Organizational Resilience

In this era of ‘polycrisis’, governments, business and communities across the globe are seeking to boost their resilience. Far from being a catch-all strategy for our times, the quest for resilience raises fundamental questions of values, power and responsibility. This poignant, multidisciplinary volume shows us what that looks like in a variety of contexts. It offers a treasure trove for scholars and practitioners of organizational design, crisis preparedness and sustainability governance.

-- Paul ‘t Hart, Professor of Public Administration, Utrecht University, the Netherlands

Resilience is a generative idea. If you read this volume, as you should, you will not find the one and true meaning of ‘resilience.’ Instead, you will learn how the authors, by probing its meaning, investigate a range of a critical topics, including paradox, hybridity, narrative, power, crisis, and sustainability. By thinking with and through the concept of resilience, the authors demonstrate that it has what Karl Weick calls the ‘generative properties of richness.’

-- Christopher Ansell, University of California, Berkeley

Organizational Resilience: Interdisciplinary Insights offers a rare glimpse into core tenets of resilience observed through the disciplinary lenses of a set of experienced scholars and practitioners with deep knowledge of organizations operating in dynamic, uncertain conditions. The authors address complex issues confronting managers seeking to build resilience that are little recognized and often ignored. By probing troubling issues observed in practice - paradoxical constraints on action, power relations among participants seeking common goals, and variance in narrative accounts of the same event perceived in different contexts – this remarkable set of authors presents a nuanced, credible framework for guiding organizations as they adapt to changing conditions. In doing so, the book updates and redefines the concept of resilience as organizations seek sustainable change in both goals and practice.

-- Louise K. Comfort, University of Pittsburgh and University of California, Berk