Understanding Crises – Shaping Change
Key subject area Organizing in Times of Crisis
What does “organizing” mean when crises are no longer isolated exceptional events, but rather overlap and reinforce one another? Our research team is investigating how different types of organizations, ranging from businesses and public institutions to associations and NGOs, can maintain their agency and proactively shape societal change amid a widely recognized polycrisis.
Our Goal
We investigate how organizations can become more resilient and sustainable in the face of intertwined crisis phenomena, on and across local and global scales. As a result, we view crises not as disruptions, but as systemic phenomena that fundamentally challenge existing structures and practices of organizing. The goal is to develop new theories and models of organizing and crisis management that provide guidance and enable action even under conditions of high uncertainty. How organizations respond to crises plays a decisive role in determining how resilient and adaptable our societies are as a whole. Here lies the societal relevance of our research area.
The Challenge
Established research approaches assume that crises are temporary and that returning to the previous order is possible, however, current social developments show a different picture. Crises are increasingly intertwined and profoundly transform existing routines, institutions, and infrastructures. This requires a fundamental rethinking of how we organize: How are decisions made under conditions of uncertainty? How do new roles and forms of cooperation emerge? How are supply chains being restructured?
Our Approach
We explore organizational practices in various crisis contexts and examine the extent to which these enable organizational and societal agency in times of polycrises. In doing so, we combine process- and practice-theoretical approaches from organization studies with related fields of research in sociology, psychology, and political science, while taking into account the perspectives of diverse societal stakeholders. With this foundation, we develop innovative and relevant concepts for research and practice.
This key subject area was developed within the context of the Leuphana Center for Organization & Social Transformation (LOST). It constitutes a research focus of the internationally oriented LOST group.
Organizing in Times of Crisis builds on the teaching initiative of the same name, which received the Aspen Institute’s Ideas Worth Teaching Award in 2020. The open-access course for Master programs in Business Administration, Management and Organization Studies was developed in collaboration with researchers from the LOST group during the COVID-19 pandemic and is available online.
The key subject area is part of the Embracing Transformation program, which is funded by the Strategic Development of Potential initiative of the Lower Saxony Ministry of Science and Culture (MWK) and the Volkswagen Foundation.
