisis from its onset has several theoretical and methodological parallels in the study of projects. To provide an outsider perspective in the process of cultivating this research stream within Project Studies, we interviewed Christine Pearson, Professor of Global Leadership at Thunderbird School of Global Management at Arizona State University. Pearson is globally known for her work on organisational crisis and is the author of the seminal work “Reframing Crisis Management.” In this interview, Pearson unpacks the evolution of conceptual frameworks in crisis research and elaborates on the role of projects in the face of crisis, specifically emphasising the non-linear conceptualisation of crisis. She highlights the role of project leadership in the context of crisis and finishes with potential future directions for contribution of the discipline of Project Studies to crisis literature, as she calls this research stream a “fertile territory.” These insights can be specifically used by project scholars in view of crisis associated with man-made hazards, natural hazards, or accidents, as well as broader management scholars to use theories developed in study of crisis by project scholars.

Using ANTi-microhistory to theorize a typology of organizational crisis

PurposeThe purpose of this article is to present qualitative research of the past organizational crisis at Mississippi Chemical Corporation that the authors use to theorize a typology of organizational crisis from the leadership perspective.Design/methodology/approachThe authors combined ANTi-microhistory approach and staff ride research design to re-enact the sensemaking of the company’s former crisis leaders and elicit their retrospective oral accounts. A long interview format was used to interview the crisis leaders.FindingsThe authors found that the former crisis leaders not only conceptualized organizational crisis conventionally as an event or as a process but also that they engaged in the denial of the crisis to guard the company’s reputation and competed with their claims against the stakeholder claims about the ways how the crisis was to be managed.Originality/valueBased on the paper’s findings, the authors proposed an original typology of organizational crisis.

Uncertain festival futures: how European music festival organisers navigate ‘loss’

Risk management and the navigation of loss are inherent to working conditions within the festival industry. With festivals cancelled, postponed or redesigned, the coronacrisis has deeply affected the already uncertain festival sector. Based on thirty-five interviews with Danish, Dutch and British music festival organisers, this article examines which losses organisers experienced when faced with a social trauma that disrupted their ontological security. Additionally, it analyses how they have coped and responded to this situation via organisational and emotional strategies. Three phases in how organisers cope with loss are identified, where organisational and individual responses play varying, complementary roles: (1) imminent short-term loss and its realisation, (2) acceptance of short-term loss and (3) moving beyond loss. The analysis reveals how managing potential personal loss and facing organisational crisis should not merely be seen in terms of a rational decision-making process but is also mediated by emotional losses organisers experience as not only their livelihood, but their work identity is existentially challenged. Implications are drawn on the nature of cultural work, with attention to the entwinement of personal and professional identities.