Hysteresis as learning: How professionals adapt, withdraw, and resist in organisational polycrisis

Abstract

Organisations in polycrisis no longer face isolated shocks but overlapping disruptions that unsettle professional identities and everyday work. This study examines how staff in UK universities learn, unlearn, and resist when institutional change accelerates beyond their capacity to adapt. Through a textual–visual thematic analysis of 41 participants’ narratives and self-selected photographs, we specify how hysteresis operates as a learning condition under sustained polycrisis. We identify three patterned responses under conditions of hysteresis: adaptive (pragmatic recalibration), ambivalent (emotional suspension), and resistive (ethical defiance). These reveal how affect, time, and institutional complexity shape divergent ways of making sense and sustaining integrity in turbulent contexts. The study advances management learning theory by showing how professionals learn morally and emotionally amid uncertainty, demonstrates the value of multimodal inquiry for tracing affective dynamics, and offers insight into how leaders might recognise and support varied trajectories of becoming during sustained disruption.