In this paper, we investigate organisational responses to an economic crisis within a group of seven subcontractors in the Swedish heavy vehicle industry. Although the participating firms had similar exposures to an abrupt and severe shift in demand, their performances during the crisis varied extensively. One year after the crisis began, some firms were still encountering financial problems threatening their survival, yet others had orchestrated a recovery that was generating healthy cash flows. Evaluation of in-depth interviews with key organisational members and standardised financial indicators suggests that the subcontractors' performances in the crisis were determined by their ability to attain and evaluate 'deep knowledge' from stakeholders and 'wide knowledge' from other external actors. Hence, our findings not only demonstrate an opportunity to extend existing research on crisis management but also indicate that the subcontractors' performances in the economic crisis were related to the implementation of dynamic capabilities.During the first half of 2008, business was generally flourishing for Swedish heavy vehicle subcontractors. The capacity utilisation within the industry was reaching a record-high level and the projections of the two major Swedish original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) of heavy vehicles, Volvo Trucks and Scania, were very promising. In fact, the second quarter (Q2) of 2008 was the best quarter in the entire history of Volvo Trucks, which is the world's second largest heavy truck brand (Volvo Group1, 2008). As a consequence, many subcontractors were having troubles to deliver the increasing order levels and were, under pressure from the OEMs, making significant investments to increase production capacity. Hence, whilst the global car industry was facing severe problems caused by the financial crisis of 2007 and a world of rising gas prices and increased awareness of traffic emissions (New York Times, 2008), the Swedish heavy vehicle industry appeared to be safe and sound.However, on the 24 th of October when Volvo Trucks and Scania presented their third quarter results, it was evident that this optimistic prospect was drastically inaccurate. Most remarkably, Volvo Trucks announced that orders of heavy trucks in Europe had fallen from 21,948 (Q2) to 115 1
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