This article presents a typology of temporal organizational responsesto crises in public perception aimed at examining the ability of organizations torestructure in order to cope with acute crisis management challenges. The typologyis based on organizations ’ capacities to launch crisis management strategies andadapt their managerial and operational levels to deal with crises. According to thetypology, the Fully Adapting Organization manages to adapt both its strategy andits managerial and operational levels to deal with the crisis. The Semi-AdaptingOrganization changes its strategy but lacks the capacity to change managerial andoperational levels according to the new strategy. The Non-Adapting Organizationdoes not grasp the importance of strategy change in the first place. Based on threeinductive case studies the study concludes that organizational culture plays animportant role in this process where the Semi and the Non-Adapting organizationswere dominated by strong expert cultures that proved to be less inclined to change.In contrast, the Fully Adapting Organization had deliberately fostered an organizationalculture in which flexibility was a cornerstone.