Organisational Report

The evolution of thinking on Organizational Resilience Research and thought leadership on Organizational Resilience has developed over the last 40 years in several different fields (see Figure 1). We identify five distinct phases, with five contrasting perspectives. A defensive perspective that focused on loss avoidance and value preservation drove the first two phases: 1. Preventative control. Organizational Resilience is achieved by means of risk management, physical barriers, redundancy (spare capacity), systems back-ups and standardized procedures, which protect the organization from threats and allow it to ‘bounce back’ from disruptions to restore a stable state. i.e. defensive + consistent. 2. Mindful action. Organizational Resilience is produced by people, who notice and react to threats and respond effectively to unfamiliar or challenging situations. i.e. defensive + flexible.

BALANCING AND MANAGING TENSION

PARADOXICAL THINKING

IMAGINING AND CREATING

ADAPTIVE INNOVATION

PERFORMANCE OPTIMIZATION

IMPROVING AND EXPLOITING

MINDFUL ACTION

NOTICING AND RESPONDING

MONITORING AND COMPLYING

PREVENTATIVE CONTROL

ORGANIZATIONAL RESILIENCE MATURITY

TIME

Figure 1: The evolution of Organizational Resilience thinking over time

It soon became recognized that Organizational Resilience was not only about learning to bounce back (Wildavsky,1988), but also the ability to ‘bounce forward’ (Manyena, O’Brien, O’Keefe and Rose, 2011) to grow and prosper in the future (Reich, 2006). Again, there were two further phases and perspectives on how this could be achieved: 3. Performance optimization. Organizational Resilience is formed by continually improving, refining and extending existing competencies, enhancing ways of working and exploiting current technologies to serve present customers and markets i.e. progressive + consistent. 4. Adaptive innovation. Organizational Resilience is created through creating, inventing and exploring unknown markets and new technologies. Organizations can be the disruption in their environment i.e. progressive + flexible.

Organizational Resilience | BSI and Cranfield School of Management

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