The Need for Organisational Resilience - Chapter 1

era. Logistics were constrained by the means available for transporting men and materials (e.g.

ammunition) over distance. The opportunity to exploit the sky was in its infancy, with some early

attempts to use hot-air balloons for observation.

Nevertheless, the art of war feeds on human ingenuity to develop novel ways of subduing hostile

forces. This does not make those past theories redundant. They rather serve as a point of reflection,

one that makes one think about their usefulness in the current context. Hence, they cannot be a

blueprint, to be taken for granted and applied universally. Instead, they should trigger a thought

process. As with the concept of Organisational Resilience as a translation of military concepts,

evolved over centuries, this is an art. Clausewitz argued:

All thinking is indeed Art. Where the logician draws the line, where the premises stop which are

the result of cognition – where judgement begins, there Art begins. But more than this the

perception of the mind is judgement again, and consequently Art; and at last, even the perception

by the senses as well. In a word, if it is impossible to imagine a human being possessing merely

the faculty of cognition, devoid of judgement or the reverse, so also Art and Science can never be

completely separated from each other. The more these subtle elements of light embody

themselves in the outward forms of the world, so much the more separate appear in their

domains; and now once more, where the object is creation and production, there is the province

of Art; where the object is investigation and knowledge Science holds sway. After all this it results

of itself that it is more fitting to say Art of War than Science of War. (Adapted from Von

Clausewitz 2011, 50)

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Organisational Resilience

History is most useful when explored through the eyes of those who contributed to the

development of the art of war, such as Von Clausewitz and De Jomini. Depth of study is

achieved through examining a campaign or battle in detail. In this respect, we will focus in

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