An Event-System Perspective on Disruption: Theorizing the Pandemic and Other Discontinuities Through Historical and Fictional Accounts of the Plague

Disruptions such as COVID-19 – and the subsequent flux they trigger in organizations and society – have become commonplace. In order to advance our understanding of (and adaptation to) future discontinuities and crises, we argue that we require a reconceptualization of how disruption occurs. To do so, we draw on Event Systems Theory (EST): in contrast to previous work viewing disruption as the outcome of a singular event, we focus on how disruption can occur from an event chain, i.e., a set of events that are temporally and causally connected. We abductively shape our conceptual arguments by drawing on narratives of past pandemics, reviewing two historical and two fictional texts that (re)create the experiences of those living through the Black Death and subsequent outbreaks of the bubonic plague. Rather than focusing on events themselves, we identify how certain characteristics among events in a chain lead to four micro-level experiences: stagnation, disorientation, polarization and repudiation. We then proceed to examine how these micro-level reactions culminate into macro-level transformations of economic, political and cultural norms. Our event-system perspective on disruption and crises thereby not only provides insights into understanding the post-pandemic world, but also generates insights into responses to future discontinuities.