Making sense of uncertainty – Interrogating conceptions of the New Normal

A world of poly-crisis stimulates concept formation. A popular term for understanding these events is ‘New Normal’. The increased use of this term reflects a demand for making sense of a world characterized by unpredictability and complexity. We will examine how the term New Normal is understood and used in current academic writing and what may these meanings imply for business? This article offers an integrative literature review of 307 articles published between 2006 and early 2023. Our review reveals significant empirical variation while at the ontological level we propose two categories: Those who claim we are in a new steady state vs. those who understand the current business environment as dominated by flux. To enable inferences about strategy and organizations, authors at a minimum need to be clear whether they perceive the new normal as a steady state or a permanent state of flux. • Polycrisis begets sensemaking. A popular term to make sense of it is the New Normal. • Authors use the term New Normal without speaking explicitly about what it means. • New Normal can mean both a steady state and a permanent state of flux. • Meso level analyses tends to see more stability than macro level analyses. • Management advice will source more ideas from the crisis management literature.