Faculty of Business and Economics, U. of Melbourne, Australia
Recessions represent a major challenge for organizational adaptiveness. They not only require substantial and swift changes to a firm’s internal operations but also—due to the high degree of interdependence between firms in the global economy—to a firm’s interorganizational relations. Research on how firms manage their exchange relationships through recessions has developed across multiple management disciplines. Using resilience as an umbrella concept, we synthesize this interdisciplinary literature, clarify key concepts, map the evidence available, and identify gaps in the evidence base. Our analysis of 73 empirical papers from six management disciplines yields the following main insights: firms deploy a variety of tactics to eliminate, stabilize, transform, and create interorganizational relations; a combination of tactics (instead of reliance on one type) may yield superior firm outcomes during and after a recession; some tactics may be sequentially interdependent; and the effectiveness of tactics in reaching desirable outcomes (i.e., resiliency) might be contingent on internal and external environments’ characteristics. We conclude our review with suggestions for future research.