Stakeholder Relationships and Organizational Resilience

Abstract

Organizational resilience is defined as a firm's ability to effectively absorb, develop a situation-specific response to, and ultimately create new ways of doing business and thrive as a consequence of adversity Prior studies suggest that resilient organizations are often associated with two seemingly opposing properties: reliability comprises a set of capabilities that enable a firm to return to normal quickly after disruptive events However, reliable and flexible responses may involve different and often opposing sets of knowledge and capabilities. For instance, reliability requires fast and accurate perceptions, and improvisational behaviors, whereas flexibility requires envisioning of new uncertainties, explorational learning, and creative transforming Given the challenge of balancing reliability and flexibility, we are curious about what factors drive resilient organizations to achieve reliability and flexibility in response to adversity.