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Organizations Under Siege: Innovative Adaptive Behaviors in Work Organizations

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Improving Disaster Resilience and Mitigation - IT Means and Tools

Abstract

By examining the actual behavior of both managers and employees in work organizations during a crisis, we were able to better understand conditions facilitating an organization’s ability to maintain operational continuity. Building on theories of organizational and disaster behavior, a working model was developed and tested from evidence acquired from work organizations that were subjected to massive Katyusha rocket bombardment of Northern Israel in 2006. The results support the notion that organizational response to a disaster includes a social process of innovative behavioral adaptation to changing and threatening conditions. Based on both perceived and actual financial performance levels during the crisis, we discerned that on the one hand, the organization’s managers react within the administrative constraints of their organizations according to their perception of its performance. The day-to-day operations, however, are maintained as employees’ adapt their own behavior to the changing demands of the situation. The analysis further shows that although plans, drills and emergency regulations are important for performance behaviors during the emergency, it was employees’ innovative adaptive behaviors that contributed to maintaining actual organizational performance. These adaptive work behaviors depended on a series of social process predictors such as the levels of emergent and prosocial behaviors as well as the densities of social networks at the workplace. The findings both support and focus on the role that external organizational disruption can have on innovative organizational adaptation and change.

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Acknowledgments

This research was made possible by a research grant from the Technion. We gratefully appreciate the assistance of the late Dr. Uri Ben-Nesher and Dr. Sharon Link for their initiative and organizing the field study. We would also like to sincerely thank the managers and employees of organizations who under difficult circumstances agreed to participate in this study.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Faculty of Industrial Engineering and Management, Samuel Neaman Institute for Advanced Studies, Technion – Israel Institute of Technology, Haifa, 32000, Israel

    Alan (Avi) Kirschenbaum & Carmit Rapaport

  2. Kirschenbaum Consulting Ltd, Haifa, Israel

    Alan (Avi) Kirschenbaum

Authors
  1. Alan (Avi) Kirschenbaum
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  2. Carmit Rapaport
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Alan (Avi) Kirschenbaum .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Computer Science and ‘Gheorghe Asachi’ Technical University of Iasi, Iasi, Romania

    Horia-Nicolai Teodorescu

  2. Faculty of Industrial Engineering and Management, Samuel Neaman Institute for Advanced Studies,Technion – Israel Institute of Technology, Haifa, Israel

    Alan Kirschenbaum

  3. Institute of Mathematics and Computer Science of the Academy of Sciences of Moldova, Chisinau, Moldova

    Svetlana Cojocaru

  4. Department of Global Health and Populati, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA

    Claude Bruderlein

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Kirschenbaum, A.(., Rapaport, C. (2014). Organizations Under Siege: Innovative Adaptive Behaviors in Work Organizations. In: Teodorescu, HN., Kirschenbaum, A., Cojocaru, S., Bruderlein, C. (eds) Improving Disaster Resilience and Mitigation - IT Means and Tools. NATO Science for Peace and Security Series C: Environmental Security. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-9136-6_2

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-9136-6_2

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht

  • Print ISBN: 978-94-017-9135-9

  • Online ISBN: 978-94-017-9136-6

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