Organizational Crises and the Disturbance of Relational Systems

Various bodies of literature attest to how crises significantly damage the way people relate with one another—damage that lasts long past the cessation of those crises. Such relational disturbances are problematic in terms of crisis management theory. If crises are understood to be operationally resolved yet the relational systems that underlie organizations remain disturbed, the crises may not truly be resolved, with implications for ongoing dysfunctional patterns of behavior, organizational vulnerabilities, and longer-term performance problems. The purpose of this article is to conceptualize organizational crises in terms of relational disturbance and crisis management as the repair of such disturbances. We introduce a framework for analyzing the relational health of organizational systems, drawing on family systems theory to help define the dimensions of relational systems. We describe and illustrate the disturbances of relational systems in the context of crises and develop a framework for their repair and transformation. We conclude with implications for theory and research guided by an expanded definition of crisis management that links operational and relational dimensions.