I’ve decided I’ve got to start writing the literature review this week, in order to not fall any further behind. I’ve lots of material, and it has notes all over it. I’m at that familiar point where I have enough to get started but haven’t made enough sense of it to know what I’m going to argue and what’s missing. This is always when I start writing.
As a good little student, I endeavour to get my definitions sorted first. In most cases this is pretty easy; I read a few and find they’re all more or less the same, so I choose the one from the author or publication that the marker might consider has the most gravitas in the subject. Unless, that is, I want to argue a slightly different stance in which case I might pick the one that suits me best!
So, I need to start by defining “resilience”. Easy, I thought. Everyone always says it’s the ability to bounce back, but I believe it’s the ability to either see things coming thus avoid/minimise a crisis and to have the capacity to deal with the unexpected that allows one to bounce forward, identifying and taking opportunities as well as minimising damage.
So I went to find the one I usually use, and found it didn’t quite say that. Then I found another, and it said something a little different. So I decided to collate all the definitions in the books and papers sitting on my desk (not on the shelves, or strewn about the house, but just on the desk). The rest of this article contains the results.
As background information, if you’ve just stumbled across this whole toping, here are three quotes to provide background, and with which I am forced to agree:
“… the concept of resilience is far from clearly defined and must be understood as a concept with different meaning in different disciplines” (de Bruijne, Boin, & van Eeten, 2010)
“there is little consistency in its use in terms of organisational resilience and a lack of common understanding as to the essential concepts prevails. The fields of enterprise risk management, business continuity management, emergency management, crisis management, physical security and cyber-security have been at the heart of organisations’ attempts to protect themselves in the past” (Braes & Brooks, 2010)
And then there’s the quote that, despite having now read more books than many on the subject, I have to also agree with, even though it could prove to be a bit of a problem, given I help organisational leaders with resilience!
“…the sociotechnical approach (a conclusion of the book, Designing Resilie nce) is a paradigmatic change that needs to be pursued vigorously, we realise that the available knowledge is still to limited to guide institutional design efforts ” (Comfort, Boin, & Demchak, Resilience Revisited, 2010)
And here are the actual definitions I picked up. I didn’t screen these – I simply wrote down the ones I could get from the table:
“the capacity to recover quickly from difficulties; toughness” (Oxford English Dictionary, 2011)
“the capacity of a social system (e.g. an organisation, city, or society) to proactively adapt to and recover from disturbances that are perceived within the system to fall outside the range of normal and expected disturbances” (Boin, Comfort, & Demchak, The Rise of Resilience, 2010)
“the capacity to rebound from adversity strengthened and more resourceful” (Sutcliffe & Vogus, 2003)
“a capacity to undergo deep change without or prior to a crisis” (Valikangas, 2010)
“reflects a concern for improving the capacity of physical and human systems to response to and recover from extreme events” (Teirny & Bruneau, 2007)
“the ability at every relevant level, to anticipate, and if necessary, to handle and recover from disruptive challenges”. (Fenwick, Seville, & Brunsdon, 2009)
the ability to minimise and/or recover from disruption (Ferudi, 2007)
“the ability to resist disorder” (Fiksel, 2003, cited in (de Bruijne, Boin, & van Eeten, 2010))
“Resilience is not so much the actual motion of springing back, but rather the ability to spring back. It refers to the capacity of the system to deal with changes, which may be reflected in the technology, knowledge, and social organisation of the system under study” (de Bruijne, Boin, & van Eeten, 2010)
“the capacity to adapt existing resources and skills to new situations and operating conditions” (Comfort, 1999 cited by (de Bruijne, Boin, & van Eeten, 2010)
“the capacity for collective action in the face of unexpected extreme events that shatter infrastructure and disrupt normal operating conditions” (Comfort, Oh, Ertan, & Scheinert, 2010)
“may be best viewed as an ‘emerging property’ of a ‘healthy’ system” (Boin, Designing Resilience, 2010)
“Organisational resilience is a function of the overall vulnerability, situational awareness and adaptive capacity of an organisation in a complex, dynamic and interdependent system” (McManus et al in the press, quoted by (Seville, Brunsdon, Dantas, Le Masuerier, Wilkinson, & Vargo, 2006)
“the successful adaptation to life tasks in the face of social disadvantage or highly adverse conditions” (Windle, 1999 cited by (Chartered Institute of Personnel Directors, 2011)
“is a dynamic process that balances risk against resources, time against severity of loss, cost against uncertainty, learning against error” (Comfort, Boin, & Demchak, Resilience Revisited, 2010)
To be fair, most of them don’t claim to be actual definitions, but they are descriptions and I find them all a little lacking. I haven’t worked out exactly how I’ll use these in the lit reviewyet , but I find typing things down and getting everything in one place useful. It forces me to concentrate on the key points because I can’t type up everything, and I delete the quotes I don’t end up using (usually about a third, I suspect).
So… I guess the first thing I have to achieve is justification of my own definition. Ho hum, it’s always good to know where to start!
Thoughts, comments, input appreciated! Got a favourite definition?
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- Boin, A. (2010). Designing Resilience. In L. K. Comfort, A. Boin, & C. C. Demchak, Designing Resilience (pp. 129-142). Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press.
- Boin, A., Comfort, L. K., & Demchak, C. C. (2010). The Rise of Resilience. In L. K. Comfort, A. Boin, & C. C. Demchak, Designing Resilience (pp. 1-12). Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press.
- Braes, B., & Brooks, D. (2010). Organisational Resilience: a propositional study to understand and identify the essential concepts. Australian Security and Intelligence Conference (pp. 13-22). Perth, Western Australia: Edith Cowan University.
- Chartered Institute of Personnel Directors. (2011). Developing Resilience: an evidence-based guide fo practitioners. London: Institute of Personnel Directors.
- Comfort, L. K., Boin, A., & Demchak, C. C. (2010). Resilience Revisited. In L. K. Comfort, A. Boin, & C. C. Demchak, Designing Resilience (pp. 272-284). Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press.
- Comfort, L. K., Oh, N., Ertan, G., & Scheinert, S. (2010). Designing Adaptive Systems for Disaster Mitigation and Response. In L. K. Comfort, A. Boin, & C. C. Demchak, Designing Resilience (pp. 33-61). Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press.
- de Bruijne, M., Boin, A., & van Eeten, M. (2010). Resilience: exploring the concept and it’s meanings. In L. K. Comfort, A. Boin, & C. C. Demchak, Designing Resilience (pp. 13-32). Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press.
- Fenwick, T., Seville, E., & Brunsdon, D. (2009). Reducing the impact of organisational silos on resilience. Resilient Organisations Research Programme, New Zealand. New Zealand: www.resorgs.org.nz.
- Ferudi, F. (2007). Invitation to Terror. London: Continuum.
- Oxford English Dictionary. (2011). Resilience. Retrieved 2011 йил 22-May from Oxford English Dictionary: http://oxforddictionaries.com/view/entry/m_en_gb0989000#m_en_gb0989000
- Seville, E., Brunsdon, D., Dantas, A., Le Masuerier, J., Wilkinson, S., & Vargo, J. (2006). Building Organisational Resilience. New Zealand: Resilient Organisations Programme.
- Sutcliffe, K. M., & Vogus, T. J. (2003). Organizing for Resilience. In K. S. Cameron, J. E. Dutton, & R. E. Quinn, Positive Organizational Scholarship – Foundations of a New Discipline (pp. 94-11-). USA: Berrett-Koehler.
- Teirny, K., & Bruneau, M. (2007, May-June). Conceptulizing and Measuring Resiience. TR News , 250 (14-17).
- Valikangas, L. (2010). The Resilient Organisation: how adaptive cultures thrive even when strategy fails. London: McGraw-Hill.
Mike Price
August 24, 2011
This one is linked to community, rather than organisational, resilience, but it has a link to the name of your business!
“…the capability of a community to face a threat, survive and bounce back or, perhaps more accurately, bounce forward into a normalcy newly defined by the disaster related losses and changes” (Cox and Perry, 2011, pp.1-2)