Global climate change threatens university campuses around the world. However, prior research suggests that universities around the globe tend to prioritize preventing further climate change rather than developing plans to address the effects of ongoing, irreversible climate change. Further, scholarship on climate change and disaster resilience tends to focus on national and municipal government efforts to respond to crisis and often overlooks universities. In this paper, we build on prior literature by addressing the following research question: How can a team of administrators support organizational resilience to respond to natural disasters? Drawing on a framework from management literature, we performed a basic qualitative inquiry study to consider whether a university’s response to a hurricane demonstrated resilience or rigidity. We found that university administrators exercised resilience by taking time to communicate and process information, using material resources, and focusing on extending emotional or relational resources. Our study provides one example of how a university can learn from prior crises and exercise resilience when faced with new threats. We offer recommendations for future research, including examining how organizational resilience occurs at multiple levels of an organization and how organizational resilience may vary when universities encounter different types of crises.

全球气候变化威胁着世界各地的大学校园。但是，先前的研究表明，全球的大学倾向于优先考虑防止进一步的气候变化，而不是制定计划来应对持续的，不可逆转的气候变化的影响。此外，关于气候变化和抗灾能力的奖学金往往侧重于国家和市政府应对危机的努力，并且常常忽视了大学。在本文中，我们通过解决以下研究问题建立在现有文献的基础上：一组管理人员如何支持组织应对自然灾害的应变能力？基于管理文献的框架，我们进行了基本的定性探究研究，以考虑大学对飓风的反应是否显示出韧性或刚性。我们发现，大学管理者通过花时间沟通和处理信息，使用物质资源并专注于扩展情感或关系资源来行使应变能力。我们的研究提供了一个例子，说明大学在面对新的威胁时如何从先前的危机中学习并发挥应变能力。我们为未来的研究提供建议，包括研究组织弹性如何在组织的多个层次上发生，以及当大学遇到不同类型的危机时组织弹性如何变化。