Precursor resilience in practice – An organizational response to weak signals

Abstract

This chapter looks at resilience from the descriptions of organizational strategies and practices in a regional airline operating regular commercial flights at short runway airports. Like many organizations facing environmental changes and intensive operational demands, the airline faces cascades of disturbances and friction in putting plans into place, requiring the ability to extend performance. This study demonstrates that different types of resilience exist and that precursor resilience is more about the organizational expansion of expectancies than individuals or groups managing the unexpected. This clarification adds depth to the understanding of resilience in aviation and similar organizational contexts, and the chapter takes issue in discussing how resilience varies and is different according to level in organizations or systems, place, time, resources, and competencies. This extends ongoing research efforts identifying specific types of resilience and their requirements based on a closer grounding of the concept in empirical studies.