The Need for Organisational Resilience - Chapter 3

Dispersion

Concentration

Static redundancy

Dynamic redundancy

No determination

Greater local focus

Stability

Dynamic

Wide focus

Narrow, localised focus

Table 3.2: Advantages of Dispersion and Concentration

Where resources and capabilities are unfocussed, they can provide a continuous

defence/offence against disruptions from internal and external environments. Static

redundancy is established across the first-line of defence/offence, to back up primary

resources and capabilities in case that first-line of defence/offence fails. It provides stability

for an organisation and a continuous buffer. This approach is beneficial in organisations that

are uncertain of where their critical functions reside and thus unsure about their own

vulnerabilities.

A concentrated effort is focussed and provides ‘just-in time’ redundancy to enable the

greatest impact in defensively withstanding unwelcome change or progressively focussing

on the vulnerabilities of a competitor. Hence, instead of covering all eventualities – risks and

opportunities − it provides a more dynamic COG that, depending on circumstances, may

shift and adopt a different type and strength of concentration.

Towards Organisational Resilience: The Fallacy of Protecting

Everything at Minimal Cost

Indiscriminate investment in organisation-wide robustness is a worthwhile goal. However,

strengthening the entire organisation to cover all functional vulnerabilities may also reveal

which of them are most crucial to the functioning of the organisation. The spread of

resources and capabilities, and their permanent embedding in an organisation, waters down

the robustness of critical functions by default. Once these critical functions cease to function

properly, they are likely to start a chain-reaction, threatening the functioning of other related

work units.

Such watering down is often driven by the need to save costs across the organisation,

without acknowledging where vulnerabilities lie. An example of this is the IT meltdown of British Airways (BA) on 27 th May 2017. Supposedly, the entirety of BA’s data centre switched

off, or was switched off by the actions of a single technician. On the first day alone, a 1,000

flights from London Heathrow and Gatwick were cancelled, with scenes of chaos at these

airports as unsuspected customers arrived in droves, only to realise that their flights were

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