Organizing For Resilience

Leading and Managing Risk in a Disruptive World

Christopher Williams, Jacqueline Jing You

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• eBook ISBN: 9781000365092
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Business General
• Index: Business

Organizing for Resilience provides a fresh and novel insight into research on how leaders can prepare their organizations to face up to shocks and disruptions in a turbulent and unpredictable world. It provides an analysis of the topic of organizational resilience in a comprehensive and integrative way, with fresh theoretical and research implications as well as important implications for leaders.

The first book to synthesize themes from across a spectrum of resilience using the metaphor of a 'resilience landscape', chapters in Part I are devoted to five analytical levels: individual level resilience; small firms in which major disruption can threaten survival; large firms with disruptions in one part of the organization; large firms facing enterprise-wide disruption; and disruption to a complete community or economic ecosystem of individuals and organizations. Cases and practice insights are presented to bring the topics to life, allowing reflection and debate at each level. In Part II, the construct of the 'resilience landscape' is developed, along with a discussion on leadership for resilience by instilling a resilience mind-set and developing capabilities in relational resilience.

The book is ideally suited to bachelor's and master's degree courses on strategy, organizational behaviour and leadership. PhD and DBA researchers in the field of resilience and strategy will also find the book useful, as will practising consultants and business leaders.

PART I
LOOKING BACK

RESEARCH AND CASES OF ADVERSITY AND RESILIENCE

1
INTRODUCTION

The suffering factor: why care about organizing for resilience?

Examples of disruptions that have caused tremendous damage and suffering to organizations and their stakeholders abound. Some of these disruptions originate externally to the organization while some spring up from within. Some disruptions are highly newsworthy and gain the attention of the world's press. Many go relatively unnoticed and knowledge about them is confined to people in and around a focal organization. Some disruptions come as a shock to the organization; there is a surprise factor that leaves managers scratching their heads. Others were anticipated: "We knew an earthquake was probable, we just didn't know when."

To think that an organization on this planet will never be confronted by disruption is a ludicrous suggestion. And not only is disruption ubiquitous, its effect can be felt in many different ways. Obrist et al. (2010: 285), citing Chambers (1989: 4), referred to this in terms of loss; this taking "many forms — becoming or being physically weaker, economically impoverished, socially dependent, humiliated or psychologically harmed". As noted by Quarantelli, Lagadec and Boin (2007), negative social phenomena such as natural disasters (e.g. earthquakes, floods, sudden epidemics, tsunamis) and man-made disasters (e.g. hostile inter- and intra-group relationships, conflicts, wars) can be traced back to the times when human beings started living in groups thousands of years ago.

Our working definition of disruption is consistent with the literature (e.g. Bhamra et al., 2011): an event occurring externally or internally to the organization that has the potential to negatively impact the operating strategy and performance of the organization. The word disruption has its roots in Latin: disrumpere, meaning to break apart, split, shatter, or break into pieces.¹ Organizations are confronted by disruptions all the time and at any time. Quite literally, they are in danger of breaking up and shattering! Each time an organization ignores a disruption it runs the risk of incurring damage, some kind of loss. Its costs are increased and/or its sales are reduced. Its suppliers, clients, staff and owners are harmed and may become less motivated to supply, buy, work for or own the organization. This progressive loss — if left unchecked — ultimately leads to the death of the organization (Hall, 1976).²

1 Online Etymology Dictionary, www.etymonline.com/word/disruption, accessed 25 May 2020

2 As Lengnick-Hall and Beck (2005: 748) noted: "If a firm does not meet the needs of its environment, competitive performance suffers."

Organizations simply cannot afford to overlook disruptions and they cannot afford to ignore the need to organize themselves in ways that allow them to cope with disruptions. This coping with disruptions lies at the heart of the definition of resilience. The word also has Latin roots: resilire, to rebound or recoil.³ Bhamra et al. (2011) noted how the concept of resilience across different fields (such as ecology, psychology, strategy, metallurgy and engineering) is more or less consistent; it is about returning a system to a stable state following a disruption. Importantly for our discussion, the concept relates to an organizational system as opposed to a mechanical system. While the emphasis on the outcome is one of stability and prevention of loss, the desirable outcome of a stable state does not have to be the same state that the system was in prior to the disruption. Resilience is just as much about moving from one equilibrium to another as it is about returning to the previous state. Linnenluecke's (2017) review of resilience in business and management made a similar observation. Resilience is a "desirable characteristic" (p. 4) that allows an organization to recover in the face of adversity. However, Linnenluecke (2017) showed that different fields have used slightly different conceptualizations and operationalizations over time. This is echoed by Thornley et al. (2015), who described it as a "contested term" (p. 23). Our working definition of resilience aligns with these review works, and is the one put forward by Fiksel in his (2006: 16) essay: resilience is "the capacity for an enterprise to survive, adapt, and grow in the face of turbulent change" (italics added).⁴

3 Online Etymology Dictionary, www.etymonline.com/word/resilience, accessed 25 May 2020

4 Numerous definitions of resilience exist. Review articles such as Bhamra et al. (2011) provide many examples. The definition we use is consistent with that used by the American Psychological Association: "the process of adapting well in the face of adversity, trauma, tragedy, threats or even significant sources of stress" (Southwick et al., 2014: 5). It is also consistent with recent work in organizational theory, e.g. Williams et al. (2017: 742): "the process by which an actor (i.e. individual, organization, or community) builds and uses its capability endowments to interact with the environment in a way that positively adjusts and maintains functioning prior to, during, and following adversity."

Organizations need resilience because the alternative is "absurd" (Fiksel, 2006; 16), undesirable (Linnenluecke, 2017) and potentially disastrous (Bhamra et al., 2011). They need the capacity to face up to turbulent change and the shocks that affect their attempts to realize their vision and perform for their stakeholders. Importantly resilience does not come about by magic or luck. It is a property of the organizational system that needs careful thinking, preparation and execution. Nevertheless, we do not fully understand organizational resilience. There is no unified approach or single theory on how to build this capacity for dealing with turbulent change and disruption (Welsh, 2014). Meanwhile, the world continues to throw up many examples of organizations and economic systems negatively impacted by shocks. As Linnenluecke (2017: 24) noted: "existing theoretical and empirical insights may have not yet uncovered the full range of factors leading to resilience, and . . . existing insights might not be directly applicable or transferable to different or future contexts."

Can we control resilience?

One reason for the lack of a unified approach for understanding how to organize for resilience is that organizations do not always need to internalize resilience. Maybe scholars have failed to fully appreciate this. In other words, one approach could be to outsource resilience and buy in the services of external organizations that are on han...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Preface
• PART I Looking back: research and cases of adversity and resilience
• PART II Looking forward: resilience in and for the future
• References
• Index