Page 43 - The Resilient Organization

30 Part One: Why Resilience Now?

important stream of research considers accidents not abnormalities of orga-
nizational life but natural accompaniments to the complexity that organi-
zations inevitably manifest and create. This literature is related to the stud-
ies of accidents that view them as eventual (difficult to avoid) endpoints of
chains of escalating events (for example, Vaughan, 1996; Hänninen, 2007;
Allison, 1971).

Operational Resilience Strategic Resilience

Accident avoidance and recovery Capacity to sustain and
accomplish strategy change
Mindfulness Capacity to create positive
surprises
Robustness Sustainability
Escalation avoidance

In sum, operational resilience is the antidote for a sudden shock or jolt.
It is the strength or stability that is needed in case of such a sudden distur-
bance. However, a broader kind of resilience is needed to combat long-last-
ing organizational decline: strategic resilience. In the spirit of Karl Weick’s
“safety is a nondynamic event” (see Hollnagel & Woods, 2006), strategic
resilience is what dynamically prevents the organization from falling into
decline, thus ensuring that a crisis never comes. Strategic resilience, as
earlier noted, is also a capacity to exploit an (imminent or long-term)
opportunity.

Threats Responses

Disturbance (sudden) Operational resilience
Decline (long-lasting) Strategic resilience
Opportunity (imminent or long term) Strategic resilience