Resilience in Organizations and Societies: The State of the Art and Three Organizing Principles for Moving Forward

Abstract

Resilience has attracted a multitude of scholars from diverse backgrounds and disciplines as it is a desired feature for responding to the adversities that modern societal systems face, not least the Covid-19 pandemic. Existing research displays little convergence on the definition of the concept making a robust theoretical framework and empirical understanding of resilience highly desirable. The aim of this chapter is to provide a more holistic understanding of the complex phenomenon of resilience from a multi-sectorial, cross-national and multidisciplinary perspective by proposing an original approach into the state of the art that might enhance future research. This chapter identifies three organizing principles for a framework of resilience. First, resilience embeds both stability and change which are both required elements. Second, adversities and their novelty profile can be mapped onto a typology of absorptive, adaptive and transformative resilience. Third, resilience has a temporal dimension that can be articulated in regard to forecasting, mechanisms and outcomes. The chapters of this edited book are positioned and connected by applying these three principles, in order to both enable theory testing and theory development throughout the volume and provide key empirical insights useful for societies, organizations and individuals.

Jogo Tonggo: Utilising Local Wisdom as a Resilient Strategy During COVID-19 Pandemic in Central Java Indonesia

“…In this context, resilience can survive and rise from crises (Harun Alias et al, 2019). They have the characteristics of accepting the reality that life has meaning and can improvise, whereas, in an organisational context, resilience can adapt to the environment and overcome unexpected dangers after danger becomes real, and learn to bounce back (Frigotto et al 2022, Harun Alias et al 2019. The spirit of gotong royong, which has become a culture among the people of Central Java, always supports the connection between individuals and organisations.…”

Organizational resilience and interorganizational relationships: An exploration of Chinese business service firms

“…These are labeled as five aggregate dimensions: integrative trustworthiness , relational competence , and innovative assimilation that enhance resilience, and identity constraints and asymmetry that undermine resilience. The emerging dimensions have somewhat discrete theoretical foundations, underscoring a point made by Frigotto et al (2022): “… the phenomenon of resilience can be seen as an elaboration of existing theories that frame the interactions between organizations and an increasingly unstable and unpredictable external environment” (p. 7). In addition, the mapping also reveals “feedback” effects between resilience and IOR attributes, emphasizing the important role of learning for resilience (Williams & You, 2022; You et al, 2021).…”

“…Second, we did not directly observe firms' behaviors in terms of preparing for, responding to, and recovering from disruptions in real time. Frigotto et al (2022) noted the importance of analyzing resilience temporally. As is well documented in the literature, interview data may be subject to biases resulting from retrospective sense‐making and impression management (Eisenhardt & Graebner, 2007).…”

Arts and culture in transformation: A critical analysis of the national plans for the European Recovery and Resilience Facility

“…Policy-making in these circumstances requires profound change and encompasses renewal, along with major changes in contexts (e.g., institutional setting). Social entities will only achieve resilience if they prove to gain transformability (Folke et al, 2010) by developing the capability to respond to the changed framework conditions and to use new knowledge for solutions distant from former experiences and conditions (Frigotto et al, 2022).…”

“…The second observation is that the understanding of how CCSs should become resilient, and how resilient they should become, varies greatly among countries. As previously explained, absorptive resilience concerns the ability to return rapidly and efficiently to the original state (Frigotto et al, 2022). Absorption measures that attempt to stabilize the CCSs after the COVID-19 pandemic try to preserve the existing system, which includes measures that have an emergency aid character.…”