“READINESS”: A keystone concept beyond organizational crisis preparedness and resilience

Driven by the academia-industry co-identified need to discover new keystones for optimizing organizational crisis communication and management decision-making, this concept paper proposes a new “READINESS” model. Grounded in the organizational preparedness and resilience literature and drawing predominantly from crisis communication and strategic conflict management elements, READINESS is examined as a multidimensional construct with multilevel efficacy, mental adaptability, and emotional leadership-focused mindset, with a dynamic process-driven agility at its core. Another tenet is that READINESS is not just for crises but also essential to manage threats, risks, conflicts, and crises across the board, constantly shaped by complex informational environments and polarizing sociopolitical issues. We begin by articulating READINESS and then illustrate its application in sticky crisis situations, followed by directions for future research, practice, and training innovation and optimization.