Management and Organization in Times of War: Challenges and Responses

Wars between countries alongside civil wars or terrorist attacks (Liu et al., 2024) are increasingly becoming sources of political, economic, and social upheaval, as well as humanitarian and environmental disasters.Countrybased armed conflicts have expanded across a growing number of regions in recent decades (Davies et al., 2025) and are identified as the most significant global threat in the Global Risks Report 2025 (WEF, 2025).Armed conflicts constitute extreme shocks not only for the population exposed to shelling, displacement, and the destruction of housing and critical infrastructure.Importantly, they put tremendous strain also on organizations, which must survive in a multi-risk environment, overcome disruptions, and adapt to new circumstances characterized by high uncertainty.War imposes paradoxical stresses on firms, institutions, and societies, triggering a profound effect on various fields of study (Lumineau and Keller, 2025), and management studies is no exception.Although some businesses, such as weapons manufacturers, may significantly benefit from prolonged war (Naseem et al., 2023), the majority of companies remain under pressure from diverse challenges, requiring managerial flexibility, adaptive responses, and strengthened resilience in order to survive.