Crisis Management in a Learning Organization

Abstract

A key property of a learning organization is its ability to cope with change, and in this context, with crisis situations. Crisis situations are events characterized by factors such as suddenness, short decision-making time and threats to organizational goals, insecurity, uncertainty, limited control and impact on future operations. It is not possible to fully predict the moment when different types of crisis situations will appear, so one of the key characteristics of organizations is preventive action in the context of preparation and thinking about the ways of acting and behaving in different crisis situations. This is also one of the key tasks of crisis management. As part of the preventive action of crisis management, it is necessary to evaluate and analyze previous experiences, both one's own and those of others, and apply lessons learned in the crisis planning and preparation phase.
Crisis learning represents organizational behavior in accordance with the concept of a learning organization. Such learning contributes to organizational effectiveness but must become an integral part of the organizational culture of the organizations themselves. Rethinking and adopting all organizational activities that have proven to be effective in containing and resolving a crisis throughout its duration, as well as changing and eliminating all inadequate and ineffective procedures, is part of the learning phase, the contribution of which is reflected in future preventive activities.
The purpose of this paper is to highlight the importance of preventive action and systematic preparation for the occurrence of various types of crises, with a special emphasis given to the adoption of ideas and organizational behavior aligned with the concept of a learning organization.