While organizations increasingly face crises, the strategy literature has overlooked how organizations adapt to them. To bridge this gap, this article builds on punctuated equilibrium theory and on the strategy perspectives that deal with crisis to construct the microfoundations of punctuated equilibrium theory. It develops a model highlighting crisis antecedents, adaptation to the crisis and crisis outcomes. In so doing, this article contributes to punctuated equilibrium theory and to the strategy literature on crisis by offering a renewed definition of crisis: the process of adaptation through which an organization changes (or does not change) its path following a signal of drift.
This article aims to offer a renewal of the natural-resource-based view of the firm as introduced in 1995 by Stuart Hart. This study suggests shifting how we theorize resources by taking an ecocentric perspective on resources, focusing on their governance and questioning resources rarity as the unique source of competitive advantage. Building on a multiple-case study of organizations or industries in the agricultural sector that have adopted this departure from Hart’s (1995) view, we explain how it led to a mutation of the industries relying on new sustainable development strategies. In so doing, this article aims to contribute to theoretical discussions on resources and on sustainable development and to offer political implications.
