Interpreting corporate crises: Towards a co-evolutionary approach

Managing corporate crises has always been a topic of interest in the evolving research about futures, especially as far as recent literature about scenario planning is concerned. Dealing with crises is even more important to date, because of the large amount of corporate failures determined by the current macro-economic recession worldwide. While a number of reliable research methodologies on crises’ antecedents exist, it is still maintained that both the literature and practice of management lack appropriate theoretical perspectives for holistically capturing the overall dynamics of crises’ paths. This conceptual article aims at contributing to filling this gap by suggesting that patterns of corporate crises can be conceived through extensively drawing on the evolving literature about organizational adaptation. The article follows one of the latest streams of research published in Futures. In fact, through adopting co-evolutionary lenses to adaptation, the article provides its readers with an interpretative framework that conceptualizes crises’ patterns as an ineffective adaptation process.

► Understanding how, why and when corporate crises occur is crucial for their management and prevention.
► Crises’ patterns can be conceptualized as ineffective processes of organizational adaptation.
► The co-evolutionary lenses to adaptation can inspire this conceptualization.