Managing Uncertainty in Crisis

This book studies the variety of organizational strategies selected to cope with critical uncertainties during crises. This research formulates and applies an institutional sense-making model to explain the selection of strategies for coping with uncertainties during crises to answer the question why some organizations select a rule-based strategy to cope with uncertainties, whereas others pursue a more ad hoc-based strategy. The study builds on the insight that organizational sense-making can vary in different organizational contexts, which are defined by different levels of institutionalization. It explores how these different levels influence the choice of strategy during crises, thus explaining the selection of different strategies. The book's key findings are that the level of institutionalization does not affect strategy selection in the initial phase of responding to crises; that three rigidity effects can be identified in the selection of sense-making strategies once organizations have faced the failure of their selected strategies; that discontinuities in the feedback loop of sense-making do not necessarily move organizations to switch their sense-making strategies, but interact with institutionalization to contribute to switching sense-making strategies.