Adventure racing as a microcosm of resilience organizing

Michelle Barton and Kathleen Sutcliffe | March 2023

In this inductive study we explore the relational microdynamics of organizational resilience in adventure racing. Drawing from an organizing lens, we frame resilience as an ongoing process by which organizational actors work together to absorb strain and maintain functioning within dynamically uncertain and adverse environments.

Adventure racing exemplifies such a context: stress, technological breakdowns, and untoward environmental conditions are both frequent and unpredictable. By analyzing and triangulating interview data from 103 members of 53 adventure racing teams, we found that racers experienced ongoing adversity punctuated by discrete acute shocks.

Moreover, resilience was accomplished and re-accomplished through processes of interrelating, in which racers worked together to mutually adjust roles and engagement, coordinated through distributed sensemaking. These processes allowed racers to better align with reality from one moment to the next, not only responding to and absorbing adversity as it arose but also shaping their emergent context. The patterns of interrelating established in response to adversity fuelled cycles of resilience or vulnerability and the capability to manage strain over the longer term. Our findings suggest resilience in organizations is more impermanent, enacted and relational than conceptual models currently portray.

Ercolano (2017): “They found that the more successful teams developed resilience through the processes of “drift management” and “meaning management.”

Teams that managed drift well paid close attention to changes in the race course. Just as important, they were attuned to their own physical and mental states. If a team member was struggling in any way, he or she would share that information with the others, and the whole team would adapt (by easing the tempo or, in some cases, literally carrying an exhausted or injured colleague). “To the extent that they could maintain a shared but fluid and accurate picture of their situation (e.g., where we are, how we are doing), they were likely to take appropriate action,” the authors write of the race participants. ” … In contrast, when teams lost touch with the reality of their context—either internally or externally—they were more likely to drift. They would enact behaviors that brought them into worse situations, for example, rushing past a turnoff or checkpoint, taking a wrong turn instead of slowing to check a map, or pushing flagging teammates to the point of breakdown.”

Drift management commonly went hand in hand with meaning management, the process of developing a mindset that sees a way through adversity to a brighter future. Adversity is acknowledged, but it is also understood to be a normal part of the experience that must be endured, probably not for a long time. The less successful teams failed at meaning management. They would disengage—both from the demands of the race and from each other—lose hope, and never cultivate the insights that might have helped them work through bad stretches.”

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Bibliografie

Barton, M., & Sutcliffe, K. (2023). Enacting resilience: Adventure racing as a microcosm of resilience organizing. Journal of Contingencies and Crisis Management. https://doi.org/10.1111/1468-5973.12459

Ercolano, P. (2017). ‘Resilience-in-action’ is key to team success, whether in backwoods or business. John Hopkins University. Read on July 5, 2026 from https://hub.jhu.edu/2017/08/08/backwoods-resilience-business-organizational-theory/