Building Resilient Organizations: Predicaments & Prospects


Book Description

This book is aimed at contemplating and reflecting on future course of action for businesses in order to become more resilient. It discusses various predicaments and prospects around building enduring organizations. By demonstrating how to build strong and resilient systems that can survive catastrophes witnessed in the past few years, it offers practical solutions by discussing the current researches, the-oretical insights, experiences and lessons which can inspire and empower business leaders, academics, students, policy makers and other stakeholders in economics.




The Resilient Organization: How Adaptive Cultures Thrive Even When Strategy Fails


Book Description

WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO BE A "RESILIENT" ORGANIZATION? It means you are not a prisoner of past performance, good or bad; you don't rely on the right leader alone for success but build the capability to be resilient into the organization. You constantly rehearse the culture of anticipating and responding to change, and you innovate even when you don't yet need to. You don't just survive, you thrive--amidst challenge and opportunity. This essential guide, written by a renowned expert in global resilience strategy, shows you how to be smart about success and failure. With these field-tested forward-focused tools, you can: SURVIVE SHOCKS AND SETBACKS TURN THREATS INTO OPPORTUNITIES ANTICIPATE CHANGE BEFORE IT HAPPENS ENSURE YOUR SUCCESS IS SUSTAINABLE As a bonus, the book features Postcards from the Resilient Edge, a powerhouse selection of frontline lessons from leading corporations that demonstrate ways you can marshal skill and master luck to take control of your organization's destiny. THE DEFINITIVE GUIDE TO THE NEW RESILIENCE MOVEMENT One of the most powerful trends born of the New Recession, resilience has become the operative word for business leaders and entrepreneurs facing an unpredictable market. On the forefront of this movement, global innovator and strategy consultant professor Liisa Välikangas has created a step-by-step system of proven survival strategies you can put into action immediately. Whether you need to bounce back from a downturn, take the fight to new competitors, or change your game plan at a moment's notice, The Resilient Organization shows you how to rethink your current strategies--and rebuild your company’s foundation--using four basic tools . . . INNOVATION with high impact and low overhead DESIGN that is robust, sustainable, and evolvable ADAPTABILITY to changing circumstances STRENGTH in the face of adversity By creating a culture of resilience in your organization, you'll be prepared for any challenge the future might hold. The Resilient Organization's fascinating case studies provide real-world examples of resilience in action: how to recover faster from hardships, how to experiment on new opportunities in a timely manner, how to avoid repeating bad business decisions, and when to scrap old strategiesthat just don't work anymore. Using the timetested principles of resilience, you can find golden opportunities in any situation--whether it's tough competition, reduced resources, or a roller-coaster market. If you're strategically resilient, you not only survive crises, but you can turn these crises into opportunities. LIISA VÄLIKANGAS, PH.D., is professor of innovation management at the Aalto University School of Economics (formerly Helsinki School of Economics) in Finland. She is the cofounder and president of Innovation Democracy, a nonprofi t global organization dedicated to supporting local innovation and entrepreneurship. Her research on innovation, strategy, and organization has been published in Harvard Business Review, MIT/Sloan Management Review, and The Wall Street Journal. With Gary Hamel, she coauthored the Harvard Business Review article "The Quest for Resilience" and cofounded the Woodside Institute, a research organization dedicated to advancing management innovation. Professor Välikangas currently divides her time between Helsinki and California.




Exploring Resilience


Book Description

Resilience has become an important topic on the safety research agenda and in organizational practice. Most empirical work on resilience has been descriptive, identifying characteristics of work and organizing activity which allow organizations to cope with unexpected situations. Fewer studies have developed testable models and theories that can be used to support interventions aiming to increase resilience and improve safety. In addition, the absent integration of different system levels from individuals, teams, organizations, regulatory bodies, and policy level in theory and practice imply that mechanisms through which resilience is linked across complex systems are not yet well understood. Scientific efforts have been made to develop constructs and models that present relationships; however, these cannot be characterized as sufficient for theory building. There is a need for taking a broader look at resilience practices as a foundation for developing a theoretical framework that can help improve safety in complex systems. This book does not advocate for one definition or one field of research when talking about resilience; it does not assume that the use of resilience concepts is necessarily positive for safety. We encourage a broad approach, seeking inspiration across different scientific and practical domains for the purpose of further developing resilience at a theoretical and an operational level of relevance for different high-risk industries. The aim of the book is twofold: 1. To explore different approaches for operationalization of resilience across scientific disciplines and system levels. 2. To create a theoretical foundation for a resilience framework across scientific disciplines and system levels. By presenting chapters from leading international authors representing different research disciplines and practical fields we develop suggestions and inspiration for the research community and practitioners in high-risk industries. This book is Open Access under a CC-BY licence.; Explores different approaches for operationalization of resilience across scientific disciplines and system levels Creates a theoretical foundation for a resilience framework across scientific disciplines and system levels Develops suggestions and inspiration for the research community and practitioners in high-risk industries Presents chapters from leading international authors representing different research disciplines and practical fields This work was published by Saint Philip Street Press pursuant to a Creative Commons license permitting commercial use. All rights not granted by the work's license are retained by the author or authors.




Building Resilience


Book Description

The factor that makes some communities rebound quickly from disasters while others fall apart: “A fascinating book on an important topic.”—E.L. Hirsch, in Choice Each year, natural disasters threaten the strength and stability of communities worldwide. Yet responses to the challenges of recovery vary greatly and in ways that aren’t explained by the magnitude of the catastrophe or the amount of aid provided by national governments or the international community. The difference between resilience and disrepair, as Daniel P. Aldrich shows, lies in the depth of communities’ social capital. Building Resilience highlights the critical role of social capital in the ability of a community to withstand disaster and rebuild both the infrastructure and the ties that are at the foundation of any community. Aldrich examines the post-disaster responses of four distinct communities—Tokyo following the 1923 earthquake, Kobe after the 1995 earthquake, Tamil Nadu after the 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami, and New Orleans post-Katrina—and finds that those with robust social networks were better able to coordinate recovery. In addition to quickly disseminating information and financial and physical assistance, communities with an abundance of social capital were able to minimize the migration of people and valuable resources out of the area. With governments increasingly overstretched and natural disasters likely to increase in frequency and intensity, a thorough understanding of what contributes to efficient reconstruction is more important than ever. Building Resilience underscores a critical component of an effective response.




Reorganize for Resilience


Book Description

In an era of raging commoditization and eroding profit margins, survival depends on resilience: staying one step ahead of your customers. Sure, most companies say they're "customer-focused," but they don't deliver solutions to customers' thorniest problems. Why? Because they're stymied by the rigid "silos" they're organized around. In Reorganize for Resilience, Ranjay Gulati reveals how resilient companies prosper both in good times and bad, driving growth and increasing profitability by immersing themselves in the lives of their customers. This book shows how resilient organizations cut through internal barriers that impede action, build bridges between warring divisions, and transform former competitors into collaborators. Based on more than a decade of research in a variety of industries, and filled with examples from companies including Cisco Systems, La Farge, Starbucks, Best Buy, and Jones Lang LaSalle, Gulati exploresthe five levers of resilience: · Coordination: Connect, eradicate, or restructure silos to enable swift responses. · Cooperation: Foster a culture that aligns all employees around the shared goals of customer solutions. · Clout: Redistribute power to "bridge builders" and customer champions. · Capability: Develop employees' skills at tackling changing customer needs. · Connection: Blend partners' offerings with yours to provide unique customer solutions.




Building Resilient Organizations through Change, Chance, and Complexity


Book Description

A must-read in the wake of COVID-19, this book unpacks the nature of resilient organizations and how they prepare for unpredictable, complex, and profound change. Organizations that do not adapt and evolve die. To date, however, it has not been at all clear how to build a resilient organization. That puts us all in the unenviable position of trying to ready our organizations for an increasingly uncertain future without the proper guidance to do it. This book introduces 14 elements of resilience that consistently emerge in organizations that have thrived amid adversity and volatility. Resilience is not about determination, grit, cybersecurity, or teams of resilient individuals; resilience, it turns out, is often confused with robustness. Readers will discover how resilient organizations build and employ a distinctive combination of crews, capital, culture, and leadership—and, crucially—how to adapt these combinations for their own organization. Senior business leaders, consultants, entrepreneurs, students, and professionals will appreciate this book’s practical, approachable, and engaging guidance, including insights by leaders from Health Care for the Homeless, The Ohio State University, NBCUniversal, retail stores, and more.




Resilient Organizations


Book Description

What differentiates resilient organizations from those that are not? Do we need to wait until a crisis strikes to see how resilient an organization is? Resilient Organizations draws on primary research to reveal the answers to these questions and provides practical ideas and actions to make your own organization more resilient. Organizational resilience is about creating organizations with the agility to adapt to unexpected challenges and the capacity to seize opportunity out of adversity. Dr Erica Seville, founder of the Resilient Organizations research programme, provides readers with the essential knowledge required to enable organizations to thrive in a world of change and uncertainty. Drawing on a decade of research, her team have identified 13 indicators to diagnose an organization's resilience. Resilient Organizations draws out the top five ingredients and shows how organization resilience is a capability that can and must be proactively fostered and maintained over time. Using case studies, diagnostic tools and key actions and initiatives to develop and maintain organizational resilience, Resilient Organizations is essential reading for everyone tasked with developing strong organizations that can survive and thrive in crisis and change - from risk, resilience and business continuity professionals to leadership and management teams.




Building Resilience with Appreciative Inquiry


Book Description

The ability to be resilient--to pick oneself up after setbacks and keep on going no matter the challenges--is critical not only to successful leadership but also to fostering teams, generating collaboration, and igniting the organization. In this book, the authors show that Appreciative Inquiry canbe an invaluable tool to build that resilience.




Building Resilience for Success


Book Description

Resilience is a word that is used in many different ways in different contexts, this new and innovative book focuses on psychological resilience in the workplace, examining other key aspects such as physical health and resilient teams, drawing from the latest research and the authors own practical experience.




Towards Resilient Organizations and Societies


Book Description

This open access book brings together scholars in the fields of management, public policy, regional studies, and organization theory around the concept of resilience. The aim is to provide a more holistic understanding of the complex phenomenon of resilience from a multi-sectorial, cross-national, and multidisciplinary perspective. The book facilitates a conversation across diverse disciplinary specializations and empirical domains. The authors contribute both to theory testing and theory development and provide key empirical insights useful for societies, organizations, and individuals experiencing disruptive pressures, not least in the context of a post-COVID-19 world. Diverse chapters are held together by a clear organization of the volume across levels of analysis (resilience in organizations and societies) and by an original perspective on resilience derived from an extended review, by the editors, of the existing literature and knowledge gaps, according to which each of the individual chapter contributions is positioned and connected to.