Extreme Weather Events and the Critical Importance of Anticipatory Adaptation and Organizational Resilience in Responding to Impacts

Growing scientific evidence suggests that more frequent and severe weather extremes such as heat waves, hurricanes, flooding and droughts will have an increasing impact on organizations, industries and entire economies. These findings call for the development of theoretical and practical frameworks to strengthen the capacity of organizations to respond to such impacts. Yet despite the need to understand what is required to build anticipatory adaptation and organizational resilience to expected impacts, the organizational theory literature offers only limited insights. This paper proposes a comprehensive conceptual framework of organizational adaptation and resilience to extreme weather events for addressing the effects of ecological discontinuities in organizational research and strategic decision-making. Implications and suggestions for future research are offered. Copyright (C) 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment.