Contradictions of Objectives During Organizational Crisis

Abstract

Organizational crises management in many cases relies on ad hoc created teams to handle these unexpected events. Due to the demanded short reaction time, there is pressure on all persons involved in handling the situation. Crisis management team members instinctively search for the “best possible outcome” of the crisis mostly based on their professional background. Some of the individual professional goals are conflicting, and conciliation might be necessary. Ultimately, each of the apparently conflicting professional goals points to the same organizational goal: the resilience after the crisis. Our findings are based on a survey done at some Eastern European multinational organizations. In the paper we not only provide arguments for multidisciplinary crisis management teams, but also show that crisis managers sometimes have concerns about the time-consuming reconciliation of the goals and the one-track-minded approach of some professionals.