Abstract

Organizational and societal crises, seen as conditions of abnormality and challenging situations, have often been conceptualised in opposition of normality and routinised processes. Pearson & Claire (1998) approached them as critical ‘moments’, Weick (1993) as cosmological ‘collapses’ and Shrivastava & Mitroff (1999) as ‘threats’. With all these understandings drawing on the idea of crises as something different from the established practice, there is a tendency to implement a ‘structure’ into crises that are rooted in binary oppositions (eg failure vs success) (see Mitroff, 2005) and narrated myths (eg the notorious evil organizations)...