AN EVENT-SYSTEM PERSPECTIVE ON DISRUPTION THEORIZING THE PANDEMIC AND OTHER DISCONTINUITIES THROUGH HISTORICAL AND FICTIONAL ACCOUNTS OF THE PLAGUE

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Roulet, Thomas J.; Bothello, Joel
• 署名单位: University of Cambridge; Concordia College, Alabama
• 刊物名称: ACADEMY OF MANAGEMENT REVIEW
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0363-7425
• DOI: 10.5465/amr.2021.0206
• 发表日期: 2023
• 页码: 772-789
• 关键词: PUNCTUATED EQUILIBRIUM; PATH GENERATION; management; Covid-19; institutions; EVOLUTION; accident; memory; tales; work

摘要

Disruptions such as COVID-19-and the subsequent flux they wreak on organizations and society-have become commonplace. In order to advance our understanding of (and adaptation to) future discontinuities and crises, we argue that we require a reconceptualization of how disruption occurs. To do so, we draw on event systems theory; in contrast to previous work viewing disruption as the outcome of a singular event, we focus on how disruption can occur from an event chain-that is, a set of events that are temporally and causally connected. We abductively shape our conceptual arguments by drawing on narratives of past pandemics, reviewing two historical and two fictional texts that (re)create the experiences of those living through the Black Death and subsequent outbreaks of the bubonic plague. Rather than focusing on events themselves, we identify how certain characteristics among events in a chain lead to four microlevel experiences: stagnation, disorientation, polarization, and repudiation. We then proceed to examine how these microlevel reactions culminate into macrolevel transformations of economic, political, and cultural norms. Our event-system perspective on disruption and crises thereby gen-erates insight, not only into understanding the (post-)pandemic world, but also into responses to future discontinuities.