Crisis Management: The Perspective of Organizational Learning

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to propose instruments to improve crisis management in an organization from the perspective of organizational learning. The assumption on which the research was based is the claim that the success of crisis management depends both on the effectiveness of the learning processes that enable overcoming a crisis and the ability to learn a lesson from a crisis. Organizational crises may be conducive to the process of intensive organizational knowledge acquisition. Actions undertaken in terms of crisis management often constitute the means for organizational learning, which is related to issues of the adaptation, survival, and competitiveness of enterprises in conditions of discrete changes in the environment. A crisis is a chance for revitalizing changes that would otherwise be impossible to implement. Increasing the ability to manage crises can be considered as a favorable condition for long-term economic and social development. Real help for managers confronted with organizational crises depends on the awareness of the importance of anti-crisis management and, above all, the problems they must face. In shaping the ability to learn valuable lessons from a crisis, the following factors are crucial: normalization mechanisms, the organization’s double-loop learning ability and the managers’ awareness of its importance in learning from a crisis, and the organization’s single-loop learning ability. Improving organizational learning should lead to the reconstruction of the organization’s abilities to cope in the crisis.