The building blocks of organizational resilience: a review of the empirical literature

Abstract

PurposeResilience is critical for organizations in today's volatile business environment, yet some will survive (and even thrive) despite adversity, while others will perish. Why do some organizations handle adversity better than others? The past literature confirms the importance of specific resources, capabilities and structures in dealing with adversity. However, empirical research on organizational resilience remains highly diverse, and the available results have not yet been presented succinctly.Design/methodology/approachA literature review of empirical research on organizational resilience was conducted to summarize the diverse findings of 69 studies, focusing on the factors that lead to resilience.FindingsSeveral building blocks affect how organizations successfully anticipate, cope with and adapt to adversity. Anticipation entails environmental scanning, resilience plans, specific leadership behavior and resources. Coping necessitates particular leadership qualities, a certain organizational culture and innovation. Adaptation requires an organization to learn from adversity and initiate change processes, which influences its ability to anticipate adversity in the long run.Originality/valueBy exclusively analyzing empirical research on organizational resilience, this study summarizes and assembles the results into building blocks for organizational resilience. The findings elaborate on the composition of a concept that is known for its complexity.

Impact of environmental scanning on organizational resilience and competitive advantage: a study of Egyptian SMEs

“…This could be achieved by activities such as ES. Further, Vakilzadeh and Haase (2021) also confirm our result by indicating that ESas an anticipation techniqueis regarded as one of the building blocks of organizational resilience.…”

Analysis of the Influencing Factors of Organizational Resilience in the ISM Framework: An Exploratory Study Based on Multiple Cases

“…From the research within the study, only scholars Vakilzadeh and Haase (2021) [53] summarized and explored the influencing factors of organizational resilience based on the empirical study of organizational resilience; however, it is difficult to reflect the crosslevel characteristics of organizational resilience. In view of this, this study systematically sorts out the influencing factors of organizational resilience from three levels, namely surface, middle and deep levels, based on the previous studies, in order to more clearly reflect the characteristics of the influencing factors of organizational resilience.…”

The relationship between environmental scanning and organizational resilience: Roles of process innovation and environmental uncertainty

“…This could be achieved by activities such as ES. Further, Vakilzadeh and Haase (2021) confirmed that ES, as an anticipation mechanism, is regarded as a building block of OR.…”

“…Similarly, Senbeto and Hon (2020) confirmed the relevance of innovation during a crisis by demonstrating that employees' innovative capabilities can be a suitable strategy to overcome adversity. Additionally, Vakilzadeh and Haase (2021) claimed that an organization's ability to innovate during adversity is critical for resilience. In the study of Giousmpasoglou and Marinakou (2021), one of the main qualities of general managers that emerged as crucial during the COVID-19 pandemic was innovation and resilience building.…”

“…Some previous studies has examined or at least encouraged to examine the impact of ES on OR and highlighted the importance of information to reduce uncertainty and increase adaptation such as the study of Burnard et al (2018), and more recently the study of Vakilzadeh and Haase (2021). Yet, the links between environmental scanning and organizational resilience remain unclear.…”