ORGANIZATIONAL ADAPTATION AND RESILIENCE TO EXTREME WEATHER EVENTS

Abstract

Growing scientific evidence suggests that rising weather extremes (e.g., heat waves, hurricanes, flooding) will have increasingly significant impact on organizations, industries and entire economies. While these findings call for both robust and practical theories of organizational adaptation and resilience to disruptive impacts from the natural environment, the literature offers only fragmented conceptual foundations. This paper reviews and builds on existing management and organization theories on adaptation to (1) build theory that incorporates the effects of ecological discontinuities into management and organization decision making, and to (2) offer a conceptual framework of organizational adaptation and resilience in the face of extreme weather events.