Building Resilience for Surviving and Thriving in a VUCA Context

Abstract

Surviving and thriving in the context of VUCA (volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity) has become a pressing issue in international business. While contemporary international business scholarship offers insight into resilience-building under VUCA conditions, the mechanisms that link decision-making at the top with organizational action are less clear. We proffer a sand-clock model of resilience-building that combines resourcefulness, time interpretations, and entrepreneurial judgments. MNE decision-makers can apply the model to build resilience for surviving and thriving in a VUCA context by embracing sustainability, analyzing temporal signals, and making better judgments.