Organizing on the Precipice

Extreme weather events wreak havoc on food security, wildlife, and livelihoods, while pandemics, wars, migration, demagoguery, religious extremism, and systemic inequalities threaten, seriously disrupt or polarize life as we know it. So, what can today's organizations learn from those that, often unexpectedly, find themselves in such extreme contexts? Extreme contexts may help us understand how organizations adapt to rapidly changing circumstances, or find themselves unable to because of bureaucracy, power imbalance, and politicking. It is often not until things break—or until the processes that constitute everyday organizing are disrupted—that we come to see the implicit, taken-for-granted assumptions or routines on which organizational coherence and stability so heavily rely. This volume brings together thirteen chapters that address organizing in extreme contexts, characterized by risk, danger, and insecurity from a process perspective. The chapters illustrate four distinct modes of engagement with extreme contexts ranging from adventuresome inquiry to instrumental scholarship. Collectively, they show how a focus on extreme contexts can help us understand organizational processes that may be too subtle to be studied in any other way.