Abstract
This research project studies the variety in organizational strategy selection when coping with critical uncertainties during a crisis. Dealing with uncertainty is an essential part of any crisis response, and poses enormous challenges to crisis managers. In dealing with uncertainties, some organizations rely on organizational routines developed over time, while some others analyse uncertainty in an ad hoc way to provide a workable interpretation of that uncertainty.
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Notes
- 1.
Emergent organization is a concept created by Russell Dynes from Delaware University’s Disaster Research Center (DRC), which was further developed by DRC researchers, such as Joe Scanlon, Tom Drabek, Dave Neal and Gary A. Kreps.
- 2.
The argument is based on lectures given by Stafford sociology professor Zhou Xueguang in the 2013 summer course Bureaucracy studies at Peking University, Beijing.
- 3.
The English journal Management and Organizational Review has become an important medium to facilitate organizational research about China.
- 4.
This is according to my presentation in Chinese academic conferences and personal discussions with colleagues in China.
- 5.
Zhou (2012) only mentioned crisis response in his definition of CSG, and he mostly concentrated on general social movements, such as the Culture Revolution.
- 6.
CSG has not always been successful in crisis response in China. For instance, the central government initiated CSG to restore the food market and reduce social unrest, but it failed to manage the food crisis and social unrest.
- 7.
Due to a lack of confidence in local suppliers of baby milk powder, Chinese customers purchased large amount of milk powder from the Netherlands and Hongkong via personal friends or online shops of Taobao (which is an e-business platform like Amazon). The purchase caused a shortage of milk powder in the Netherlands and Hongkong, causing protests by local customers.
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Lu, X. (2017). Towards a Theory of Institutional Sensemaking: Building on a Comparison of Four Cases. In: Managing Uncertainty in Crisis. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-3990-4_8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-3990-4_8
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