Organisational Report

Organizational Resilience | BSI and Cranfield School of Management

The evolution of thinking on Organizational

Resilience

Research and thought leadership on Organizational Resilience has developed over

the last 40 years in several different fields (see Figure 1). We identify five distinct

phases, with five contrasting perspectives. A defensive perspective that focused on

loss avoidance and value preservation drove the first two phases:

Preventative control.

Organizational Resilience is achieved by means of risk

management, physical barriers, redundancy (spare capacity), systems back-ups

and standardized procedures, which protect the organization from threats and

allow it to ‘bounce back’ from disruptions to restore a stable state. i.e. defensive +

consistent.

Mindful action.

Organizational Resilience is produced by people, who notice and

react to threats and respond effectively to unfamiliar or challenging situations. i.e.

defensive + flexible.

PREVENTATIVE

CONTROL

TIME

ORGANIZATIONAL RESILIENCE MATURITY

MINDFUL

ACTION

PERFORMANCE

OPTIMIZATION

ADAPTIVE

INNOVATION

PARADOXICAL

THINKING

BALANCING AND

MANAGING TENSION

IMAGINING AND

CREATING

IMPROVING AND

EXPLOITING

NOTICING AND

RESPONDING

MONITORING AND

COMPLYING

Figure 1: The evolution of Organizational Resilience thinking over time

It soon became recognized that Organizational Resilience was not only about

learning to bounce back (Wildavsky,1988), but also the ability to ‘bounce forward’

(Manyena, O’Brien, O’Keefe and Rose, 2011) to grow and prosper in the future

(Reich, 2006). Again, there were two further phases and perspectives on how this

could be achieved:

Performance optimization.

Organizational Resilience is formed by continually

improving, refining and extending existing competencies, enhancing ways of

working and exploiting current technologies to serve present customers and

markets i.e.

progressive

+ consistent.

Adaptive innovation.

Organizational Resilience is created through creating,

inventing and exploring unknown markets and new technologies. Organizations

can be the disruption in their environment i.e.

progressive + flexible.