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Title: After the storm has passed: Translating crisis experience into useful knowledge
This virtual special issue (VSI) collects together 19 papers published in Organization Science that explore how organizations learn from crises. The objective is to discuss insights that can help us understand the COVID-19 pandemic crisis, implications that existing research carries for organizations’ abilities to keep hard-earned lessons after the storm passes, and opportunities that the current phenomenon offers for future inquiry in this domain. Organizations, large and small, in scores of countries, have suspended normal operations. To survive, many organizations have adapted by shifting almost all human-to-human interactions online while facing an ethical dilemma and a tense tradeoff between public health and economic well-being. We take stock of the research on organizational learning from crises, summarize useful knowledge for managing the current crisis, and provide directions for future research.  more » « less
Award ID(s):
2030830
PAR ID:
10225081
Author(s) / Creator(s):
; ;
Editor(s):
Ahuja, Gautam
Date Published:
Journal Name:
Organization science
Volume:
31
Issue:
4
ISSN:
1047-7039
Page Range / eLocation ID:
1037–1051
Format(s):
Medium: X
Sponsoring Org:
National Science Foundation
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    ABSTRACT Organizations inevitably face various forms of disruptive events (e.g., external crises), and sustaining long‐term prosperity requires them to stay resilient when encountering unexpected adversity. Prior crisis management research predominantly relied on qualitative case studies to examine efforts after a crisis had occurred, treating the crisis as a “given” rather than a variable. The exceptionality of crisis situations and the ad hoc nature of crisis countermeasures largely limit current knowledge about how organizations may manage employees to remain in a preparative stance for disruptive events. Integrating the inclusion literature, crisis management research, and event system theory, we propose inclusion management practices as a viable pathway for organizations to develop resilience resources and capabilities prior to a crisis, allowing them to exhibit greater robustness and agility when a crisis arises. Such robustness and agility, in turn, enhance organizational performance thereafter. We further pinpoint the strength of a crisis event as an important contingency shaping the effects of pre‐crisis inclusion management practices on organizations’ resilient responses and thereby performance. We tested our hypotheses in the context of the COVID‐19 pandemic crisis using longitudinal manager‐report survey data (N= 884 workplaces). We found that workplaces that implemented more inclusion management practices before COVID‐19 were more robust and agile in response to the pandemic crisis. Agility (but not robustness), in turn, was positively related to organizational performance. In addition, the effect of inclusion management practices on agility was stronger for workplaces with greater COVID‐19 event strength. 
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  2. ; ; (, 2022 Preparedness Summit)
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