Shaken, but alive: organizational behavior in the wake of catastrophic events

Abstract

Powell, T., 1991. Shaken, but alive: organizational behavior in the wake of catastrophic events. Industrial Crisis Quarterly, 5: 271-29 1.

Organizational Learning and the Sustainability Community of Practice

“…On the other hand, it allows for the dynamic and interactive nature of organizational learning and subsequent change. Unlike earlier work that sought to find how organizational learning exhibits the same characteristics as individual learning (Hedberg, 1981, cited in Powell 1991), the processes in the Crossan framework enable learning characteristics to be identified at all levels highlighting tensions between worldviews, values, norms, roles, symbols, and ideologies. As Tsoukas and Chia (2002) have argued convincingly, change is ongoing and organizations can be thought of as in a continual process of “becoming.” The dynamic nature of links made in the 4I framework between individual, group, and organizational learning levels make it particularly suitable as a means of analysing the diverse, individualized, and shifting understandings of sustainability that have precluded its more coherent embedding across organizations.…”

Toward a Theory of Organizational Implosion

“…The organizational studies literature provides no consensus definition of organization disaster. In part, the ambiguities of organization disaster concepts are due to neighborhood effects; that is, the literature includes, in addition to studies of "organizational disaster," studies of "organizational failure" (see Mellahi & Wilkinson, 2004 for an overview), "organizational catastrophe" (Barton, 1994;McKelvey, 1999;Powell, 1991), and, especially, "organizational crisis" (Fink, Beak, & Taddeo, 1971;Starbuck, Greve, & Hedberg, 1978;Milburn, Schuler, & Watman, 1983;Wicks, 2001). To illustrate the diversity of definitions of disaster and crisis, consider Table 1, which provides some of the better-known definitions from the organization theory literature.…”

Disaster response: risk, vulnerability and resilience

“…Environmental resilience: organisational characteristics and managerial behaviour Vulnerability to disaster stress reactions is influenced by organisational characteristics (e.g. management style, reporting procedures) and bureaucratic flexibility (Alexander and Wells, 1991;Doepal, 1991;Dunning, 1994;Era Ènen et al, 1999;Paton, 1992;Paton and Purvis, 1995;Powell, 1991;Stephens et al, 1997). To sustain staff, and constitute a resilience resource, management procedures designed specifically to manage response and recovery are essential (Alexander and Wells, 1991;Paton, 1997a;1997b;Paton et al, 1998;Paton and Purvis, 1995).…”