Resilience capacity development: Prerequisites for proactive organizational transformation

Abstract

This paper aims to contribute to the complex and heterogeneous organizational resilience research field and enhance understanding of the phenomenon by presenting original insights and implications for the development of the business resilience capacity. It addresses the question of how managers can configure complex and dynamic organizational systems for constant directed renewal? To decompose organizational elements that scholars attribute to the construct and investigate academic challenges in attempts to quantify the resilience capacity, a thorough and systematic literature analysis was undertaken. It revealed that a growing body of empirical studies had examined the concept, yet there still is considerable ambiguity in the scientific literature concerning the organizational resilience emergence and development. Scholars focus on the absorptive and adaptive capacities with far less attention given to the third, critical element of the concept - transformability. Furthermore, a dynamic environment is a significant challenge for managers as complex organizational systems require adaptive governance, scenario planning, and constant strategic change. It selects out those who fail to reorient promptly. The ability to balance strategic resilience components proactively depending on the contextual requirements is crucial for sustainable business development. Thus, managers must lead the development of multilayered resilience capacity that enables organizations to absorb environmental complexity, evolve and develop a repertoire of actions to pursue new opportunities and capitalize on every change going beyond previous equilibrium. By integrating multiple perspectives, this literature review expands scientific knowledge and serves for future explorations through synthesized research findings and presenting evidence on a meta-level and uncovering area in which more research is needed. This study has gone some way towards enhancing academic understanding of the dynamic configuration of the resilience capacity. Highlighted practical implications for managers can potentially change the practitioner's approach to the initiation of strategic transformations.