From Organizational Resilience to Social-Ecological Resilience : Adaptive dynamics of tourism SMEs facing sargassum strandings

This article examines the mutual dependency between organizational and social-ecological resilience. We argue for the importance of moving beyond a firm-level perspective on resilience to account for potentially significant cross-scale interactions (Linnenluecke, 2015; A. Williams et al., 2017; T. A. Williams et al., 2017). In line with Clement and Riviera (2017) we define organizational resilience "as a dynamic firm property that integrates processes of both adaptation and transformation and that is longer term and intersystemic in nature" (Clement and Riviera, 2017: 15). We suggest that when organizations fail to consider the social-ecological environment in which they operate, their resilience strategies risk not only failing to contribute to the resilience of the broader socio-ecological system but potentially undermining it. For instance, a narrow focus on optimizing resilience from the perspective of a single firm may compromise social-ecological functioning, ultimately jeopardizing long-term organizational survival. We examine cross-scale interactions between organizational and social-ecological resilience through the case of the sargassum crisis in Martinique. Since 2011, massive Sargassum landings have caused serious ecological, economic, and social harm in the Caribbean and along African coasts, affecting marine life and human health. In Martinique, popular sites like the islets of Le François and Le Robert bays accessible only by water, face significant disruptions due to the accumulation of Sargassum, posing major challenges for the local authorities, populations, businesses and ecosystem. We study the adaptive dynamics of economic actors, focusing in particular on local tour operators operating in the bays of Le François and Le Robert. Our research aims to explore how these adaptive strategies impact the overall resilience of the social-ecological system. We focus on the adaptation and transformation strategies of tourism SMEs and assess their short- and medium-term impacts on the social ecological system and their potential feedback relationships. We regard social ecological systems as complex adaptive systems and use a social-ecological resilience approach as a lens to address and understand these dynamics. We conducted a longitudinal study focusing on small and medium-sized tourism enterprises in Martinique affected by the Sargassum crisis. As part of this research, we carried out 35 semi-structured interviews between April 2023 and March 2025 primarily with economic actors, but also with residents and institutional stakeholders who were affected by the Sargassum crisis and involved in its management.