The Power of the Present in Building Organizational Resilience

Organizational resilience scholars increasingly recognize that time matters; however, the operative present in which executives anticipate, absorb, recover from, and learn from adversity remains underspecified. This omission is consequential because how executives construe the span of “now” shapes which cues they notice, which actions they deem feasible, and how they coordinate responses as adversity unfolds. We address this gap by proposing the concept of present temporal duration (PTD), which shapes organizational resilience through three present-focused mechanisms: retrospection, introspection, and prospection. Defined as an executive’s subjective perception of the span of the operative present, PTD has two facets: an integrative span (how broad the operative present is) and temporal fluidity (how flexibly this span adjusts to situational demands). We theorize that executive PTD becomes embodied in organizations through two channels: discursive practices and temporal leadership. Drawing on temporal fit logic, we argue that organizational resilience is strengthened when the breadth and flexibility of PTD align with the temporal demands of different disruption phases and is weakened when executives rigidly sustain an operative present that is either too narrow or too broad. We develop testable propositions about PTD’s cross-level embodiment and its potentially nonmonotonic effects on organizational resilience.