Enacting resilience: Adventure racing as a microcosm of resilience organizing

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.