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The logic of tact : How decisions happen in situations of crisis

Author

Listed:
  • Martin Kornberger

    (EM - EMLyon Business School)

  • Stephan Leixnering
  • Renate E. Meyer

Abstract

The mass migration of refugees in the fall of 2015 in Europe posed an immense humanitarian and logistical challenge: exhausted from their week-long journeys, refugees arrived in Vienna in need of care, shelter, food, medical aid, and onward transport. The refugee crisis was managed by an emerging polycentric and intersectoral collective of organizations. In this paper, we investigate how leaders of these organizations made decisions in concert with each other and hence sustained the capacity to act as collective. We ask: what was the logic of decision-making that orchestrated collective action during the crisis? In answering this question, we make the following contribution: departing from March's logics of consequences and appropriateness as well as Weick's work on sensemaking during crisis, we introduce an alternative logic that informed decision-making in our study: the logic of tact. With this concept (a) we offer a better understanding of how managers may make decisions under the condition of bounded rationality and the simultaneous transgression of their institutional identity in situations of crisis; and (b) we show that in decision-making under extreme pressure cognition is neither ahead of action, nor is action ahead of cognition; rather, tact explicates the rapid switching between cognition and action, orchestrating decision-making through their interplay.

Suggested Citation

  • Martin Kornberger & Stephan Leixnering & Renate E. Meyer, 2019. "The logic of tact : How decisions happen in situations of crisis," Post-Print hal-02312257, HAL.
    • Handle: RePEc:hal:journl:hal-02312257
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    Citations

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    Cited by:

    1. Larsen, Bøje, 2020. "Whatever happened to “The Technology of Foolishness”? Does it have any potential today?," Scandinavian Journal of Management, Elsevier, vol. 36(1).
    2. Dorine Maurice Mattar, 2021. "An Organizational Change With Quarantined Members," SAGE Open, , vol. 11(1), pages 21582440209, January.
    3. Brinks, Verena & Ibert, Oliver, 2023. "Experts in crisis: The wide spectrum of advisors for coping with extreme events," EconStor Open Access Articles and Book Chapters, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, vol. 92, pages 1-13.
    4. Liisa Välikangas & Marijane Luistro-Jonsson & Sirkka L. Jarvenpaa, 2022. "Health crisis and the EU’s HERA: amplifying partial organizing with resourcing for stability, agility, and evolvability," Journal of Organization Design, Springer;Organizational Design Community, vol. 11(4), pages 169-187, December.
    5. Stephan Leixnering & Renate E Meyer & Tobias Polzer, 2021. "Hybrid coordination of city organisations: The rule of people and culture in the shadow of structures," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 58(14), pages 2933-2951, November.
    6. Stephan Leixnering & Markus Höllerer, 2022. "‘Remaining the same or becoming another?’ Adaptive resilience versus transformative urban change," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 59(6), pages 1300-1310, May.
    7. de Graaff, Bert & Huizenga, Sabrina & van de Bovenkamp, Hester & Bal, Roland, 2023. "Framing the pandemic: Multiplying “crises” in Dutch healthcare governance during the emerging COVID-19 pandemic," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 328(C).

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