Environmental Jolts Research Articles

Volunteering behavioral declines amid personal and organizational upheaval: Recruitment, retention, and barriers in Australia

ABSTRACT Volunteers have faced recent social disruptions which have brought about a new wave of barriers to wash over survivors of an already declining number of formal volunteers in Australia. How the “environmental jolt” of recent social disruption has played out for volunteering is important to understand because less is known about how organizational responses have interacted with changing individual volunteer motives and meanings in the volunteering context. Understanding the impact of this environmental jolt of recent social disruption on volunteering is crucial, especially considering the implications for well-being in communities of volunteers.

Opportunistic Change During a Punctuation: How and When the Front Lines Can Drive Bursts of Incremental Change

Environmental jolts can trigger more conducive conditions for driving change in organizations. However, punctuated equilibrium theories of organizational change concentrate on top managers’ implementation of de novo radical changes after jolts. Existing research has not examined frontline-driven, incremental change efforts during these periods of disrupted stasis, despite the value of frontline change ideas. We develop a process model to explain how and when those on an organization’s front lines can leverage a jolt to opportunistically implement long-desired change ideas in ways that promote their retention. We conducted a two-year qualitative field study at a hospital during the Covid-19 pandemic, examining the trajectories of 33 premeditated change ideas raised by frontline staff. By comparing ideas that persisted to become part of normal operations with those that failed to be selected or retained, we identified practices and conditions that promoted the selection and retention of frontline change ideas. Our study suggests that frontline change advocates can seed the long-term retention of “shovel-ready” ideas—as opposed to de novo ideas—after a jolt by rapidly and opportunistically deploying a novel set of practices before the brief window of opportunity created by lessened constraints and increased managerial receptivity closes. Prior theories of change largely assume frontline-driven change to be slow and continuous, proceeding in a one-off fashion; we explain how and when frontline change can instead occur in rapid, opportunistic bursts. This study advances theories of punctuated equilibrium and bottom-up change in organizations by unearthing an alternative way that change can be intentionally accomplished in organizations. Supplemental Material: The online appendix is available at https://doi.org/10.1287/orsc.2021.15120 .

An Investigation of Corporate Social Performance Before, During, and After an Environmental Jolt

An Investigation of Corporate Social Performance Before, During, and After an Environmental Jolt

How Start-ups Navigate Environmental Jolts: A Dynamic Capabilities Perspective

How Start-ups Navigate Environmental Jolts: A Dynamic Capabilities Perspective

Android Application for Waste Collection Management

Abstract: The value and rate of logical waste discarding will remain to rise as long as mortal conditioning remains. The result of the scurrility of logical waste, which is a great peril to the world and to mortal health, calls for the want to amend the situation before it can get out of phase. This leads us to exercise the stylish ways to take logical waste collection following the rearmost trends in movable technology. This study developed a waste collection model with the end of intending a movable waste operation operation model that will support ameliorate quality operation of logical waste collection and better environmental jolt reduction. The model places waste creators in the middle ground of the waste collection system as they play a crucial part in producing logical waste, aiding waste companies during waste collection and providing an operative device for external councils to epitomise this appreciation. all conditioning related to logical waste collection and directing their opinions. In this study we have handed all the necessary and over- to- assignation movable technology and the model can work to achieve an operative logical waste collection system at home.

The Role of Personal Values in Shaping Perceptions of the Legitimacy of Public Health Officials During a Global Pandemic

Major environmental jolts can prompt individuals to critically evaluate their personal view of the legitimacy (i.e., propriety) of established authorities, especially when jolts amplify conflicts between the authority and individuals’ value priorities. The COVID-19 pandemic constituted a major jolt that highlighted both clashes and alignment between the values of public health officials (enhancement of health and disease prevention) and other basic values. Using data from a survey of 1,356 U.S. adults collected in spring 2022, I descriptively assess whether the pandemic jolt prompted individuals to critically evaluate the legitimacy of public health officials. I then investigate how basic values that aligned and clashed with public health values during the pandemic shaped assessments of public health officials’ propriety two years into the pandemic as well as intentions to comply with them in a future health crisis. Descriptive findings reveal that individuals actively assessed public health legitimacy during the pandemic. Other analyses demonstrate how value (mis)alignment affects evaluations of the propriety of public health officials. Values also operate through propriety assessments to influence future compliance intentions, providing insight into social psychological processes undergirding institutional endurance and change.

Community leaders’ sensemaking of environmental jolts: Stabilizing and silver lining framing of disruption

ABSTRACT The COVID-19 pandemic has been a defining catastrophe for many communities across the world. This study focuses on a small, urban community in the United States at the regional epicenter of the pandemic with high rates of illness, death, financial hardships, and a halt to in-person school and services that lasted over a year. Drawing on institutional theory with a focus on environmental jolts and leadership sensemaking, we conducted a thematic analysis of 20 interviews with cross-sector community leaders, including city officials, school district administrators, directors of community-based organizations, and church leaders to evaluate how they made sense of COVID-19 disruptions and framed their responses to the environmental jolt caused by the pandemic in Spring, 2021. Findings illustrate how leaders framed the jolt as highlighting existing issues, maintained a focus on priorities and purpose pre-dating disruptions, and emphasized opportunities emerging from the crisis. We discuss how leaders engaged in sensemaking both as a form of stabilization, providing a rationale for maintaining pre-pandemic priorities, and as a way to motivate and leverage opportunity through an emphasis on the silver lining of the jolt. We close with implications of these findings for ongoing and future responses to environmental jolts and crises.

Moving Through the Storm: A Longitudinal Study on IT-Based Agile Organizational Crisis Response

This research integrates the theoretical strands of crisis management and organizational agility to improvise a process in which organizations expedite their IT-based solutions to cope with mega disruptions, carried out through two studies. Using corpus linguistics as an analytical approach with data collected from press releases from 10 US retail conglomerates, our findings point to the transition from a business-as-usual business model to the incubation of a work-at-home retail model that is infused by technology innovations. In making such a transition, organizations exercise agility through rapidly responding to a multitude of environmental jolts. The contribution of the present article lies in illuminating the role of IT innovations and digitization efforts that lay the necessary organizational capabilities to stay abreast with market opportunities amid extenuating circumstances. This research provides an empirical articulation of the importance of IT-based crisis responses to help scholars better understand the nature of crisis management and organizational agility.

Family firms’ survival in an economic downturn: The role of ownership concentration and collaborative intensity

ABSTRACT This study examines the key topic of small- and medium-sized enterprise (SME) survival during an economic downturn by focusing on the role of family governance. We argue that family SMEs typically show higher levels of organizational inertia that may particularly harm their performance during an environmental jolt, while other idiosyncrasies, including greater survivability capital and owners’ transgenerational sustainability intentions, enhance their odds of survival. However, we also contend that family firms are a heterogeneous group, and draw attention to the level of ownership concentration and collaborative intensity as factors likely to enhance these firms’ survival. Conversely, we posit that family businesses with lower ownership concentration will benefit more from high collaborative intensity, thus suggesting the need to examine the joint survival effects of these two factors. We performed Cox survival analyses on a sample of 259 SMEs tracked from 2005 to 2019. The results offer important implications for scholars, managers, and policymakers.

The differential effect of environmental jolts and information sources on dynamic capabilities

AbstractChallenges in the business environment are typically categorized as threats or opportunities. Firms develop dynamic capabilities to cope with these challenges and improve strategic fit. However, evidence of a causal relationship between unpredictable environmental challenges (jolts) and dynamic capabilities is inconclusive. This study explores how information about positive (opportunity) and negative (threat) jolts communicated via two information sources affects dynamic capabilities. A 2 × 2 experiment was conducted among 131 managers. The findings indicate that human‐based information sources dominate web‐based information sources, particularly when the information reveals potential threats. The use of human information sources is associated with stronger dynamic capabilities than reliance on web information sources. Moreover, the findings confirm that the manifestation of dynamic capabilities differs between opportunities and threats.

International dynamic marketing capabilities and international performance during the pandemic: a study of export manufacturers from Poland

PurposeThis paper contributes to studies on the relationship between dynamic capabilities (DCs) and performance by showing how domain-specific DCs – international dynamic marketing capabilities (IDMCs) – affect the international performance of exporting firms in the context of extreme environmental dynamism – during the COVID-19 pandemic.Design/methodology/approachThe authors focus on a sample of 277 exporting manufacturers from the post-transition economy of Poland. The authors use hierarchical multiple regression analysis to test this study's hypotheses.FindingsThis study's findings show that deployment of IDMCs by export manufacturers in the context of environmental jolts contributes to better performance, and this relationship is mediated by adaptation to foreign markets and product development capability. Additionally, this study's results reveal that the significant and positive indirect effect of IDMCs on international performance (through mediators) is, however, weakened under conditions of extreme environmental dynamism.Research limitations/implicationsThe limitations pertain to the cross-sectional nature of this study and the research sample, characterised by the dominance of export manufacturers of final products, the dominance of manufacturers operating in the business-to-business sector, or in the business-to-business and business-to-customer sectors simultaneously.Practical implicationsThe study provides suggestions to managers on how to build resilience in international markets during turbulent times. These activities involve investments in IDMCs that support activities centred around product development and adaptation to foreign markets.Originality/valueThe novel construct of IDMCs is introduced and operationalized. The study empirically tests the direct and indirect relationship between IDMCs and performance contingent upon extreme environmental dynamism. The results demonstrate the boundary conditions for the effectiveness of these domain-specific DCs in such a research setting.

Supply chain resilience and absorptive capacity: crisis mitigation and performance effects during Covid-19

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to investigate the relationships of supply chain resilience (SCR) and absorptive capacity (ACAP) with firm performance by specifically examining the crisis-mitigating effects under an environmental jolt such as COVID-19.Design/methodology/approachThis paper is based on data from a questionnaire survey among Danish manufacturing and transport and logistics companies with 174 respondents.FindingsWhile the adaptive capabilities associated with both SCR and ACAP are well recognized in extant SCM literature, less is known about their boundary conditions. Examining the functioning of SCR and ACAP amid the COVID-19 crisis, this study finds that both SCR and ACAP related positively to firm performance. However, while the positive relationship between SCR and firm performance was partly mediated by better crisis-mitigation, the results of this study did not find that a similar mechanism was present for ACAP. These results suggest notable refinements of current understandings of SCR and ACAP.Research limitations/implicationsThis study is limited by the cross-sectional design, the focus on Danish companies only, and by examining only two industries. Hence, comparisons to other countries and other industries would be of significant interest.Practical implicationsInvesting in SCR and ACAP to different extents provides for a complementary mix of longer-term opportunity-generating dynamic capabilities and more short-term crisis-mitigating dynamic capabilities. Firms will benefit from both types of dynamic capabilities during a crisis, but the latter will be more important for mitigating specific crisis impacts.Originality/valueThis paper extends current theorizing on ACAP and SCR by adding the distinction between the long-term opportunity generating dynamic capabilities and short-term crisis-mitigating dynamic capabilities. This paper provides novelty by empirically examining this theorizing by investigating the performance- and crisis-mitigating effect of SCR and ACAP in the light of the COVID-19 crisis.

Professional Sports Teams' Community Engagement during an Environmental Jolt: Shifting Activities and State Differences amid the COVID-19 Pandemic

Professional Sports Teams' Community Engagement during an Environmental Jolt: Shifting Activities and State Differences amid the COVID-19 Pandemic

Adapting to a jolt: A mixed methods study identifying challenges and personal resources impacting professional gig workers' well-being during COVID-19

Scholarship on stress and resilience at work has repeatedly overlooked professional gig workers despite the rapid growth of this independent workforce. Studying such workers, especially under conditions of global disruption, offers an opportunity to expand theory on the role of personal resources in promoting resilience and well-being in the absence of the contextual resources traditionally offered by organizations. Drawing on the conservation of resources theory (Hobfoll, 1989) and using unique qualitative and quantitative data gathered prior to and during the COVID-19 global pandemic, we investigate the pandemic's impact on an international sample of professional gig workers and test the relationship between psychosocial resources and workers' well-being and resilience. Results suggest that workers experienced the pandemic as an environmental jolt (Meyer, 1982) that affected their working lives by shrinking the amount of gig work available, especially for women, and increasing the challenges associated with fluctuating emotions, organizing day-to-day work, and cultivating relationships. Further, we find that pre-pandemic levels of two theoretically informed personal resources—work meaningfulness and the emotional carrying capacity of these workers' networks—affect outcomes: Work meaningfulness is associated with cognitive and affective well-being, and emotional carrying capacity is associated with social and affective well-being, as well as psychological resilience. Taken together, this research provides novel insights into professional gig workers' experiences of and reactions to environmental jolts, and the personal resources that aid in their well-being and resilience.

The effect of slack configurations on company performance from a dynamic perspective

AbstractThe existing literature on slack resources points to a relationship with organizational performance, though little attention have been given to their dynamic deployment. Arising from the idea that companies present different levels of slack resources, this paper analyzes the slack‐performance relationship using a dynamic performance and configurational approach. We investigate the existence of coherent configurations of slack resources and analyze the generation and use of slack resources in a period of crisis and economic recovery. Seemingly unrelated regressions were used on 419 Spanish manufacturing companies to assess the effect of slack configuration on performance from a cross‐sectional and longitudinal perspective. The results show clear configurations and a continuous slack–performance relationship, so available and potential slack positively affect performance, whereas recoverable slack negatively affects performance, although these relationships are contingent on the economic situation. Therefore, firms increase their available and potential slack when faced with an environmental jolt, whereas this increase varies depending on the configuration or availability of slack resources. Configurational equifinality in the slack–performance relationship is also confirmed, with the effect being contingent on time.

Environmental Jolt and Experimentation in A Nascent Industry

Environmental jolts on the one hand open up new market opportunities for firms to engage in experimentations, but on the other hand pose a threat of experimentation failure by disrupting existing routines and processes. We argue that whether or not environmental jolts would motivate a firm to engage in experimentations depends on the firm’s network diversity that shapes how the firm access and process information for decision making under uncertainty. We collected data on how firms in the nascent drone industry responded to the environmental jolt brought by the COVID-19 pandemic from 2020 to 2021. We find that the regional manifestation of an environmental jolt is positively associated with the likelihood of firm experimentation when firm network diversity is moderate but negatively associated with the likelihood of firm experimentation when firm network diversity is very high.

Adaptations and Tensions in Remote Work: A Longitudinal Study of the Covid-19 Environmental Jolt

Remote work provides alternative methods of working which in turn became the norm during the Covid-19 pandemic. In this, paper, we study adaptation practices introduced by both individuals and organisations as a way for managing the enforced remote work. The study draws upon 51 interviews of knowledge workers collected over two years during different phases of the Covid 19 pandemic. We apply adaptation theory and the concept of environmental jolt as lenses to examine the transformation of work as an adaptation process towards new digital working practices. We approach adaptation as a way of coping with a radical change or dynamic situation and building resilience. Based on the data analysis, we expend the adaptation theory in relation to different forms of adaptation to digital work practices (e.g. at technological, organisational, and behavioural level). We also find that remote work overall was a positive experience among knowledge workers, and it has increased their autonomy and accountability at the cost of a number of emerging tensions. Findings emphasize phases of adaptation and tensions that emerge over time in remote work at both individual and organizational level.

CSR representation in the public discourse and corporate environmental disclosure strategies in the context of Brexit. A cross-country study of France, Germany, and the United Kingdom

The strategic management literature has recognized the role of social and environmental activities in supporting a firm's economic well-being. Although some research has explored the role of social and environmental practices during uncertain periods, studies are still scarce. This paper contributes to this issue by studying corporate social responsibility (CSR) representation during environmental jolts. Through a multi-level analysis, we investigate the conceptualization of CSR in the context of Brexit. From a macro-level perspective, we explore CSR representation in the public discourse by looking at the output of economic journalists. Additionally, based on a micro-level analysis, we examine the CSR disclosure policies of firms and evaluate them in the context of an uncertain environment.Based on a sample of more than 1500 press release data from major UK-based business publications and more than 1000 shareholder letters from companies listed on three major European indices, the DAX 30, CAC 40, and FTSE 100, the text analysis techniques of topic modeling and ‘bags of words' are used.The findings show that an unprecedented exogenous shock such as Brexit increases CSR representation in the public discourse and corporate communication strategies, suggesting the greater importance of CSR disclosure during uncertain periods. In addition evidence is shown that organizations target and adapt shareholder communication on CSR in accordance with market uncertainty.

Development of Strategic Resilience Framework for Small Businesses Post-COVID-19

The detrimental transboundary effect of COVID-19 exhibits an unprecedented circumstance for organizational resilience. This proposed research paper aims to analyze the impact of COVID-19 on small businesses (SBs) worldwide towards developing a strategic resilience framework. This framework enables the development of resilient strategies that SBs can utilize to survive and sustain their livelihood post-COVID-19. It is profoundly challenging to cope with the consequences of a devastating global pandemic with enormous negative economic side-effects and survive given reduced income, jobs lost, etc. This paper utilizes different models, such as Meyer’s Model, the PESTEL model, and the Comprehensive Organizational Model, to discuss the process of adaptations to market shocks. This adaptation methodology consists of different anticipatory, responsive, and rehabilitation phases, leading to organizational resilience. A conceptual framework is proposed through a qualitative analysis of existing academic literature concerning strategic resilience for small businesses facing environmental jolts such as COVID-19. By developing the proposed strategic resilience framework, other methods and theories, including the adaptability of small- and medium-sized organizations, will be addressed.

Environmental jolts and temporal adaptation in a local solar energy movement

Environmental jolts are unexpected external shocks of the institutional environment that disrupt actors and movement processes and trigger adaptative responses in them. A jolt represents a disconti...