In Contamination: Disturbance ecology and organization studies

Our contemporary world is marked by dense interdependencies and ecological crisis. In response, organization studies has drawn on ecological thinking to reconceptualize the relationship between organization, technology, and environment, making significant contributions to our understanding of organization in socio-ecological, media-ecological, and process-ecological terms. Yet, this reconceptualization overemphasizes the importance of stabilization and balance, leaving the field ill equipped to address the escalating precarity of our contemporary world. Therefore, we draw on disturbance ecology to develop an understanding of organization based on contamination and disturbance, rather than stabilization and balance. We argue that this approach allows organization studies to better engage with precarity as a necessary condition of existence, of being vulnerable to others, rather than a lack of stability that needs balancing. We discuss the implications of such a disturbance-ecological approach for organization studies, focusing on vulnerability, resilience, and limits as our central themes.