Organizational Adaptive Capacity during a Large-Scale Surprise Event: A Case Study at an Academic Institution during the COVID-19 Pandemic

OCCUPATIONAL APPLICATIONS

The COVID-19 pandemic caused large organizations and institutions to adapt their decision-making procedures and hierarchical structures to address pandemic-specific concerns. By examining a large public university, we found that effective adaptation occurred through restructuring the decision-making processes, coordinating decisions between departments, and effective monitoring of prior decisions. When considering the COVID-19 pandemic as a fundamental surprise event, our work identified strategies and decision-making that both maintained and increased adaptive capacity through the course of such an event. Through this case study, we highlight decisions that can be made by similar large organizations, to increase adaptive capacity when they are faced with similar surprise events.

TECHNICAL ABSTRACT

Background

In 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic caused significant disruptions for institutions of higher education around the world. In response to these disruptions, academic institutions adapted policies and standard operations to continue providing learning for students.

Purpose

We conducted a case study examining a large public university in the United States, wherein the COVID-19 pandemic had drastic effects on the university decision-making structure. We aimed to obtain insights into how a restructuring of this university’s decision-making hierarchy in response to the pandemic ultimately increased adaptive capacity.

Methods

We used semi-structured interviews of 11 participants to identify key areas of organizational adaptation and qualitative content analysis of these interviews to identify key themes within the data.

Results

Identified themes pertained to adaptations at multiple levels of organizational scale, including decision-making hierarchical structure, general preparedness for a fundamental surprise event, allocation of resources during the pandemic, and monitoring of policy effectiveness.

Conclusions

Results from our case study identify how a large public university adapted to the COVID-19 pandemic as a fundamental surprise event. These findings offer guidance for similar organizations to actualize adaptive capacity across different levels of scale.

Keywords:

• Resilience
• fundamental surprise
• adaptive capacity
• sociotechnical systems

Acknowledgments

This work was completed in conjunction with two other studies, one of which examined adaptations to class scheduling policies and procedures (Hegde et al., 2022) and the other which created a representative mathematical model of decision-making for hand sanitizer placement, each at the same large public university (O’Brien et al., 2022). These studies were partially funded by a seed grant from Clemson University awarded to author SH.

Conflict of Interest

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Additional information

Funding

These studies were partially funded by a seed grant from Clemson University. The contents of this paper are solely the responsibility of the authors and do not necessarily represent the official views of Clemson University.