Using ANTi-microhistory to theorize a typology of organizational crisis

Abstract

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.