The Need for Organisational Resilience - Chapter 1

possible source of error, yet flexibility relies on fostering that same cognition to develop new

solutions. At times, an ‘autopilot’, rule-based, way of working suffices to counter the effects

of coupling, but in the face of complex interactions, mindfulness must be allowed to flourish.

It is understandable that a rapid transition from consistency-based to flexibility-based

management, and vice-versa, is challenging, as managers tend habitually to pursue their

chosen way of thinking and working, until external circumstances force them to change. It is

well-established that managers find it equally demanding to be simultaneously compliant

with rules, processes and routines, while deviating from them in order to permit creative

solutions to take effect. The literature offers solutions to these two problems which require

fundamentally different approaches, setting up a tension which is not easily reconcilable. In a

nuclear power plant, for example, where resilience is of utmost importance, this problem is

close to insurmountable:

We cycled endlessly through the problem of insuring rapid, unquestioning response

to orders from on high (or orders in the procedures manual), and at the same time

allowing discretion to operators. Regarding discretion, the operators would have the

latitude to make unique diagnosis of the problem and disregard the manual, and be

free of orders from remote authorities who did not have hands-on daily experience

with the system. We could recognize the need for both; we could not find a way to

have both.” (Perrow 1999, 335)

The need for resilience in 1940. From the outset, the campaign in the west in

1940 was more demanding for the Germans than it was for the French and their Allies. The

positions along the river Meuse at the southern edge of the Ardennes were not as strongly

fortified as those sections further to the East. However, the Ardennes, both the rivers Meuse

and Semois and the heights overlooking the area around Sedan, posed an additional

obstacle for the Germans. In this line, two potent French armies were deployed: the French

Second Army under General Charles Huntzinger and the French Ninth Army under General

André Georges Corap. The aim of these two armies was to establish a defence line in depth,

and repulse any German attempt to cross the rivers Semois and Meuse. In addition, the

purpose of the Ninth Army was to serve as a hinge for the more eastern armies to move into

Belgium to cover the Dyle river and reinforce the military forces of the Low-Countries to

make a stand at the city of Breda.

The Germans had to carry out a range of amphibious crossings such as over the Albert-

Canal and the rivers Semois and Meuse. Amphibious crossings take time and they require a

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