Quantifying organisational resilience: an integrated resource efficiency view

Abstract

Organisations are increasingly exposed to risks from globally disruptive events, triggering interest and new research into organisational resilience. Several levers to increase resilience are defined in the literature but organisations still find it challenging to prepare for the next disruption. This study contributes to the resilience literature by drawing on the integrated resource efficiency view (IREV) framework to measure four levers of organisational resilience and derive an organisational resilience index (ORI). Levers include resiliency management, business continuity and organisational learning capacity, which are related to the levels of preparedness of the organisation for potential disruptions, and operational flexibility, which relates to how quickly it can reconfigure resources in changing situations. Results show that a composite index encompassing the four levers is strongly associated with increased organisational resilience. The ORI provides leaders and decision makers with an approach to assess resilience at the level of the whole organisation and with sample groups, such as business type or geographical location, enabling structured multi-level comparisons and analysis. Furthermore the ORI helps managers target attention and resources to improve preparedness and take action to mitigate constraints on operational flexibility.