IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/spr/jorgde/v9y2020i1d10.1186_s41469-020-00074-z.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Latent organizing for responding to emergencies: foundations for research

Author

Listed:
  • Paul C. Fenema

    (Netherlands Defence Academy)

  • A. Georges L. Romme

    (Eindhoven University of Technology)

Abstract

Time and again, many organizations and their staff members must respond to unexpected catastrophes like hurricanes (e.g., Katrina), virus pandemics (e.g., COVID-19), or other major emergencies. As a result, some organizations allow their employees to respond to external emergencies by engaging in response actions for a limited time, like in the case of emergency response teams. The latter teams consist of employees that act as emergency response officers who can respond to floods, train crashes, or other emergencies. Emergency response teams constitute an example of so-called latent organizing (LO) in the preparation for and response to any (unpredictable) future emergency. While latent organizing is ubiquitous in a societal and professional sense, it has hardly been studied in the organization design literature. In this paper, we develop a research agenda for studying LO. LO serves to prepare for and respond to emergencies, but otherwise remains largely dormant and inactive. When it is inactive, host organizations use the LO’s human and other resources for their own gainful purposes. Resources for LO are thus organized in a quasi-permanent fashion, one that is rather latent until activated by an emergency. We further develop the construct of latency to explore how effective LO can be designed and facilitated. In addition, we develop a research agenda for future work in this area.

Suggested Citation

  • Paul C. Fenema & A. Georges L. Romme, 2020. "Latent organizing for responding to emergencies: foundations for research," Journal of Organization Design, Springer;Organizational Design Community, vol. 9(1), pages 1-16, December.
    • Handle: RePEc:spr:jorgde:v:9:y:2020:i:1:d:10.1186_s41469-020-00074-z
    DOI: 10.1186/s41469-020-00074-z
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://link.springer.com/10.1186/s41469-020-00074-z
    File Function: Abstract
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1186/s41469-020-00074-z?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Giovan Francesco Lanzara, 1983. "Ephemeral Organizations In Extreme Environments: Emergence, Strategy, Extinction [I]," Journal of Management Studies, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 20(1), pages 71-95, January.
    2. Miranda Chan & Michael A Johansson, 2012. "The Incubation Periods of Dengue Viruses," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 7(11), pages 1-7, November.
    3. Francesca Mariotti & Rick Delbridge, 2012. "Overcoming Network Overload and Redundancy in Interorganizational Networks: The Roles of Potential and Latent Ties," Organization Science, INFORMS, vol. 23(2), pages 511-528, April.
    4. Romme, A. Georges L. & Reymen, Isabelle M.M.J., 2018. "Entrepreneurship at the interface of design and science: Toward an inclusive framework," Journal of Business Venturing Insights, Elsevier, vol. 10(C), pages 1-1.
    5. Richard M. Burton & Dorthe Døjbak Håkonsson & Jackson Nickerson & Phanish Puranam & Maciej Workiewicz & Todd Zenger, 2017. "GitHub: exploring the space between boss-less and hierarchical forms of organizing," Journal of Organization Design, Springer;Organizational Design Community, vol. 6(1), pages 1-19, December.
    6. Ken Starkey & Christopher Barnatt & Sue Tempest, 2000. "Beyond Networks and Hierarchies: Latent Organizations in the U.K. Television Industry," Organization Science, INFORMS, vol. 11(3), pages 299-305, June.
    7. A. Georges L. Romme & Gerard Endenburg, 2006. "Construction Principles and Design Rules in the Case of Circular Design," Organization Science, INFORMS, vol. 17(2), pages 287-297, April.
    8. A. Georges L. Romme, 2019. "Climbing up and down the hierarchy of accountability: implications for organization design," Journal of Organization Design, Springer;Organizational Design Community, vol. 8(1), pages 1-14, December.
    9. Herzig, Christian & Moon, Jeremy, 2013. "Discourses on corporate social ir/responsibility in the financial sector," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 66(10), pages 1870-1880.
    10. Stephan Billinger & Maciej Workiewicz, 2019. "Fading hierarchies and the emergence of new forms of organization," Journal of Organization Design, Springer;Organizational Design Community, vol. 8(1), pages 1-6, December.
    11. Jan-Kees Schakel & Paul C. van Fenema & Samer Faraj, 2016. "Shots Fired! Switching Between Practices in Police Work," Organization Science, INFORMS, vol. 27(2), pages 391-410, April.
    12. Martha S. Feldman, 2000. "Organizational Routines as a Source of Continuous Change," Organization Science, INFORMS, vol. 11(6), pages 611-629, December.
    13. Kraaijenbrink, Jeroen & Spender, JC & Groen, Aard, 2009. "The resource-based view: A review and assessment of its critiques," MPRA Paper 21442, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    14. Jiao Luo & Andrew H. Van de Ven & Runtian Jing & Yuan Jiang, 2018. "Transitioning from a hierarchical product organization to an open platform organization: a Chinese case study," Journal of Organization Design, Springer;Organizational Design Community, vol. 7(1), pages 1-14, December.
    15. Jay R. Horwitz & Anita M. McGahan, 2019. "Collaborating to manage performance trade‐offs: How fire departments preserve life and save property," Strategic Management Journal, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 40(3), pages 408-431, March.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. M. Hassan Awad, 2023. "Place and the Structuring of Cross-Sector Partnerships: The Moral and Material Conflicts Over Healthcare and Homelessness," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 184(4), pages 933-955, May.
    2. Cristina VEITH & Iyad ISBAITA & Paul MARINESCU, 2021. "Factors Influencing Trust In Remote Teams," Proceedings of the INTERNATIONAL MANAGEMENT CONFERENCE, Faculty of Management, Academy of Economic Studies, Bucharest, Romania, vol. 15(1), pages 859-870, November.
    3. Cristina Veith & Irina Dogaru, 2020. "Digital work in the context of covid 19," Manager Journal, Faculty of Business and Administration, University of Bucharest, vol. 31(1), pages 61-69, December.
    4. A. Georges L. Romme, 2020. "The Construction of the COVID-19 Pandemic: Designing Societal Solutions That Would Prevent a Full Lockdown," Journal of Public Administration and Governance, Macrothink Institute, vol. 10(3), pages 1-15, December.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Luigi Mosca & Martina Gianecchini & Diego Campagnolo, 2021. "Organizational life cycle models: a design perspective," Journal of Organization Design, Springer;Organizational Design Community, vol. 10(1), pages 3-18, March.
    2. A. Georges L. Romme, 2019. "Climbing up and down the hierarchy of accountability: implications for organization design," Journal of Organization Design, Springer;Organizational Design Community, vol. 8(1), pages 1-14, December.
    3. Ivan Rodrigo Rizzo Dias & George Bedinelli Rossi, 2017. "How far is World Champion from World Class? Institutional effects on a Brazilian non-profit sports organization," Brazilian Business Review, Fucape Business School, vol. 14(Special I), pages 24-44, January.
    4. Wu, Yuanyuan & Wu, Shikui, 2016. "Managing ambidexterity in creative industries: A survey," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 69(7), pages 2388-2396.
    5. Asadifard, Reza & Tabatabaeian, Seyed Habiboallah & Sofi, Jahanyar Bamdad & Taghva, Mohammad Reza, 2017. "A model for investigating the stability factors in formal science and technology collaborative networks: A case study of Iran," Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Elsevier, vol. 122(C), pages 139-150.
    6. Manning, Stephan, 2017. "The rise of project network organizations: Building core teams and flexible partner pools for interorganizational projects," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 46(8), pages 1399-1415.
    7. Ali Marjovi & Behrouz Zarei, 2023. "Design-oriented policy interventions: The case of technology-based international entrepreneurship in emerging context," Journal of International Entrepreneurship, Springer, vol. 21(1), pages 111-142, March.
    8. Nangobi Racheal & Mshenga Patience Mlongo & Mugonola Basil, 2023. "Determinants of farmers’ organizational structural choices in Uganda," SN Business & Economics, Springer, vol. 3(8), pages 1-22, August.
    9. Georg Schreyögg & Jörg Sydow, 2010. "CROSSROADS---Organizing for Fluidity? Dilemmas of New Organizational Forms," Organization Science, INFORMS, vol. 21(6), pages 1251-1262, December.
    10. Jennifer van den Berg & Alex A. Alblas & Pascale M. Le Blanc & A. Georges L. Romme, 2022. "Designing for Resilience: How Dutch Maternity Care Collaborations Anticipate, Adapt, and Thrive during a Pandemic," Administrative Sciences, MDPI, vol. 12(4), pages 1-32, November.
    11. Ali Zackery & Joseph Amankwah-Amoah & Zahra Heidari Darani & Shiva Ghasemi, 2022. "COVID-19 Research in Business and Management: A Review and Future Research Agenda," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 14(16), pages 1-32, August.
    12. Gilstrap, J. Bruce & Hart, Timothy A., 2020. "How employee behaviors effect organizational change and stability," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 109(C), pages 120-131.
    13. Mahto, Raj V. & Belousova, Olga & Ahluwalia, Saurabh, 2020. "Abundance – A new window on how disruptive innovation occurs," Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Elsevier, vol. 155(C).
    14. Mónica García-Melón & Blanca Pérez-Gladish & Tomás Gómez-Navarro & Paz Mendez-Rodriguez, 2016. "Assessing mutual funds’ corporate social responsibility: a multistakeholder-AHP based methodology," Annals of Operations Research, Springer, vol. 244(2), pages 475-503, September.
    15. Muturi, Moses Murimi & Beatrice Elesani Ombaka & Joseph Muchiri, 2019. "Relationship between Intellectual Capital and Performance of Small and Medium Manufacturing Enterprises in Kenya," International Journal of Business and Economic Sciences Applied Research (IJBESAR), International Hellenic University (IHU), Kavala Campus, Greece (formerly Eastern Macedonia and Thrace Institute of Technology - EMaTTech), vol. 12(2), pages 22-32, December.
    16. Fiorenza Belussi & Silvia Rita Sedita, 2006. "The Management of Events in the Veneto Performing Music Cluster: Bridging Latent and Permanent Organisations," "Marco Fanno" Working Papers 0028, Dipartimento di Scienze Economiche "Marco Fanno".
    17. Trippel, Arthur, 2015. "Born Globals: Darstellung und kritische Würdigung," Ilmenauer Schriften zur Betriebswirtschaftslehre, Technische Universität Ilmenau, Institut für Betriebswirtschaftslehre, volume 1, number 12015.
    18. Mohsen Jajarmizadeh & Hojat Moshtaghian Abarghooi, 2015. "Identifying Perceptual Factors Affect Intrinsic Career Success by Delphi Method," Journal of Asian Scientific Research, Asian Economic and Social Society, vol. 5(3), pages 149-164, March.
    19. Gopesh Anand & John Gray & Enno Siemsen, 2012. "Decay, Shock, and Renewal: Operational Routines and Process Entropy in the Pharmaceutical Industry," Organization Science, INFORMS, vol. 23(6), pages 1700-1716, December.
    20. Rafael Alcadipani & Cíntia Rodrigues Oliveira Medeiros, 2020. "When Corporations Cause Harm: A Critical View of Corporate Social Irresponsibility and Corporate Crimes," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 167(2), pages 285-297, November.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:spr:jorgde:v:9:y:2020:i:1:d:10.1186_s41469-020-00074-z. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.