What Comes After Black Swans and Gray Rhinos? An Organizational Perspective of Disruption

Abstract

The interface between organizations and their environments greatly interests organizational scholars. A key research stream—how changes in the external environment produce changes within organizations—is especially relevant in today’s turbulent economic and political context. We develop a theoretical model that considers external events and organizational routine changes as key components of disruption. We first draw on event system theory to derive and describe the external event dimensions of magnitude, coupling, clustering, and space, presented in a circumplex model. Then, we use an information-processing lens to theorize how those dimensions directly and contingently influence organizational routine change. We discuss our model’s implications for the effective management of organizations amid constant disruption.