Organizational Resilience in the Context of Higher Education Institutions: A Systematic Literature Review

Abstract

This study is a continuation of a previous work-in-progress extended abstract from ASEE 202319. This is a Systematic Literature Review (SLR) of Organizational Resilience (OR) in Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) context. The previous extended abstract study showed a gap in the literature; most work related to resilience in educational contexts was focused on an individual perspective. However, this is a rapidly evolving knowledge area, and literature published after the data collection for that initial study has shown that after COVID-19, there has been an increase in the role played by Organizational Resilience in educational contexts. Moreover, the current study's bibliometric information shows that OR analysis in HEIs is becoming a trend of which researchers and HEI employees should be aware. This study follows the same methodology of Tranfield and colleagues1 as used before. The findings were refined from the previous work, by enlarging the inclusion and exclusion criteria (i.e., including 2022 and half of 2023 years), while expanding the pool of databases used. Implications for engineering education relate to survivability experiences, unexpected shocks, and decisions taken from other universities and educational institutions in general. Although not all literature explores engineering-focused cases, the analysis of these experiences and decisions taken from literature can guide the survivability of engineering education institutions, and the potential impacts of considering OR theories for engineering education.