The Role of Knowledge and Culture in Organizational Crises: Managing and Planning in “Interesting” Times

There has been a good deal written on the subject of dealing with organizational crises. A basic problem in much of this is a failure to provide a practical definition of just what constitutes a “crisis”, and what differentiates crises from the typical assortment of problems and situations that organizations encounter. This workshop will draw from Thomas Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions as a starting point for that definition, will proceed to the notion of organizations as communities of people who share similar knowledges (i.e., as cultures), will continue with a taxonomy of the types of change that organizations may undergo, and will conclude with a discussion of how to recognize and provide leadership in crisis situations.