Sea Change? Sensemaking, Firm Reactions, and Community Resilience Following Climate Disasters

Abstract

Communities around the world face increasing risks of climate disasters such as floods, hurricanes, and droughts. What drives firms’ heterogeneous responses to a climate disaster, and what could be the consequences for community resilience? To address these questions, we theorize how different aspects of sensemaking (sense of place, time, certitude, and loss) affect firm responses. Then, aided by an elaborate thought experiment – a narrative scenario of a future flood hitting the Dutch coast – we theorize how heterogeneity in firms’ initial responses can trigger sensemaking-sensegiving cycles that spiral a community towards reconstruction or unplanned retreat. Our article advances understanding of firms’ heterogenous disaster responses, the drivers of community resilience, and uncovers potential tensions between organizational and community resilience. We also contribute to sensemaking theory by relaxing the popular assumption that sensegiving requires deliberation. Finally, our article showcases how narrative scenarios of future events can expand the methodological toolkit of organization theory and points to new opportunities for future interdisciplinary work.