So, before that happens, I thought I’d do two things.  Partly to fulfil my promise to you and partly to make sure I can be clear with the new company that I own the copyright on these things.

First, I’m going to attach the distributable PDF of my thesis.  Though the (c) mark says Cranfield University, I have a blanket statement from them saying I – and I alone – can do what I like with it, including republishing it for a different market.

Second, I’m going to put up later this week the outline of the book I’ve been working on.  It’s more or less finished and – since it won’t be proofed or any of that jazz for sometime, what with a new job – I don’t want any doubt around the fact it’s mine and not a company’s!

Thanks for your indulgence.

In return for that, you can have the PDF of my thesis, should you want it:

Don’t forget that it’s fine for you to use this work for your own purposes, so long as you credit the source. For private or commercial purposes please credit Charley Newnham and include a link to her Linked In profile. For academic purposes please click here for the complete reference.

———— >

3. RESEARCH METHODS

 “It is better to have ideas and for some of them to be wrong, than to always be right by having no ideas at all.”  Edward de Bono (2009)

This chapter describes the methodology used to obtain indicative answers to the questions identified at the end of the last chapter.  It comprises of sections titled:

• Research Strategy
• Study Ethics
• Questionnaire Creation
• Data Collection and Framework for Analysis
• Summary

Study limitations are recognised and noted within the text of this chapter.

3.1 Research Strategy

Research for this study can be explained is explained under two subheadings: 3.11 Literature Review, and 3.12 Primary Data from Organisational Leaders and “Resilience” Business Units.

3.11 Literature Review

Initial research involved reviewing academic books and papers relevant to the subject of organisational resilience.  The most relevant sources were chosen and discussed, as outlined below.

In the context of studying what appeared to be an emerging field, an early decision was made to use data from studies and materials produced as recently as possible. A brief scan of the bibliography shows many sources from this 2011 and 2010, and the vast majority from this millennium.  However, quality material that pre-dated this was included where appropriate and where later studies were not available.

The core sources used for this study are the four books and one paper referenced in the previous chapter.  Further academic papers were sourced primarily via Google’s Scholar Search and access was gained using the researcher’s Cranfield University credentials.  Initial searches were run on wide topic themes such as “organisational resilience” and “leadership for resilience”.  As the work progressed searches were tightened to the issue in hand, for example, “average tenure of chief executive officers in the UK”.   Some papers were identified by individuals following the blog for this dissertation (see below), and were sourced using the same method as for other papers.

As the intended outcome was to produce work to assist leaders of organisations employing at least 100 people and possibly many thousands, popular academic business titles were used to source case studies and editorial opinion. The Harvard Business Review (HBR) was the journal of choice in these cases because of its academic robustness, significant reputation and global, professional readership.  The publication of HBR’s “The Failure Issue” (Harvard Business Review, 2011) was particularly useful and references to number of articles from this issue are found in this work.

An online blog was also used to share the progress of this work online.  This was a deliberate strategy to harness literature recommendations and new ideas from others researching the field.  The blog was launched before the thesis proposal was submitted and, via the blog, contact was made with many individuals, including resilience academics Liisa Valikangas[1] and Ned Powley[2], and particularly recent resilience PhD graduate Amy Stephenson[3].  Gaining access to Stephenson’s work before publication by ResOrgs at the end of August 2011 was invaluable.  The blog that accompanied this work can be found online at http://www.goldordust.wordpress.com.

3.12 Primary Data

The lines of enquiry identified at the end of the previous chapter revealed a need to gather data from two sources.   Information pertaining to organisational leaders and leadership had to be sought from organisational leaders.  Information regarding “Resilience” business units could be usefully obtained by approaching such units directly.

In both cases it was decided that the “tried and tested research strategies and data collection techniques” (Biggam, 2010) associated with a survey/questionnaire (defined as “a method for collecting primary data in which a sample of respondents are asked a list of carefully structured questions chosen after considerable testing, with a view to eliciting reliable response” (Balahur & Steinberger, 2009)) would be used for each strand.

It is useful to consider the primary data strands separately:

3.12(a) Organisational Leaders Strand

Most of the lines of enquiry identified relate to behavioural preferences of organisational leaders in relation to resilience.  Respondents able to provide useful data in this strand were organisational leaders.

In keeping with the studies interest in making this work useful to leaders of large organisations as well as small ones, the decision was made to target leaders of reasonably established companies that were likely to have cause to have considered at least some of the resilience function issues (e.g. risk management, business continuity, security) as well as their own management principles.

Required samples size was carefully considered.  Statistics were sought to define the potential population of ‘organisational leaders’ but none credible sources for this data were not identified.  It was not therefore possible to consider a population, confidence level and confidence interval calculation (Biggam, 2010) to determine a truly representative sample for this study.  As a degree of analysis of potential trends within the data was intended, the sample set needed to be big enough to allow this to a reasonable degree.  However, as it was acknowledged that the resulting data was intended to provide “rich and detailed insights” (Collis & Hussey, 2009) and a potential basis for further research rather than outright conclusions, a particularly large sample was not a significant requirement. Cranfield academic guidance[4] indicated that “about twenty” respondents would be needed in order to be able to discuss the results of this strand with a level of credibility: as shown later, the number of responses significantly exceeded this.  Furthermore, statistical relevance calculations were applied to all apparent data correlations to assure significance had been secured.

A number of strategies for data collection were considered, including case studies of individual leaders or leaders within one organisation, structured interviews and a survey.  A survey that included questions that could be used for descriptive and elementary analytics provided an efficient way of asking uniform questions to individuals suitable for providing data (Collis & Hussey, 2009).

The decision to use a convenience sample (Biggam, 2010) was made at the outset of this study.  There are issues with the usefulness of a convenience sample because no claim can be made that it represents an entire population of any kind (Biggam, 2010).  However, as this study is exploratory, adding to the resilience discussion and providing a basis for further research, the convenience sample method is “perfectly acceptable” (Biggam, 2010) and as the survey will be conducted online, it is in fact the only acceptable method (Schonlau, Fricker, & Elliott, 2002).  Practically speaking, it also innovative techniques to increase the number and variety of respondents, as shown in the Data Collection section.

In order to provide useful data, it was decided that responses would be solicited from organisational leaders working in reasonably established organisations. (These terms are defined in the section titled Data Collection and Framework for Analysis.)

3.12(b) Resilience Business Unit Strand

The other area that required primary investigation was around the scope, purpose and output of “Resilience” business units emerging in organisations.   While the Organisational Leaders strand asks about behaviour preferences and opinion, which are subjective (Balahur & Steinberger, 2009) the information required on “Resilience” business units was primarily factual.

The respondents best able to provide useful data in this strand were individuals working in business units with the word “Resilience” in their titles.  In order to maintain a degree of similarity between the data sets of the two strands, it was decided that the same qualifying rules would apply to ensure that responding organisations were reasonably established.

Research was undertaken to understand how many organisations might have departments with “Resilience” as a keyword in their title in order to understand the potential population.  No obvious sources of this information were available.  Searches were performed on Google and Linked In[5].  This showed there was very few, compared with, say, Human Resources, which seems to appear in most organisations with more than 100 employees.  It was therefore decided that a response from a minimum of ten UK organisations would provide sufficient data to be able to discuss the scope, roles and outputs of such departments.  In the event, this number was significantly exceeded.

The data required from the “Resilience” business units were relatively straightforward and a survey provided an efficient way of asking uniform questions to individuals suitable for providing data (Collis & Hussey, 2009).   The decision was again made to use a convenience sample for exactly the same reason as given above for the Organisational Leadership strand.

3.2 Study Ethics

As with any study, the ideas included in this thesis come from a variety of sources.  These are duly credited throughout the study, however, it has not always been noted where other individuals recommended the examination of a particular text.

Questionnaire respondents were assured anonymity to encourage responses.  Though respondents were asked provide an email address if they wanted a copy of the study findings, not every respondent did and, as per the researcher’s stated promise, email addresses were detached from the study data before it was analysed.

Primary data from the surveys has been retained in electronic files. They are backed up in a Dropbox storage file, though the Dropbox file will be removed when this thesis has been marked.   The analysis process has been retained so several versions of the data exist, from the raw data downloaded from the online survey through all the ‘working out stages’.  The raw data (excluding any email address) can be made available to Cranfield marking staff if required, if the data is not copied nor retained.

3.3 Questionnaire Creation

As already noted, a questionnaire was created for each strand: Organisational Leaders and Resilience Departments.

The lines of enquiry were dictated by the questions identified at the end of the Issues and Literature Review.   Copies of the questionnaires are included as Appendix 2 (Organisational Leader Questionnaire) and Appendix 3 (Resilience Business Unit Questionnaire).

Considerations and activities during the creation of the questionnaires included the following:

ü Ensuring survey questions were formulated so that answers would inform the study questions

ü Using an online platform to maximise response opportunities from suitable personal contacts, online contacts and via online forums including this study’s blog

ü Ensuring the security of data (Schonlau, Fricker, & Elliott, 2002)

ü Keeping language simple and universal (de Vous, 1991) with only a few questions per screen

ü Using multiple choice or Likert scale answer options (May, 1993)where appropriate, but using matrix questions sparingly, to assist with ease of completion and reducing response errors (Schonlau, Fricker, & Elliott, 2002)

ü Forcing answers only on rare occasions where no data can be analysed without that answer (Schonlau, Fricker, & Elliott, 2002)

ü Placing classification questions at the beginning of the survey (May, 1993), asking factual questions first and moving to more difficult questions at the end of the survey (de Vous, 1991)

ü Avoiding double-barrelled, duplicate and leading questions (de Vous, 1991)

ü Avoiding questions encouraging ‘prestige bias’ (de Vous, 1991)

ü Changing the style of question frequently to keep the respondent interested (Schonlau, Fricker, & Elliott, 2002)

ü Setting criteria and practice for excluding responses that did not meet study requirements/standards to ensure data quality (Schonlau, Fricker, & Elliott, 2002)

ü Embedding coding for responses in online survey to make analysis easier when data was returned (de Vous, 1991)

ü Ensuring the questionnaire looked professional to gain confidence of respondents (May, 1993)

ü Offering anonymity and ‘something’ in return for completing the survey (May, 1993)

ü Piloting the questionnaire in person so issues could be identified and rectified (May, 1993) and to ensure people didn’t give similar answers to every question (de Vous, 1991)

ü Staggering invitations to complete the survey to ensure respondents could report any problems, meant any unforeseen issues could be addressed (Schonlau, Fricker, & Elliott, 2002)

3.4 Data Collection and Framework for Analysis

3.41 Organisational Leader Questionnaire

The terms ‘organisational leader’ and ‘reasonably established organisations’ had to be defined in order to seek out those who qualified, disqualify those that did not, and use the data appropriately after collection.  It was important that the definitions provided an objective measures so no-qualifying responses could be discarded:

For ‘organisational leader’, terms such as leader, senior manager and director are used in different ways in different organisations so were not appropriate.  Instead it was decided that seniority would be established by counting the number of line managers between an individual and the organisation’s Chief Executive Officer (CEO)/Managing Director (MD) or equivalent.  So, if a respondent had no line management between themselves and the CEO/MD/equivalent, or indeed was that person, then they would select zero; if a respondent reported to someone who reported to the CEO/MD/equivalent they would select 1, and so on.   Anyone choosing 1 or 0 is considered by this study to be an organisational leader because they are at the very top of a large organisation or, in a smaller organisation where fewer layers may exist the actions of the respondent at this level in a smaller population have significant ability to influence the resilience state.

The term ‘reasonably established’ was defined for the purpose of this study as employing at least 100 employees and having existed for at least 5 years.  These figures are somewhat arbitrary: the figure of more than 100 employees was chosen as there was legislation that applied to UK organisations that had at least this number of staff in 2007 (BIS, 2008).  5 years was chosen as many businesses fail within their first 3-4 years (Bright Ideas, 2011).   It is acknowledged this is likely to skew results as those responding may work in organisations with higher levels of resilience as those that have not thrived or which may fail before they reach the five-year mark are excluding from the study.  As this study is intended to be useful to leaders of reasonably sized organisation this decision is acceptable, however it is noted that findings may be somewhat affected as a result.

As the aim of this questionnaire was to look at whether the presence of particular circumstances or factors might correspond with an inclination (or disinclination) for behaviours that contribute to organisational resilience, the questionnaire had to include a way of indicating each respondent’s propensity for resilience behaviour (PRB).  This was achieved by amending the questions in Stephenson’s tool to ask leaders to indicate their own propensity towards particular behaviours, rather than respond for their organisation.  More specifically:

Each leader had to be asked to indicate the strength of their inclination to undertake particular actions and responsibilities that contribute positively to organisational resilience in a manner that allowed a numerical PRB value to be determined for each respondent. As seen in the literature review, Stephenson’s resilience tool identified 13 key attributes of resilience, and her work (Stephenson, 2011) also includes the wording of each question posed to her respondents (included as Appendix 1).   A question for each identified attribute was created – using Stephenson’s wording where possible – to ask the respondent to determine how much responsibility they personally took for each attribute. An additional seven questions were added: five to cover attributes indicated by the Issue and Literature Review but not prominently covered by Stephenson’s tool, and two where Stephenson’s tool asked about two factors within the same grouping.  The full list of PRB attributes for which one question was taken or created is noted in Table 2.3.

On the questionnaires, the PRB questions were broken into four groups with other questions inserted between.   This was done to ensure the style of question changed frequently so as not to bore the responder, and to minimise the possibility of respondents manipulating their responses to PRB questions if they realised they were those that would be measured.  Notes on how the questions were group appear later in this section.

Table 3.1: List of PRB attributes noting where wording was available from the Stephenson tool

Each question required an answer from a five point rating scale where the response was weighted according to the scale (e.g. never = 1, rarely =2, sometimes=3, often=5, all the time=5).  The values of the PRB questions for each respondent were added together to provide a total PRB value for each respondent.

The PRB value provided an indicative basis to look at whether the presence of other circumstances or factors identified in the literature review might correspond with a higher inclination (or disinclination) for resilient behaviours.

It is important to note that this survey does not purport to provide statistically sound and robust evidence due to a number of limitations, some of which are noted below.  It simply seeks to offer indicative information that could be used as a basis for further research.

Limitations that suggest resulting data may only be used for indicative purposes and a basis for further research include:

• Concerns around a leader’s willingness to complete a questionnaire for this work made it necessary to keep it as short as possible: where Stephenson’s tool uses several questions to ascertain an indicating value for each PRB factor, this survey did not.  This limits the value of the resulting data, but ensured a good response rate in a limited timeframe
• The questions were not robustly tested in the same way they were for Stephenson’s tool.  However, the wording of the questions were guided by that tool, as well as the information noted in the section ‘Questionnaire Creation’ (e.g. avoiding questions encouraging ‘prestige bias’ (de Vous, 1991))
• “Convenience samples generally do not support statistical inference” (Schonlau, Fricker, & Elliott, 2002).  Due to short timeframes and limited resources, this survey was conducted with a convenience sample.
• It is also noted that some questions intended for inclusion were removed during the testing phase when useful versions could not be determined.  For example:
  • the survey doesn’t ask if respondents preferred to grow their organisation organically or via mergers and acquisitions (important to Carmeli & Markham, 2011) because trial respondents suggested mergers and acquisitions could be organic
  • To determine whether leaders understood ‘organisational resilience’ as a disruption management system or a holistic strategic capability, two definitions were offered for the term, neither of which contained the words holistic or strategic to avoid prestige bias (see note C below)
  • No scale was available to measure an individual’s level of realistic optimism.  A simple question was therefore devised to provide an indication of the individual’s perception of their position (see note G below)

Bearing in mind the need to keep the questionnaire interesting and not group all question types together (Schonlau, Fricker, & Elliott, 2002), the survey was organised as follows:

1. Questions 1,2,3, and 4 provide basic information on the organisation (non-qualifiers – i.e. those working in organisations less than 5 years old or with less than 100 employees – were disqualified based on their response to these questions)
2. Question 14 seeks to establish the seniority of the responder
3. Question 6 asks if they view ‘resilience’ as a business continuity-based or strategic capability
4. Questions 7, 8, 15 and 17 indicate propensity to take action that increases resilience (PRB)
5. Question 9 establishes whether the respondent makes use of the ‘resilience functions’
6. Questions 10 and 11 ask about tenure in the current role
7. Question 12 aims to find which responders believe they are ‘realistically optimistic’
8. Question 13 seeks to establish motivation for organisational longevity
9. Question 16 seeks to discover if responders require certain experiences for career progress
10. Question 18 determines whether responders would accept constraints in return for resilience
11. Question 19 asks an open questions about barriers encountered to resilience efforts

The intention was to use the data as follows:

• Questions in A & B included criteria for establishing seniority within a qualifying organisation
• For each respondent, the sliding scale answers from all D (see above) questions were totalled, giving each respondent an indicative value for their propensity to act for resilience.  These values would be compared with the other factors in A, C, E, F & G to see if there are any emerging trends.  Any such trends would be considered possible casual links worthy of further research that is outside the scope of this study
• The remaining question sets, H, I, J and K, provide additional potential insight leaders’ thoughts on other identified gaps in the literature, and against which to examine PRB totals.

3.42 Resilience Business Unit Questionnaire

The qualifying criteria for this survey were that the respondent worked in an organisational department that considered its primary responsibility to be ‘resilience’ and that the word ‘resilience’ was the keyword in their department’s title.

Unlike the primary dataset above, this survey aimed to answer a simple question: what is the remit of an organisational department that appears to take responsibility for ‘resilience’ and what, if any, functions has it replaced or been merged with.

Once again it is noted that the resulting data was not intended to be statistically sound, but provide an insight as a basis for possible further research.

The survey was organised as follows:

1. Questions 1, 2 and 3 provide basic information on the department and organisation (non-qualifiers – i.e. those working in organisations less than 5 years old or with less than 100 employees – were disqualified based on their response to these questions)
2. Questions 4 asks about the scope of the department
3. Question 5 asks if the organisations views ‘resilience’ as a business continuity or strategic capability
4. Questions 6 and 7 seek to establish how the resilience department fits with other ‘resilience functions’
5. Question 8 seeks to establish the department manager’s seniority
6. Question 9 requests qualitative information on barriers to the resilience department
7. Questions 10, 11 and 12 seek basic information on the organisation
8. Questions 13 seeks to understand the extent to which the resilience department contributes to organisational resilience

The intention was to use the data as follows:

• Comment on the scope and responsibilities of  “Resilience” business units
• For each respondent, the sliding scale answers from all S (see above) questions will be totalled, giving each respondent an indicative value for the resilience department’s contribution to organisational resilience.
• All other responses will be used qualitatively to seek trends on each individual area

3.43 Data Significance Thresholds

Where PRB values were compared with other data, correlation and significance thresholds were ascertained and interpreted as follows:

3.43(a) Correlation Co-efficient 

In the absence of an SPSS package, correlation coefficients were calculated using online calculator at: http://www.alcula.com/calculators/statistics/correlation-coefficient/.

The correlation measure was considered using Field’s (2006) guidance that “±0.1 is a small effect, ±0.3 is a medium effect and ±.0.5 is a large effect”.  Thus, correlations greater than 0.3 were considered interesting and those larger than 0.5 were considered valuable.

3.43(b) Statistical Significance

The statistical significance of each correlation was calculated using an online tool provided by an academic at California State University.  It uses the correlation value and the sample size to provide p-values at http://www.danielsoper.com/statcalc3/calc.aspx?id=44 .

The significance of the correlation was also considered using Field’s (2006) guidance that “when the probably falls below 0.5 (Fisher’s criterion) we accept this as giving us enough confidence to assume the test statistic is as large as it is because our model explains a sufficient amount of variation to reflect what’s genuinely happening”.  Thus p-values below 0.5 were considered to render a correlation co-efficient as significant as, at this level, the statistics suggest the result did not happen purely by chance.

3.44 Reaching Qualified Respondents 

Work began on reaching respondents qualified to participate in primary research long before the proposal for this study was written.  Consideration was given to the significant challenge of connecting with a sufficient pool of suitably senior organisational leaders.  A strategy was created to overcome this and executed during the study:

Personal Contacts.   The researcher was fortunate to work with interested, helpful (and kind!) senior leaders in a very well known organisation, and to know others.   Personal conversations elicited offers of a questionnaire response and, in some cases, offers to forward requests for responses to their own contacts in other organisations.  Similar offers resulted from conversations with individuals working Resilience departments of other organisations.  A visiting lecturer of Cranfield University also contacted several senior organisational leaders on my behalf, vouching for the credibility of the study and asking for responses.

The Blog.  The blog at www.goldordust.wordpress.com was created to achieve several aims.  As well as ordering the researcher’s thoughts in the pre-writing stage, it created a small community of interested persons and subject specialists.  These individuals assisted during the literature review by offering text suggestions and opinions that were shared via the blog response system (these can be seen online) and via personal emails to the researcher.

Linked In.  The professional networking site at http://www.LinkedIn.com was utilised in several ways.  The researcher added clear objectives to her profile headline, ensuring all contacts actively using Linked In were aware of her work.  She joined a number of relevant Linked In groups several months before the primary research began in order to use their community board to request responses to the relevant questionnaire. For example, a request for qualified persons to complete the Organisational Leader questionnaire was posted on Linked In’s “CXO” group community boards, which is aimed at Chief (Something) Officers of large organisations.  A similar request was made for the Resilience Department questionnaire on the ‘Resilience Professionals’ group.  About 20 Linked In groups were joined and utilised in total.   For the ‘resilience department’ strand, targets were also identified by searching for individuals with the word ‘Resilience’ in their job titles.

3.6 Chapter Summary

This study is exploratory.  The data findings are intended to be indicative, to add to academic and practitioner discussions, and provide a possible basis for further research.

Primary research was based on questions arising from the Literature and Issue review of the previous chapter.  It was undertaken via a blog at www.goldordust.wordpress.com and, two online questionnaires.

Questionnaires were created to survey (a) individuals working in ‘Resilience Departments’ on the scope of their unit, and (b) organisational leaders to examine whether any indicative, casual links could be made between an individual’s PRB and specific factors or circumstances. Respondents were contacted in many ways including personal email, email from a trusted colleague, via the study’s blog or a reader of that blog, and from posts on online forums that included relevant Linked In groups.

Data analysis frameworks and statistical significance thresholds were created before the questionnaires were launched online.

p.s. If you don’t have a journal subscription it’s worth googling for the title of the paper.  Put the title in speech marks and add filetype:pdf at the end of the query.  If it’s on the net for free  anywhere at all, you should find it this way.

——————->

• Alloy, L. B., & Abramson, L. Y. (1979, Dec). Judgement of contingency in depressed and nondepressed studients: sadder but wiser? Journal of Experimental Psychology , 108 (4), pp. 441-485.
• Alvesson, M., & Karreman, D. (2011, Nov). Odd Couple: Making Sense of the Curious Concept of Knowledge Management. Journal of Management Studies , 38 (7), pp. 995-1018.
• ASIS. (2009). ASIS SPC.1-2009: Organisational Resilience: Security, Preparedness, and Continuity Management Requirements with Guidance for Use. (A. b. 2009, Ed.) USA: Asis Worldwide.
• Balahur, A., & Steinberger, R. (2009). Rethinking Sentiment Analysis in the News: from Theory to Practice and Back. Workshop on Opinion Mining and Sentiment (WOMSA) (pp. 1-12). Citeseer.
• Bannatyne, D. (2011). 43 Mistakes Businesses Make… and how to avoid them. London: Headline Business Plus.
• Barrett, P. (2000, Feb 23). Business Continuity Management: Opening remarks at a launch of a Better Practice Guide. Retrieved 06 29, 2011, from Australian National Audit Office: http://www.anao.gov.au/uploads/documents/Business_Continuity_Management1.pdf
• Bazerman, M., & Watkins, M. (2008). Predictable Surprises. USA: Harvard Business School.
• BBC. (2002, Aug 22). Enron scandal at-a-glance. Retrieved Aug 5, 2011, from BBC News: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/1780075.stm
• BCI. (2010). BCI Good Practice Guidelines 2010. Retrieved Jun 30, 2011, from Business Continuity Institute: http://www.thebci.org/gpg.htm
• Beer, M. (2009). High Committment High Performance. San Francisco: John Wiley & Sons.
• Bezos, J. (2003, Apr). The Next Web Innovation. Retrieved Jul 8, 2011, from Ted Talks: http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/jeff_bezos_on_the_next_web_innovation.html
• Biggam, J. (2010). Succeeding with your Master’s Dissertation: a step-by-step handbook. Maidenhead, England: Open University Press.
• BIS. (2008). Employee Matters – Rights. Retrieved Sep 22, 2011, from Department for Business, Innovation & Skills: http://www.bis.gov.uk/policies/employment-matters/rights/info-con
• 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.
• Boin, A., Hart, P., Stern, E., & Sundelius, B. (2010). The Politics of Crisis Management: Public Leadership Under Pressure. UK: Cambridge University 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.
• BRCCI. (2011). Frequently Asked Questions. Retrieved Aug 22, 2011, from Business Resilience Certification Consortium International: http://www.brcci.org/faq.htm
• Bright Ideas. (2011). Start Up Business Advice. Retrieved Sep 22, 2011, from Bright Ideas: http://www.bright-ideas.org.uk/start-up-business-advice.html
• BSI. (2006). British Standard 25999 Business Continuity Management – Part 1: Code of Practice. British Standards Institute. Chiswick: BSI.
• BSI. (2010). BS 25999 Workshop. Retrieved Nov 2, 2011, from BSI Shop: http://shop.bsigroup.com/en/Browse-By-Subject/Business-Continuity/BS-25999-Workshop2/
• BSI. (2011). BS ISO/IEC 27031:2011 Information technology. Security techniques. Guidelines for information and communication technology readiness for business continuity. Retrieved Jul 19, 2011, from British Standards Institute: http://shop.bsigroup.com/en/ProductDetail/?pid=000000000030168355
• BSI. (2011, Jun 29). BSI BS29999. Retrieved Jun 29, 2011, from British Standards Institute: http://shop.bsigroup.com/en/Browse-By-Subject/Business-Continuity/BS-25999-Workshop2/
• BSI. (2006). Business Continuity Management 2006: Code of Practice. London: BSI.
• BSI Shop. (2011). PAS 200:2011 Crisis Management. Retrieved Nov 8, 2011, from British Standards Institute Shop: http://shop.bsigroup.com/en/ProductDetail/?pid=000000000030252035
• Burnett, J. J. (1998). A Strategic Approach to Managing Crises. 24 (4), 475-488.
• Cabinet Office. (2004). Civil Contingencies Act. Retrieved June 29, 2010, from Cabinet Office: http://www.cabinetoffice.gov.uk/content/civil-contingencies-act
• Carmeli, A., & Markman, G. D. (2011). Capture, Governance, and Resilience: Strategy Implications from the History of Rome . Strategic Management Journal , 32, 322-341.
• Collins, J. (2009). How the Mighty Fall (and why some companies never give in). London: Random House.
• Collis, J., & Hussey, R. (2009). Business Research (Vol. Third Edition). Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
• 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.
• Conan Doyle, A. (2006). The Sign of Four. London: Headline Review.
• Coutu, D. (2003). How Resilience Works. In D. Coutu, Harvard Business Review on Building Personal & Organisational Resilience (pp. 1-18). London: Harvard Business School Press.
• Cranfield. (2011). Post Graduate Prospectus: MSc/PgDip/PgCert Resilience. Retrieved Aug 22, 2011, from Cranfield University: http://www.cranfield.ac.uk/students/courses/page1809.html
• Daily Finance. (2011). Memorable Companies That Have Vanished. Retrieved Nov 14, 2011, from Daily Finance: http://www.dailyfinance.com/photos/companies-that-have-vanished/
• De Bono, E. (2009). Lateral Thinking: A Textbook of Creativity. London: Penguin.
• De Long, D. W., & Fahey, L. (2000). Diagnosing cultural barriers to knowledge management. Academy of Management Executive , 14 (4), pp. 113-127.
• de Vous, D. A. (1991). Surveys in Social Research (Vol. Third Edition). Australia: Allen & Unwin.
• Drucker, P. (1993). Managing for the Future: the 1990’s and beyond Managing for the Future: the 1990’s and beyond. New York: Plume Books.
• Drucker, P. (1993). The Practice of Management (Vol. Reissue edition). New York: Harper Business.
• Elliot, D., Swartz, E., & Herbane, B. (2010). Business Continuity Management: A Crisis Management Approach. New York: Routeledge.
• FEMA. (2010, Jun 17). Voluntary Private Sector Preparedness Accreditation and Certification Program (PS-Prep) Resource Center. Retrieved Nov 11, 2011, from FEMA: http://www.fema.gov/privatesector/preparedness/adoption_standards.shtm
• Ferudi, F. (2007). Invitation to Terror. London: Continuum.
• Field, A. (2006). Discovering Statistics Using SPSS (Vol. Second Edition). London: Sage Publications.
• Gardner, D. (2009). Risk. London: Virgin Books.
• George, G., Sleeth, R. G., & Siders, M. A. (1999). Organizing Culture: Leader Roles, Behaviors and Reinforcement Mechanisms. Journal of Business and Psychology , 13 (4).
• Gino, F., & Pisano, G. (2011, Apr). Why Leaders Don’t Learn From Success. Harvard Business Review , pp. 68-74.
• Handy, C. (1995). The Empty Raincoat. New York: Random House.
• Harvard Business Review. (2011, April). The Failure Issue. Harvard Business Review .
• Hiles, A. (2010). The Definitive Book of Business Continuity Management (Vol. Third Edition). London: John Wiley & Sons.
• Horne, J. F., & Orr, J. E. (1998). Behavours That Create Resilient Organizations. Employment Relations Today , 24 (4), pp. 29-40.
• ISO. (2009). BS ISO 31000:2009 Risk management. Principles and guidelines. Retrieved Jul 19, 2011, from International Organization for Standardization: http://www.iso.org/iso/catalogue_detail?csnumber=43170
• ISO. (2006, May 30). ISO considers development of standards for improving crisis management. Retrieved Aug 19, 2011, from International Organisation for Standardisation: http://www.iso.org/iso/pressrelease.htm?refid=Ref1011
• Jackson, D., Firtko, A., & Edenborough, M. (2007). Personal resilience as a strategy for surviving and thriving in the face of workplace adversity: a literature review. Journal of Advanced Nursin , 60 (1), 1-9.
• Johnson, N. (2010). Social Capital and Organisational Resilience. PhD thesis (supervised by Dominic Elliott) submitted to the University of Liverpool, Liverpool.
• Kanter, R. M. (2011, Apr). Cultivate a Culture of Confidence. Harvard Business Review , p. 34.
• Kennedy, J. F. (1963, Nov 22). Remarks at the Breakfast of the Fort Worth Chamber of Commerce. Retrieved Jun 29, 2010, from McAdams: http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/ftworth.htm
• Lafley, A. (2011, Apr). I think of My Failures as a Gift. Harvard Business Review , pp. 86-89.
• Leeson, N. (1995). Rogue Trader. London: Sphere.
• Linked In. (2011, Jun 29). Linked In Advance Search Page. Retrieved Jun 29, 2011, from Lined In: http://www.linkedin.com/search/fpsearch?title=*resilience*&currentTitle=CP&searchLocationType=I&countryCode=gb&keepFacets=keepFacets&page_num=1&pplSearchOrigin=ADVS&viewCriteria=1&sortCriteria=R&redir=redir
• Madsen, P. M. (2011, Apr). How to Avoid Catastrophe. Harvard Business Review , pp. 89-97.
• Mallak, L. A. (1998). Measuring resilience in health care provider organizations. Health Manpowe Management , 24 (4), pp. 148-152.
• May, T. (1993). Social Research: Issues, Methods and Process. Bury St Edmonds: Open Press University.
• McEntire, D. (2007). Disaster Response and Recovery. USA: John Wiley & Sons Inc.
• McManus, S. (2008). Organisational Resilience in New Zealand. Retrieved Aug 23, 2011, from Resilent Organisations: http://www.resorgs.org.nz/Organisational%20Resilience%20in%20New%20Zealand.pdf
• Medonca, S., Cunha, M. P., Kaivo-oja, J., & Ruff, F. (2004). Coping with the Future: Developing Organizational Foresightfulness. Futures , 36 (2), 201-218.
• Menkes, J. (2011). Better Under Pressure. USA: Harvard Business Review Press.
• Mintzberg, H. (1989). Mintzberg on Management. US: Hungry Minds.
• Oxford Dictionaries. (2011). Oxford Dictionaries. Retrieved Jul 8, 2011, from Oxford English Dictionary: http://oxforddictionaries.com
• Paynter, J. (1998). Year 2000 Issues and Recommendations. Software Engineering: Education Practice, 1998. (pp. 411-415). Auckland: University of Auckland.
• Perrow, C. (1999). Normal Accidents: Living with High Risk Technologies. New Jersey: Princeton University Press.
• Praverand, P. (1980). Knowledge is Power. International Development Review , 22 (1), 55-58.
• Putman, R. D. (2000). Bowling Alone. London: Simon & Schuster.
• Ramanujam, R., & Goodman, P. S. (2003). Latent Errors and Adverse Organisational Consequences: a conceptualization. Journal of Organisational Behaviour , 24 (7), 815-836.
• Resilient Organisations. (2005). Terminology. Retrieved Aug 18, 2011, from Resilient Organisations: http://www.resorgs.org.nz/terminology.shtml
• Robert, B. (2010). Organisational Resilience: concepts and evaluation method. Canada: Presses Internationales Polytechnique.
• Ronndahl, U. (2005). Is it Time to Reconsider the Concept of Risk Management? Risk Consulting , 1, 27-29.
• Rowe, D. (2004, Nov). Risk Analysis: Overhead or value-added? Retrieved Jun 20, 2011, from Risk Magazine: http://www.dmrra.com/publications/Risk%20Magazine/200411%20Risk%20Management%20Overhead%20or%20Value%20Added.pdf
• Rowntree, D. (2000). Statistics Without Tears: An Introduction for Non-Mathemeticians. London: Penguin Books.
• Schonlau, M., Fricker, R. D., & Elliott, M. N. (2002). Conducting Research Surveys via Email and the Web. Santa Monica: RAND.
• Seligman, M. E. (2011, April). Building Resilience. Harvard Business Review , pp. 102-106.
• Seville, E., Vargo, J., Stevenson, J., & Stephenson, A. (2011). Making the Case for Resilience Investments. 11th International Conference on Applications of Statistics and Probability in Civil Engineering. Zurich: International Conference on Application of Statistics and Probability.
• Sheffi, Y. (2005). The Resilient Enterprise: Overcoming Vulnerability for Competitive Advantage. USA: Massachusetss Institute of Technology.
• Simsek, Z. (2007). CEO Tenure and Organisational Performance: an intervening model. Strategic Management Journal , 28, 653-662.
• Social Research Methods. (2006, Oct 10). Theory of Reliability. Retrieved 12 28, 2011, from Research Methods Knowledge Base: http://www.socialresearchmethods.net/kb/index.php
• Stephenson Resilience. (2011). Measuring Business Resilience. Retrieved Aug 23, 2011, from Stephenson Resilience: http://www.stephensonresilience.co.uk/ourservices/measuring-business-resilience/
• Stephenson, A. (2011). Benchmarking the Resilience of Organisations. (http://www.resorgs.org.nz/pubs/THESIS_BENCHMARKING%20THE%20RESILIENCE%20OF%20ORGANISATIONS.pdf, Ed., & N. T. Canterbury, Trans.) New Zealand: Resilient Organisations.
• Stephenson, A., Vargo, J., & Seville, E. (2010). Measuring and comparing organisational resilience in Auckland. The Australian Journal of Emergency Management , 25 (2), 25-32.
• Strategic Risk. (2008). Strategic Risk Research Summary: Today’s European Risk Manager. Retrieved Aug 2, 2011, from Strategic Risk Journal: http://www.strategicrisk.co.uk/Journals/Newsquest/StrategicRISK/StrategicRISK_May_2008/attachments/SR_EURO_RISK_MAN.pdf
• Sutcliffe, K. M., & Vogus, T. J. (2003). Organising for Resilience. In K. S. Cameron, J. E. Dutton, & R. E. Quinn, Positive Organizational Scholarship. San Francisco: Berret Koehler.
• Taleb, N. (2007). The Black Swan. London: Penguin.
• 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.
• Walker, B., Holling, C., Carpenter, S. R., & Kinsig, A. (2004). Resilience , Adaptability and Transformability in Social-Ecological Systems. Ecology & Society , 9 (2), http://www.mendeley.com/research/resilience-adaptability-and-transformability-in-socialecological-systems/.
• Weick, K. E., & Sutcliffe, K. M. (2007). Managing the Unexpected: Resilent Performance in an Age of Uncertainty (Vol. 2nd Edition). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
• Woodman, P. & Hutchings, P. (2011). Managing Threats in a Dangerous World: The 2011 Business Continuity Management Survey, March 2011. Retrieve Dec 2, 2011 from Chartered Management Institute: http://www.bcifiles.com/Managing_threats_BCM_2011.pdf

• Wooten, L. P., & James, E. H. (2008). Linking Crisis Management and Leadership Competencies: The Role of Human Resource Development. Advances in Developing Human Resources , 3 (10), 352-379.
• Young, T. C. (1999). Turning Back the Clock on the Millenium Bug: Trigger of Coverage for Year 2000 Claims under CGL Occurance Policies. (http://heinonline.org/HOL/LandingPage?collection=journals&handle=hein.journals/arzjl31&div=14&id=&page=, Ed.) Arizona State Law Journal , 31 (259).

You’ve already had the Introduction so here’s Chapter 2 which is the “Issue & Literature Review”.  My Dad, who was one of my marvellous proof readers, refers to this chapter as the one where I “completely destroyed the US’s national standard for resilience.”  Um… I wouldn’t have put it quite like that but, yes, I personally think it’s a very, very poor excuse for a “standard”.  Sorry to be so blunt, but, well, you can read my arguments for yourself and decide whether you agree or not.

Feel free to comment at the end if you like.  Opinions and debates always welcome.

For the sources of the quotes, please use the Bibliography (which includes links to those available on the  web).

For the sources of the quotes, please use the Bibliography (which includes links to those available on the  web).

Don’t forget that it’s fine for you to use this work for your own purposes, so long as you credit the source. For private or commercial purposes please credit Charley Newnham and include a link to her Linked In profile. For academic purposes please click here for the complete reference. 

—————————>

2. ISSUES AND RELATED LITERATURE REVIEW

 “Resilience: if you think of it in terms of the Gold Rush then you’d be pretty depressed right now, because the last nugget of gold would be gone.  But the good thing is, with innovation, there isn’t a last nugget.  Every new thing creates two new questions and two new opportunities”

Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon.com (2003)

This chapter critically evaluates relevant issues and published literature.   As this work is intended to be useful to senior organisational leaders, the most recent possible literature is used.

The first section of the chapter seeks to define “organisational resilience” in light of diverse academic and professional offerings.  The second establishes how academia considers organisational resilience might be achieved, reviewing professional standards and guidelines and analysing them in light of key academic texts.   The possibility of identifying factors that most impact organisational resilience, measuring organisational resilience and, by extension, measuring a leader’s propensity to act with behaviours that induce organisational resilience is examined in the subsequent section of the literature review.  At the end of the chapter, the summary includes a list of lines of enquiry identified for primary research, based on questions raised or not answered by the issues and literature review.

The chapter is organised under the headings:

• What is organisational resilience?
• How is organisational resilience achieved?
• Can organisational resilience be measured?
• Summary

2.1 What is organisational resilience?

In this emerging discipline, there is little consensus on the definition of organisational resilience (e.e. Braes & Brooks, 2010 and Comfort, Boin & Demchak, 2010).  The narrative of Designing Resilience (Comfort, Boin, & Demchak, 2010) shares a journey from a somewhat operational definition at the beginning of the book to one that is rather more holistic and strategic at the end.  This section takes a similar journey, albeit with different inputs, and comes to similar though not identical conclusions.

The Oxford English Dictionary states “resilience” is a noun meaning “the ability of a substance or object to spring back into shape” or “the capacity to recovery quickly from difficulties; toughness” (Oxford Dictionaries, 2011).   But in the context of an organisation, academics don’t agree on definitions nor common understandings of what it is nor how it may be achieved (Braes & Brooks, 2010).

Some definitions appear based on the dictionary’s notion of bouncing back.  These refer to resilience as an organisation’s capacity to recover to its original state quickly after a sudden change or high impact disruptions, e.g. Ferudi (2007) and McEntire (2007).  Others consider it a far more strategic concept, which not only assists recovery to the original state, but helps an organisation minimise the possibility of crisis at a strategic rather than a functional level (e.g. Valikangas, 2010 and Comfort, Boin & Demchak, 2010).  Here, resilience also embraces new possibilities that may be presented via the potential crisis that may increase opportunities for prosperity.

There is a third argument, however, that both the above concepts encourage resilience to be considered as (albeit sometimes sophisticated) business continuity management.  They argue that this view is too narrow[1] and have considered organisational resilience in light of psychological, social and ecological resilience, and how that resilience capability encompasses a seemingly natural adaptation to environmental change that permits on-going generational survival without the danger of crisis (Sutcliffe & Vogus, 2003).  This train of thought concurs with the findings of a very recent study contesting that the only proof of organisational resilience is total or on-going longevity (Carmeli & Markman, 2011). This idea offers a practical insight, as businesses also fail for reasons other than a unexpected disruption or sudden crisis. For example, some expand too quickly (Bannatyne, 2011) or without due discipline (Collins, 2009) lack the strategic governance for growth (Carmeli & Markman, 2011) or simply fail to respond to gradual decline, often due to poor or unrealistic situational awareness (Collins, 2009).   Carmeli & Markman (2011) argue resilient companies don’t settle for endurance but seeks to thrive: “corporate resilience is about neither crisis management nor turnaround programs… it is not reactive but proactive organisational conditioning”.

Horne & Orr (1998) cite a 1992 study by Peters and Waterman offering a list of “excellent companies”; 18 months later more than 30% of those companies were no longer considered “excellent” and new research showed “the majority had failed to adapt to changes in the external environment”.  So, moving away from the notion that resilience is a recoverycapability and acknowledging it is the capability for an organisation to endure and thrive with or without obvious disruption is useful.

Socio-ecological system theory defines resilience as “the capacity of a system to absorb disturbance and reorganize while undergoing change so as to still retain essentially the same function, structure, identity, and feedbacks” (Walker, Holling, Carpenter, & Kinsig, 2004) but this is closely linked with “transformability”, or the “capacity to create a fundamentally new system when ecological, economic, or social structures make the existing system untenable” (Walker, Holling, Carpenter, & Kinsig, 2004).  Applying these tightly coupled socio-ecological theories in an organisational context addresses both sides of the resilience coin: the operational notion of recovery and endurance and the strategic concept of proactive conditioning to survive and thrive without suffering any noticeable disruption.

However, there may be potential practical issues with adopting a strategic definition of resilience.  In an organisational context, measures for resilience must usually be cost-justified and thus measurable (Sheffi, 2005).   Thus it may be hard to justify some resilience measures that protect an organisation from disruption if the disruption that was avoided cannot be identified.   For example, in 1994, terrorists hijacked an Air France plane and attempted to fly it into the Eiffel Tower; in 1995 the US foiled an Islamic terror plot to simultaneously hijack eleven commercial flights; yet it didn’t occur to any airline to place locks on cockpit doors as a precautionary measure (Bazerman & Watkins, 2008).  Taleb’s parable (2007) offers a potential explanation:

“Assume that a legislator with courage, influence, intellect, vision and perseverance manages to enact a law that goes into universal effect and employment on September 10, 2001; it imposes continuously locked bullet-proofed doors in every cockpit (at high cost to the struggling airlines) just in case terrorists decide to use planes…. This legislation is not a popular measure among the airline personnel, as it complicates their lives.  But it certainly would have prevented 9/11.  The person who imposed locks… gets no statues in public squares, not so much as a quick mention… in his obituary, “Joe Smith, who helped avoid the disaster of 9.11 died of complications of liver disease”.  Seeing how superfluous his measure was, and how it squandered resources, the public with great help from airline pilots, might well boot him out of office… He will retire, depressed, with a great sense of failure. I wish I could go to his funeral but, reader, I can’t find him.”  (Taleb, 2007)

While Taleb’s account may be fictional, it demonstrates the difficulty of being able to justify the value of precautionary measures taken for resilience in the period before the measure is required, and to maintain its justification when the event it prevents does not occur.   Organisations are statistically more likely to invest in resilience after a disruption, crisis or otherwise negative incident (Seville, Vargo, Stevenson, & Stephenson, 2011), which points to an operational rather than a strategic understanding of the concept.

Recent work from the renowned New Zealand based Resilient Organisations institution, including that by McManus (2008) and Stephenson (2011) suggest that factors indicating organisation resilience can be split into three dimensions: Situational Awareness, Management of Keystone Vulnerabilities and Adaptive Capacity.  This concurs with Sutcliffe and Vogus’s opinion that resilience is a capacity.  Acknowledging the aim of longevity demanded by Carmeli & Markham (2011), our working definition, which may be used with or without the bracketed text, is therefore:

Organisational resilience is the strategic and operational, planned and adaptive, capacity of an organisation [in a socio-technical system to eradicate, avoid or minimise organisational crises] to thrive and achieve longevity.

However, given the lack of consistent agreement regarding definition, a line of enquiry was included in the primary research to better understand if organisations generally consider organisational resilience to be a strategic capability or a business interruption management system.

2.2 How is organisational resilience achieved?

Literature examined herein may be categorised as professional guidance and academic texts.  As organisations may be likely to consult professional guidance before academic texts, guidance is examined first.

2.21 Professional Guidance

Professional guidance can be offered in many guises. The contribution of national and international standards, and postgraduate education, is examined below.

Standards claiming to assist organisational resilience include national and international standards for Business Continuity (BSI, 2011), Risk Management (ISO, 2009) and Information Security (BSI, 2011).  However, he title of the American National Standard, Organizational Resilience: Security, Preparedness, And Continuity Management Systems (ASIS, 2009) implies that it provides definitive input.  For brevity, it will be referred to herein as ANSOR.  This standard has been adopted by, among others, the US Department for Homeland Security ‘s Private Sector Preparedness program and the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA, 2010).

ANSOR was created by ann association for security professionals. It was later adopted by the US and the Netherlands as a national standard.  As per its title, the Standard appears to suggest that resilience is achieved by bringing together the functions of security, emergency preparedness and business continuity with some specific considerations. Claiming to be “a management system… to anticipate, prevent if possible, and prepare for and respond to a disruptive incident (emergency, crisis and disaster)… [by] enhancing security, preparedness, response, continuity and resilience” (ASIS, 2009) via a systems approach, it appears to lean heavily on existing standards for related topics (e.g. Risk Management (ISO, 2009) Information Security (BSI, 2011) and BS25999 for Business Continuity (BSI, 2011)).

One might conclude that ANSOR does four things well.  Firstly, it identifies the business functions its writers believe conduct the resilience effort. These are security (information and physical), risk management, business continuity and crisis management, recognizing internal and external dependencies and supply chains as crucial considerations.  The functions identified concur with the writing of the more operational academic authors, for example, Braes & Brooks (2010) who cite: “enterprise risk management, business continuity management, crisis management, physical security and cyber security” and network and supply chain dependencies (Sheffi, 2005).  Secondly, the standard attempts to include Crisis Management. After BS25999, the standard for Business Continuity, was published it was widely suggested an accompanying standard in Crisis Management was required (ISO, 2006). The high level of detail that ANSOR includes on Crisis Management – especially compared with other functions in the title – suggests an attempt to bridge that gap. Thirdly, it requires the named functions to work together.  As shown later, the scholars endorse this.  Fourthly it doesn’t contradict a resilience certification consortium explanation that the difference between resilience and continuity is that resilience encompasses planned change as well as unplanned events (BRCCI, 2011).

While the scholarly notion that “rather than being rare and extraordinary… resilience emerges from relatively ordinary adaptive processes” (Sutcliffe & Vogus, 2003) must be acknowledged, ANSOR only claims to be a management system that deals with disruptive incidents, therefore adopting a business continuity-based approach that is very limited in its ability to contribute to overall organisational resilience.   As the academic texts will show later, this standard would need to include many other functions and organisational capabilities  to provide robust guidance on organisational resilience.

The researcher was unable to establish what an organisation would gain from adopting ANSOR instead, or as well as, the existing standards for each function, which each present as more thorough and authoritative than ANSOR.  ANSOR’s approach is unbalanced: risk and crisis management are described in detail (with some bizarrely detailed notes, such as a requirement to have access control at the door of crisis rooms) while, at the other end of the scale, physical and information security are barely mentioned.  It furthermore fails to address any of existing issues with risk management processes (an issue of importance that is considered on page 28).   It also requires organisations to create metrics to monitor resilience performance but does not explain how resilience can be measured.

In summary the implication of ANSOR’s title, that following the guidance will result in organisational resilience, is not supported by this study.

Meanwhile, BS25999 for Business Continuity (BSI, 2006) states it should be considered “a holistic management process that identifies potential threats… and the impacts to business operations… and the capability for an effective response” (BSI, 2006).  As this resembles some definitions of resilience as per the previous section, it merits consideration in a quest for resilience guidance.   BS25999 is the fastest selling British Standard of all time (BSI Workshop, 2010), providing a clear approach to identifying, mitigating and managing potential disruptions to business.  Criticisms include the lack of crisis management guidance which is currently being remedied by publicly available specification PAS:200 (BSI Shop, 2011), a precursor to a British Standard on Crisis Management.   As previously stated, single functions may contribute towards resilience but cannot produce it; BS25999 makes no claim that its guidance will result in organisational resilience.

Considering the professional standards in light of operational verses strategic guidance – where operational relates “to the routine functioning and activities of an organization” and strategic relates to “to the identification of long-term or overall aims and interests and the means of achieving them” (Oxford Dictionaries, 2011) – suggests that BS25999 and other functional standards are useful aids to assisting operational resilience.

Some academics, e.g. Sheffi (2005) focus on operational resilience.  Leading university courses on resilience are often made up of predominantly operational functions; Cranfield University’s own MSc Resilience course, for example, includes modules on risk, business continuity, crisis management, technology, supply chain, and security (Cranfield, 2011).  However, as shown later, many academics (e.g. Sutcliffe & Vogus, 2003) argue that the scope for resilience is far more complex than the sum of output from these functions/disciplines.   This is, perhaps, reflected in Cranfield’s syllabus by the inclusion of a module titled Strategy for Resilience.  While the frequently named functions  - risk, business continuity, security, crisis management, etc. hereafter referred to collectively as ‘resilience units’) – clearly contribute an organisation’s resilience, previously discussed indications that these aren’t the only contributing factors will be explored further as other academic texts are considered.

It is particularly important to reach a conclusion regarding the level of contribution to resilience that the resilience units provide because a new unit name is emerging.  A search on business-focused social media site, Linked In, suggests units with the word “resilience” in their titles are beginning to appear[2], for example Resilience Department, Business Resilience and Resilience and Risk.  In some cases the researcher’s personal acquaintance with some of the units appearing in the search offers the suggestion that some of these new units are renamed business continuity units or business continuity units that have joined forces with risk management teams.  No data explaining the ‘normal duties’ of a business unit called ‘resilience’ could be sourced, but it appeared possible the title may imply a belief that resilience can be achieved mainly by via work of this function: primary research was therefore undertaken by this study to understand the scope and responsibilities of these units.

2.22 Academic Texts

This section uses four books and one academic paper as the basis against which to consider other literature.  These five items were chosen for their focus on organisational resilience; the combination of mainstream availability and author credibility and; because they each take very different approaches.  Other literature is considered around these books by Sheffi (2005), Valikangas (2010), Beer (2009), Collins (2009) and the Carmeli & Markman (2011) paper.  Key ideas from the five focussing texts are summarized in Table 2.1

 Author (Year)IdeasYossi Sheffi (2005)

• Organise for responsive action
• Assess the vulnerabilities
• Reduce the likelihood of disruptions
• Collaborate for security
• Build in redundancies
• Design resilient supply chains
• Invest in training and culture

Michael Beer (2009)

• Invest in leadership and employees
• Develop a culture of emotional attachment to the company and internal community
• Provide resources to enable high performance
• Harness organisational learning to discipline change

Jim Collins (2009)

• Recruit the right people for leadership
• Strategies embrace disciplined thought
• Action is disciplined
• Build the company to last:
  • Without dependence on a charismatic leader
  • Preserving core values and reason for being

Liisa Valikangas (2010)

• Rehearse everything: “resilience is not a strategy; it is a rehearsal”
• Manage consequences of past performance
• Invest in innovation
• Design with robustness, sustainable, evolvable with redundancy
• Embrace natural selection and understand serendipity in all areas, and/or subject to resilience tests
• Ensure adaptability and mobility

Carmeli & Markman (2011)

• Organic and controlled expansion/growth
• In depth organisational understanding
• Strong strategic governance
• Supporting tactics: save power by achieving objectives through others or via efficient resource deployment; maintain a stronghold base; isolate adversaries; create forward outposts

There is no suggestion that the books disagree with the notion that high resilience minimises the possibility of incident or decline, and that this provides competitive advantage, but their approaches to the issue are very different.  Carmeli & Markham’s paper (2011) is based on case studies and contends that organisational resilience is proved by longevity.

Sheffi (2005) provides an operationally focused text, concentrating on functions such as risk and supply chain management, and building a culture for redundancy and flexibility. This text is most noticeably aligned with an operational approach and, though strategic requirements are considered, he considers resilience primarily from disruption management viewpoint.  Valikangas (2010 is strategic and conceptual, advocating investment in knowledge management, innovation, “building resilience” and rehearsing strategies.  Her material might be considered light on explaining how to practice what is preached.  Beer (2009) takes a very different stance.  He builds resilience vicariously, by creating a highly committed workforce: “High Commitment, High Performance”(HCHP).  Collins (2009) examines how firms can avoid slipping into slow-burn failure that they may not even notice – possibly because profits are still increasing  – by defining decline in five stages (see Figure 2a).   Carmeli & Markman’s (2011) conclusions are based on studying 150 companies against the Roman Empire, which endured for over 1000 years. Further to their belief that resilience is not about disruption but proactive conditioning to survive and thrive, they argue it is achieved by “capture” (expansion) and governance strategies – see Figure 2b – that are completed “only after [the organisation learns how] to systematically combine, align and reinforce the two strategies.”

Figure 2a – Collins (2009) 5 Stages of Decline

Figure 2b: Capture-Governance Matrix (Carmeli & Markman, 2011)

Despite their diverse approaches, themes emerge from these academic works. Those that appear to be most valued across the works are examined below, but it may be useful to note that the underpinning discursive thread lead this study to four key conclusions.  Firstly, organisational resilience is a holistic concept requiring both strategic activity led by those at the very top of the organisation and operational activity inherent across the organisation.  Secondly, deep organisational learning and understanding, realistic situational awareness and robust governance (e.g. Collins, 2001 & Carmelli & Markman, 2011) are vital.  Thirdly, resilience will not completely protect an organisation from disruption so its resilience plan will require business continuity and crisis management processes (Valikangas, 2010).  And finally, many of the processes contributing to the resilience capacity should be an intrinsic part of a strategic risk management process but the best of these are flawed due to lack of data about the future, the heuristic nature of human beings (Gardner, 2009) and an on-going perception of risk management being something only risk managers do (Rowe, 2004).

Solid Values and Purpose.  More resilient organisations tend to have strong corporate values and a clear understanding of their place in the world (Sheffi, 2005) which is interesting if only because the same is true of resilient people (Jackson, Firtko, & Edenborough, 2007).  Valikangas (2010) argues that, like resilient individuals, these companies are also likely to sacrifice short-term gains in favour of long-term goals, while Beer (2009) argues that it goes further than this, and leaders must “accept constraints with regard to firm purpose and values, strategy, financial and cultural risks” to prioritise, achieve and maintain resilience.  Beer argues, for example, the leaders of failed investment banks Bear Sterns and Merrill Lynch didn’t “have the aspirations, the higher moral purpose, or the savvy to build a resilient organisation capable of sustained advantage” (Beer, 2009) because short-term profit was their priority. The consensus among the authors is that when organisations are motivated by strong values and shared purpose, leaders and employees are inherently more committed to the firm’s resilience and longevity.  Valikangas (2010) suggests this enables “organisational resilience beyond the leadership’s ability” especially when accompanied by a culture encouraging resourcefulness, robustness and adaptive capacity while Beer goes so far as to suggest that resilience is increased when leaders accept constraints to organisational values, strategies and financial and cultural risks in pursuance of maintaining key values and purpose. This suggests that organisations that believe they have inherently higher moral purposes (which may be easier to identify in charity and not-for-profit organisations) or accept constraints such as those outlined by Beer, may have a higher propensity for resilient behaviours.  This hypothesis was tested via a two lines of enquiry in the primary research.

Optimistic v Pessimistic Outlook. The first sentence of the previous paragraph notes a similarity between tendencies of resilient organisations and resilient people.   It is therefore interesting to consider whether more similarities may exist. However, in the field of human resilience there is consensus that “realistic optimism” – hope based on an understanding of the circumstances surrounding oneself – is the key (e.g. Seligman, 2011).  Menkes (2011), asserts realistic optimism to be a vital leadership attribute that requires both “an awareness of circumstance” and “a sense of agency” which concurs with organisational requirements for resilience (Valikangas, 2010 & Collins, 2009).  On the other hand, human psychology studies also show risk is most accurately assessed by those with mild depression – a proposition known as ‘depressive realism’ (Alloy & Abramson, 1979).  Research into potential links between an individual’s optimistic/pessimistic outlook for their organisation and their propensity for behaviours impacting organisational resilience could not be found, so a line of enquiry was included in the primary research.

Understanding Vulnerabilities & Risk. The ability to identify and manage vulnerabilities and risk is vital for resilience.  Collins (2009) and Valikangas (2010) consider this to be a strategic task as well as an operational one, with as much importance given to long-term horizon scanning as to identifying operational hazards.  However, there are fundamental issues with the ‘science’ of risk management.  It is properly calculated by multiplying statistical probability by the cost of impact; in reality, risk management is often done by ‘guesstimate’ with heuristics playing a significant role (Gardner, 2009).  Furthermore, the perception can often be that ‘proper’ risk management, as per the guidelines (ISO, 2009), is done by risk managers.  It can therefore be difficult to achieve genuine engagement (Rowe, 2004). Specialist risk managers often feel isolated from general operations, unable to get time with senior management, and believe valuable “risk management data” is “largely ignored” (Strategic Risk, 2008) and is therefore rarely considered to be part of the strategic corporate effort. Yet the seemingly ‘sudden’ disappearances of large companies such as Woolworths, DeLorean, RCA, Arthur Andersen, TWA and Bear Sterns (Daily Finance, 2011) and fraudulent events such as the Barings Bank  collapse (Leeson, 1995) and Enron scandal (BBC, 2002) show risk assessing longer term strategies and current activity at the highest level is prudent.  The impacts of terrorist events such as 7/7, and particularly 9/11 which resulted more than 18,000 businesses being “dislocated, disrupted or destroyed” (Makinen, 2002), have widened the scope of ‘risk’ and registers to increasingly include hazards such as terrorism, employee and leadership issues, crime (Ronndahl, 2005) and supply chains (Sheffi, 2005) yet these particular additions may simply enforce the idea that risk is an operational task.

For resilient strategic decisions to be “informed by facts, not politics” (Beer, 2009) a sound approach to understanding vulnerabilities is required, yet the corporate risk management process can often appear divorced from the corporate strategists as, perhaps, may be demonstrated by its lack of presence in the standards (e.g. ANSOR).

Comprehensive Strategy, Innovation and Governance.Valikangas (2010) asserts constant innovation is vital for resilience, even though it “is too often viewed as merely a distraction – until it pays off”.  Beer (2005) and Collins (2009) preach innovation with a more cautious tone, suggesting incremental development based on existing capabilities and testing before committing high levels of resource.  Balance may perhaps be achieved by Valikangas’s (2005) notion of rehearsing everything, Collins’s (2009) reckoning that innovation must be disciplined and controlled, and Carmeli & Markman (2011) declaring considered expansion, which may include innovation, undertaken with learned and total governance, to be at the very core of resilience in an organisation.

Understanding of Networks.  Though Valikangas’s (2011) work on resilience appears conceptual, when broken down it appears to place intrinsic value on the importance of understanding everything in the organisation as a component in a network.  Staff inside the organisation, relationships outside the organisation, supply chains, technology systems, processes with interdependencies, and even transport and neighbours are essentially networks.  Perrow’s (1999) theory of normal accidents tells us that tighter networks arising from coupled technologies and increasing supply chain variables give more opportunity for mishap, particularly if their linkages are misunderstood.  Understanding these enables the identification of flexibility, redundancy, and opportunities (or the potential for them) and how they might be leveraged when required.   Creating and maintaining social networks and capital can provide substantial resilience capability (Putman, 2000) as demonstrated by Johnson’s (2010) case studies of organisations that successfully leveraged their social capital in times of need.

Business Continuity, Crisis Management Strategies. None of the texts claim that disruption or crisis can be eradicated; Beer (2005) believes crises are “inevitable” when a company exists for a sustained period of time.  Business continuity and crisis management measures enable a company to better respond to and recover from an disruption or incident (BSI, 2006) and those that enable the organisation to identify and take advantage of new opportunities presented due to such events may offer competitive advantage (Valikangas, 2010).  Business Continuity and Crisis Management strategies and planning and tools are therefore essential components of an organisation’s resilience toolkit.                                               

Comprehensive Organisational Understanding and Knowledge Management.  Harnessing learning, retaining knowledge and understanding the organisation is a recurring theme for resilience in all five of the chosen resilience texts.   Truly understanding how things work, interrelate and depend on each other, being able to notice deviations from the norm, and being able to establish the cause of issues (Valikangas, 2010) is vital, as is being able to spot near-misses and “near misses masquerading as successes” (Madsen, 2011).   Information and learning must be tested before being considered knowledge to avoid “dangerous attribution errors” (Gino & Pisano, 2011) and because making robust strategy and operational decisions depend on it (Carmeli & Markman, 2011).    Collins’ (2009) observation that many companies didn’t realise that they were in decline explains potential consequences of lack of understanding and, perhaps, not knowing the difference between organisational effort, chance and serendipity (Valikangas, 2010).  As Beer (2009) notes, “The evidence is overwhelming; declines in organisational performance are almost always caused when leaders avoid realities that are known to everyone… in virtually [every case study we conducted] people at lower levels across multiple functions know the truth”.   Other authors might refer to these indications as “weak signals” (e.g. Medonca, Cunha, Kaivo-oja, 2004) or “accumulation of latent error” (e.g. Rananujam & Goodman, 2003).

 However, understanding how many organisations function can be as complex as their size, networks and tightly coupled systems (Perrow, 1999) and increasingly long supply chains (Sheffi, 2005).  Knowledge that was easily shared in times past may now be held by specialists, suppliers or otherwise held outside the company itself and, as the saying goes “knowledge is power” (Praverand, 1980). Like risk management, capturing learning and knowledge is one of the areas that many organisations find notoriously difficult (Alvesson & Karreman, 2011). De Long and Fahey (2000) found that an organisation’s pro-activity on information sharing and knowledge management depends entirely on its cultural norms.

Culture for Resilience.  Culture is important to resilience, and not just for knowledge management.  Organisational academic Rosabeth Moss Kanter (2011) injects, “resilience is not simply an individual characteristic… Teams that are immersed in a culture of accountability, collaboration and initiative are more likely to believe they can weather any storm… The lesson for leaders is clear: build the cornerstones of confidence – accountability, collaboration, and initiative – when times are good.”  Many concur that a culture of accountability coupled with a commitment to learning is key, (e.g. Lafley, 2011) and, as company culture is invariably dictated by the decisions of its leaders (George, Sleeth, & Siders, 1999), it is the leaders who choose whether resilience is a priority for the organisation.

If leaders choose resilience, building such a “culture takes years… [but is] easily liquidated with a few bad decisions” (Beer, 2009) suggesting it is fragile.  While Sheffi (2005) might encourage the culture to value flexibility and/or redundancy, Beer (2009) prioritises cultivating a highly committed workforce to achieve resilience. In addition to investment in staff capabilities he states this means avoiding layoffs “at all costs” asserting “companies with employment stability outperform their competitors” (Beer, 2009).  Sheffi (2005) isn’t alone in advocating appropriate redundancy and flexibility and is particularly supported by Valikangas (2011) in many areas including systems, technology capacity, stock, and supply chains.  No literature to refute these notions was found but, in tough economic times, one might imagine the cost justification for adding or maintaining redundancy and avoiding staff cuts wherever possible may be a challenge.

Rehearsing.  Valikangas is not alone in suggesting that resilience strategies should rehearsed regularly to ensure they are fit-for-purpose and may be relied upon (Valikangas, 2010), however, the notion of exercising is most prominent in texts regarding business continuity and crisis management arrangements (e.g. BSI, 2006).  Valikangas (2010) takes this much further, proposing organisational leaders practice not just contingency arrangements but for strategies, policies and plans in general, suggesting that while practice might not make perfect it certainly enhances the understanding and potential of the capability.

2.23 Summary

Table 2.2 shows a summary of key features of organisational resilience as discussed above.

Table 2.2: Summary of some key features of an organisational resilience after Sheffi (2005), Valikangas (2010), Beer (2009), Collins (2009) and Carmeli & Markham (2011)

Reviewing this body of evidence suggests that achieve resilience an organisation should strive for strong values, comprehensive governance, thorough strategic and operational vulnerability identification processes, disciplined innovation, excellent knowledge management, and have solid crisis and continuity planning arrangements in place.  The more resilient companies also understand their networks (and interdependencies, including supply chains),cultivate appropriate social capital, rehearse their resiliency measures and their business continuity and crisis management plans, and seek to embed all these elements into a culture that clearly values its people and its resilience capabilities.   This is not an exhaustive list of organisational resilience indicators, but offers an insight to some of the key themes provided by these authors.

This evidence concurs with Sutcliffe & Vogus’s (2003) statement that “resilience emerges from relatively ordinary adaptive processes”.   Yet this work has already shown that some of these capabilities, particularly around strategizing risk information, managing knowledge, and understanding networks, are among the most difficult for organisations to achieve for a variety of reasons including uncertainty, human nature, complexities, or costs.  Additionally, none of the authors suggest metrics for measuring resilience, nor the value thereof, which adds to the challenge of justifying the pursuance of enhancing the resilience capability.  The need to understand the scope of “Resilience” units that are emerging in organisations was identified in the previous section.   This information may also shed light on whether resilience units are assisting with the more difficult aspects of enhancing resilience capability.

A summary of the lines of enquiry for primary research identified in this section is included at the end of the chapter.

2.3 Can organisational resilience be measured?

The saying that “what can’t be measured can’t be managed” (Drucker, 1993) often translates, according to business leaders such as Dragon’s Den’s Duncan Bannatyne (2011), into the need for Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) and metrics.

Resilience is a capability and, as such, is not easily measurable: “resilience is always active within an organisation but may only be visible during the post-crisis phases” (Stephenson, 2011). However, without visibility of links between resilience, longevity, survival and competitiveness, the ability to create viable business cases for resilience measures may be compromised. Organisations require mechanisms to decide whether the costs of resilience – e.g. financial outlay, slower growth, less profit, restrictions on change – are justified (Sheffi, 2005).   As previously noted, both ANSOR and BS25999 require metrics and monitoring.  ANSOR for “operations that have a material impact on its performance” (ASIS, 2009) and BS25999 for “business continuity capability” (BSI, 2006).  Neither standard offers guidance nor methodology on how to do this.

So can ‘organisational resilience’ or a ‘resilience capability’ be measured?  Some academics suggest it can, but a search for scholarly offerings provided a few explanations of what might be measured but not how it should be done.   A paper by Stephenson (2011) provides a thorough methodology and its indicating factors closely match those identified in the previous section, and is therefore is examined in more detail later in this section.

Mallak (1998) asserts that organisational resilience is dependent on the individual resilience of those who work within it.  Acknowledging he could not measure it directly (another cited example of this is “wisdom, which cannot be directly observed but may be a combination of factors such as scepticism and curiosity” (Mallak, 1998)) he provides a list of indicators for six key attributes on his resilience scale: “goal-directed solution seeking; avoidance; critical understanding; role dependence; source reliance; and resource access”.  In common with the few other papers available to the researcher (see below), it appears that, rather than offering a tool to assign objective numerical values to measure an amount or volume of resilience capability within an organisation, the authors proffer assigning perceived values to a number of factors that the author(s) claim indicate resilience within the organisation.  In a number of cases it appears these are considered benchmarking tools rather than exact ‘measures’. For example, the Multidisciplinary Centre for Earthquake Engineering Research (MCEER) at the University of Buffalo use a “4R Framework” of indicators: robustness, redundancy, resourcefulness and rapidity (Teirny & Bruneau, 2007) while Sutcliffe (2007) – which is also cited by Stephenson (2011) – appears to concur with Beer’s (2009) notion that high reliability often indicates high resilience while considering metrics for their key resilience indicators: ‘anticipation’ and ‘containment’.

Stephenson (2011) critiques most of the above-mentioned studies as well as more by Somer, Weick, Sutcliffe and Panton.  She concludes their results contribute to the knowledge but are all limited by shortcomings in sampling and lack of quantitative testing to date. Acknowledging that organisations need metrics, Stephenson continues with the work of her sponsor, the Resilient Organisations Research Group (ResOrgs), to propose resilience indicators complete with a metric measurement offering (Stephenson, Benchmarking the Resilience of Organisations, 2011).   Examining the above frameworks in light of the literature reviewed in 2.2 How is Resilience Achieved? suggests clear similarities in findings, including MCEERs markers: redundancy, resourcefulness and rapidity (Teirny & Bruneau, 2007), and Sutcliffe’s (2007) anticipation and containment.  However, the tool explained by Stephenson (2011) is of particular interest to this study due to the obviously close correlation between the key indicators for resilience identified by the literature review, and the factors identified and used in the tool[3].

It is noted that the tool belongs to ResOrgs, a multi-disciplinary team of academic researchers, state sponsored by New Zealand, operating under the auspices of two universities: Auckland and Canterbury[4].   The detailed methodology of the tool proposed is provided by Stephenson’s PhD paper, which was later reworked for publication by ResOrgs in 2011 (see Stephenson, 2011).  The tool was also  summarized succinctly in academic papers elsewhere, e.g. a paper in the Australian Journal of Emergency Management by Stephenson, Vargo & Seville (2010). “Stephenson, 2011” is more heavily referenced herein, however, since the primary research of this dissertation relies heavily on the underlying detail and methodology of the tool.

Figure 2c shows the key factors identified by Stephenson’s tool along its horizontal axis.

Figure 2c: An example of output from a modified version of Stephenson’s Business Resilience Tool

Though this study did not test the tool, close examination of the work suggests several reasons to conclude that it has a number of shortcomings as a pure measurement tool. For example:

• The tool only creates values for the capabilities identified for resilience, as per Figure 2c. Though the indicators closely match the indicators identified in this study, no claim is made (by Stephenson (2011) or this work) that the list is exhaustive or fully explains the resilience capability.
• The methodology requires employees to provide their individual perception of the organisation’s capability level for each resilience factor.  Though the requirement for a significant number of employees to participate enhances the opportunity for a realistic reflection of the actual level of capability (Rowntree, 2000), individual and group perceptions – as already noted with regard to risk assessment – are often fundamentally flawed (Gardner, 2009).
• The term “measurement” implies that consistently identical results would be achieved for one organisation if the process were repeated several times by different pools of participants within the organisation (Social Research Methods, 2006).  There is no evidence that this testing has been undertaken; Stephenson appears to reflect this by referring to the process as a “benchmarking” tool (Stephenson, 2011) in her academic work.

Based on this, it must be concluded that this study has not identified a way to measure total organisational resilience. This was not an unexpected result given the issues associated with uncertainty (Gardner, 2009): how can organisations be made resilient when exactly what the future holds is unknown, and how can the utility of resilience measures be evaluated if the things they protected us from did not happen (Taleb, 2007)?

However, it must also be concluded that there are a number of positive uses for Stephenson’s benchmarking tool in the resilience arena.  The factors identified concur with the literature review herein, suggesting confirmation that the factors benchmarked by the tool provide significant contributions to organisational resilience. The robust, academic methodology provides organisations with a visual representation of their employee’s perception of the capability level of each of these factors, which may highlight areas for improvement.  And, of course, by choosing to better understand their resilience capability via a route that involves employees, organisations are investing in a culture for resilience.

The tool is also particularly useful for the research purposes of this study, which includes the aim to determine whether a leader’s individual propensity for resilient behaviours (PRB) can be measured. Stephenson’s tool asks individuals to describe their perception of an organisation’s propensity to invest in behaviours that enhance organisational resilience.   If the same questions were asked of an individual leader, in terms of their own personal behaviour rather than their perceptions for the organisation, a resulting benchmark value could be assigned to their individual propensity for the identified behaviour to enhance organisational resilience.  Thus Stephenson’s tool could be adapted to measure an individual leader’s PRB by asking the individual to respond with regard to his/her own behaviour as opposed to that of the organisation.

 2.4 Chapter Summary

This chapter has provided some answers to the first four objectives identified in the research focus (see page 13), but also presented a number of new lines of enquiry for primary research.

The definition of organisational resilience (question 1) is a matter of debate in the professional world, but academic texts allow us to determine and use the working definition provided on page 20.   A diverse range of academic literature provided common themes on how resilience is achieved (question 2), and this is summarized on pages 31/32, though it is noted that this list is indicative but not exhaustive.   However, it is apparent that professional guidance may suggest resilience is achieved simply by combining the efforts of those they consider to be the ‘resilience units’: risk management, business continuity, physical and information security and crisis management.  This study must conclude therefore, that the guidance provided by the professional standards is misleading as though the ‘resilience units’ are clearly a vital part of the overall resilience capability, they remain only a slice of that capability.

This study was not able to identify an objective, reliable method of measuring organisational resilience (question 3) in the true sense of the word ‘measure’.  However, the factors identified via the literature review concur with those used in Stephenson’s resilience benchmarking tool (Stephenson, 2011) which provides scales to gauge and place values on individual and group perceptions of the factors identified by the tool (and this study) as key contributors toward capabilities that enhance organisational resilience.  Since Stephenson’s tool already captures perceptions for individuals regarding the organisation, the tool could be adapted to enquire about an individual’s propensity for resilient behaviour (PRB) instead of that of their organisation.  Thus (question 4) an individual leader’s PRB – for those factors identified – might be gauged.

Two questions were not answered by this literature review and these were added to the lines of enquiry for primary research.

2.41 Lines of Enquiry for Primary Research 

The primary research aims to provide insight on the two outstanding research questions:

1. Establish organisational leaders’ understanding of the term organisation resilience
2. Identify circumstances in which a leader’s PRB might be predicted or improved

 The following lines of enquiry for primary research were identified in the Issue and Literature Review:

1. Do organisations understand the concept of resilience to be a strategic capability or a functional business interruption management system?
2. What are the scope and responsibilities of business units called “Resilience”?
3. Are organisations with significant ‘moral purposes’ (e.g. charities and not-for-profit) led by people with higher propensities for resilient behaviour?

10. Do leaders who believe that accepting constraints to organisational values, strategy, financial and cultural risks is likely to increase resilience have higher propensities for resilient behaviours.

11. Does the presence of realistic optimism in the leaders of an organisation impact the propensity for behaviours that contribute to organisational resilience?

12. Are “Resilience” units assisting with the more difficult aspects of enhancing the resilience capability?

If you’re using the extracts from my thesis:

• Newnham,C. (2012). GOLD OR DUST? Creating Resilient Organisations: Predicting a leader’s propensity for behaviours that create organisational resilience.  London: Cranfield University (Msc Resilience Thesis).

• Newnham, C ([2011 or 2012]). [Name of Article/Post]. Retrieved [Date] from Gold or Dust: http://www.GoldorDust.wordpress.com/%5Binsert rest of URL here]

Many thanks

If you use any of it in some work, please reference it as per this link!

For the sources of the quotes, please use the Bibliography (which includes links to those available on the  web).

Don’t forget that it’s fine for you to use this work for your own purposes, so long as you credit the source. For private or commercial purposes please credit Charley Newnham and include a link to her Linked In profile. For academic purposes please click here for the complete reference.

——————————>

1. INTRODUCTION

“We would like to live as we once lived.  But history will not permit it.” John F Kennedy (1963)

1.1 Background

The concept of ‘organisational resilience’ has emerged over the past two decades.   Robert (2010) claims this is “more than merely a fashion; this trend corresponds to a will on the part of international governments to develop a culture of resilience” when just 7 years earlier Coutu (2003) suggested many industry leaders considered it just another “buzzword”.

In the 1980/90’s, business students were taught strategic frameworks from new business gurus such as Handy (1995), Drucker (1993) and Mintzberg (1989).  Academically sound tomes became mainstream books, bought by business leaders as well as students.  In 1994, Charles Perrow published the first version of his work on ‘normal accidents’ (Perrow, 1999), asserting that the more technologies and entities were tightly coupled, the more likely accidents are to happen.  Chains of entities become more vulnerable because they are dependent on each other.  While Perrow was focusing on complex systems such as nuclear facilities, he was also predicting that rapid advances in technology would ensure even tighter coupling via more extensive networks.  He claimed that though these new infrastructures would offer great business efficiencies, they would also provide a new set of challenges. Business practices such as outsourcing, championed by the likes of Drucker (1993), were becoming more mainstream and beginning to create larger and more complex networks.  Newly emerging tools including email and the internet ensured that organisations became more reliant on technology, circuits and systems in local, national and global markets; participating in networks beyond any single entity’s control.

Fear of the so-called “Millennium Bug” prompted many companies to undertake pre-emptive work to protect themselves from disaster during the period leading to January 1, 2000 (Young, 1999).  Concerns included the sudden failure of elevators, financial transactions, traffic lights and air traffic control systems as the clock struck midnight (Paynter, 1998).  Relatively new reliance on technology and dependencies between networks saw organisations undertaking work to ensure their systems were amended to cope.  Many more prepared plans in case other organisations failed as the new millennium began.

While the predicted doom of Y2K simply didn’t happen, the plans put in place in case it did were the first business continuity plans for many organisations (Barrett, 2000).  This may explain the common perception that business continuity plans relate only to technology issues (Hiles, 2010) despite a growing recognition that company-wide contingency planning was something organisations should be considering more seriously (Barrett, 2000).

By the beginning of 2002, a new formality began to surround what had previously been known as contingency planning, and the discipline of ‘business continuity planning’ was beginning to emerge (Robert, 2010).  Spurred by increasing reliance on networks and technology, and perhaps because of the introduction of 24hour news coverage which meant that the implications of high-profile events such as terrorist attacks and power outages in the USA were understood and feared on a global scale, many more organisations across the globe began to seriously consider their arrangements in an emergency (Robert, 2010).

Governments encouraged this.  For example, the UK created a new government department called the Civil Contingencies Secretariat and passed the Civil Contingencies Act (Cabinet Office, 2004).  As well as placing obligations for continuity and emergency preparedness on emergency services, first responders and utility companies, it mandated local authorities to provide business continuity guidance to organisations within its jurisdiction. More organisations began adopting the principles and British Standard Institute formalised the processes by issuing BS25999 The British Standard for Business Continuity in 2006 (BSI, 2006).   That it is the fastest-selling standard of all time (BSI Workshop, 2010) indicates enthusiasm for understanding, if not adopting, the principles.

By March 2011, 58% of organisations had a business continuity management programme, with the figure rising to 73% for public service organisations (Woodman and Hutchings, 2011), running alongside their other risk management departments.  However, while business continuity and crisis management arrangements seek to prepare an organisation to mitigate and deal with business disruption, for some, this is no longer enough.

Recent months have seen an increasing emerge of “Resilience” business units, which appeared to the researcher (who is acquainted with the individuals working in some of these) to be replacing or subsuming “Business Continuity” business units.  A search carried out on the professional networking site, LinkedIn, for this paper in July 2011[1] demonstrated this was the case for organisations such as British Airways, KPMG, British Telecom, BAE Systems, Transport for London, and the London Olympic organisers.  So some ‘business continuity’ functions are part of a re-branding exercise to re-establish them as part of the ‘resilience’ effort.  What does this mean in practice?

A fruitless search led to the identification of a gap in the literature.  No information could be located to understand the aims of a ‘Resilience’ business unit and the changes, if any, to business continuity functions that have changed their name or been subsumed into a ‘Resilience’ department.

The concept of business continuity while, to some extent identifying and encouraging the mitigation of risk prior to an event requiring a business continuity response, remains focused on managing situations and returning to business-as-usual.   As depicted in Figure 1a, this means most business continuity planning is focused on the potential event and the response after the event – or “right of bang”.

Figure 1a: The Crisis Continuum (after Burnett, 1998)

The crisis continuum approach (Burnett, 1998) highlights that an event causing disruption, or a negative impact, may begin long before an recognisable event occurs.  This may encourage consideration of creeping or slow burn ‘events’ that may negatively impact the organisation, but not be noticed by business continuity or crisis management planning.

The crisis continuum concept makes it easier to identify that work done to the ‘left of bang’ may alter the continuum to minimise or prevent crises.  Academics such as Valikangas (2010) refer to this as resilience building.

This amended concept of crisis – from the beginning of circumstances to the commencement of a negative impact – allows us to consider a wider range of issues than business continuity allows.  As well as traditional business continuity concerns such as fire, flood, terrorism, security and supply chain the continuum view encourages a more holistic approach (Burnett, 1998).  It may encourage effort “left of bang” that eradicates the “bang” altogether.  Examples where a systematic resilience approach may have offered a better outcome than business continuity arrangements may have included:

• A CD manufacturer learning of the invention of electronic music files (years before the before the CD-less iPod was launched) considers how this might impact their product offering over the next decade and adapts long before they become obsolete
• A boarding school learning that the government plans MOD spending cuts (long before it was announced residential places for military children would no longer be subsidised) seeks new pupil sources or revenue streams for its assets

While business continuity and risk management are functional concepts, the emerging concept of organisational resilience building is holistic and strategic (Valikangas, 2010) implying that the decisions required to achieve it are most likely to be made by an organisation’s leaders.   However, while a substantial body of work exists to equip academics and executives with the information to improve “right of bang” activities, “left of bang” (organisational resilience) material is scarcer and contains fewer consensuses, as the discipline of resilience emerges.   Key hypotheses of this study, therefore, are that:

• While there’s little consensus on how to achieve organisational resilience at a strategic or total-organisation level, some material does exist and consensus may be identified
• If a consensus is identified, it may be possible to isolate factors that contribute to an organisation’s resilience capabilities
• If the factors can be isolated, it may be possible to indicate an individual leader’s propensity for resilient behaviour (PRB) by examining their personal propensity to contribute to each factor
• If an individual’s PRB can be indicated by a measure, it may be possible to identify circumstances in which an individual is likely to have a higher or lower PRB, granting the possibility of being able to predict PRB for a given individuals

1.2 Research Focus

The aim of this study is to provide organisational leaders with an understanding of the term “organisational resilience” and how it is achieved.  Furthermore it aims to offer insights to equip leaders to understand their own PRB and to be able to predict the likely PRB of others.  In this way, those seeking to increase organisational resilience may be able to select individuals best suited to make decisions that increase – or at least do not diminish – resilience when desired.[2]

The scope of this study is significant and resources limited; therefore this work seeks only to identify indicative first findings that would merit further research:

The following objectives were identified in helping achieve the aforementioned aim:

1.     Clarification of the term “organisational resilience”

2.     Critical assessment of the current “how to” literature to determine how organisational resilience is achieved

3.     Determine whether organisational resilience can be measured

4.     Determine whether a leader’s individual propensity for resilient behaviours (PRB) can be measured

5.     Establish organisational leaders’ understanding of the term organisation resilience

6.     Identify circumstances in which a leader’s PRB might be predicted or improved

During this study, carried out from April-December 2011, the discipline of ‘resilience’ was emerging in a business context almost at the same speed that it was being examined and considered in the academic realm.  This meant that while it was timely to examine the concept, and a contribution such as the one intended by this study was a timely commodity, the literature available was something of a moving feast.   A cut-off date for research papers was therefore set at 31 September 2011.  A key paper referenced in this study, a then not-yet-published paper from the New Zealand government funded Resilient Organisations Research Group[3], was kindly offered to this study in email at final draft stage: the published version is referenced herein.

1.3 Approach

The research approach taken for this study is shown in Figure 1b:

Figure 1b: Sources and use of data for this study

This study began with the analysis of relevant literature (secondary data):

• Academic literature included books, papers from journals and conference proceedings
• Including best practice guidelines and standards – professional literature – was important to ensure the study considered current practice and guidance

The findings of the secondary data were used to generate useful lines of enquiry to inform this study’s response to gaps in the literature:

• Lines of enquiry for organisational leaders were followed using a questionnaire served by online survey provider, Survey Monkey[4]
• Lines of enquiry for individuals working in a department called “Resilience” were also followed using a questionnaire by the same provider

1.4 Structure

The study is laid out over five chapters, including this introduction:

• Chapter 1 offers background information and an overview of the study and it is findings.
• Chapter 2 discusses the issues and reviews related literature.  It defines organisational resilience and identifies key attributes.  It also highlights gaps in the literature that that became lines of enquiry for primary research. The numbering of these lines below acknowledges that objectives 5 and 6 (see page 13) were not answered in the literature review:
• 5.           Establish organisational leaders’ understanding of the term organisation resilience
• 6.           Identify circumstances in which a leader’s PRB might be predicted or improved
• 7.           Do organisations understand the concept of resilience to be a strategic capability or a functional business interruption management system?
• 8.           What are the scope and responsibilities of business units called “Resilience”?
• 9.           Are organisations with significant ‘moral purposes’ (e.g. charities and not-for-profit) led by people with higher PRBs?
• 10.        Do leaders who believe that accepting constraints to organisational values, strategy, financial and cultural risks is likely to increase resilience have higher PRBs?
• 11.        Does the presence of realistic optimism in the leaders of an organisation impact the propensity for behaviours that contribute to organisational resilience?
• 12.        Are “Resilience” units assisting with the more difficult aspects of enhancing the resilience capability?

• Chapter 3 explains how the findings from the literature review were developed into lines of enquiry that were followed by obtaining primary data.  It provides the complete research methodology.  Copies of the online survey questionnaires deployed for primary research can be found as Appendices 2 and 3.
• Chapter 4 sets out the key findings from the primary research.  Graphs and statistical analysis are offered where appropriate.  The data is considered in light of the literature and issue review.
• Chapter 5 offers conclusions.  The final chapter concisely summarises the answers provided by this study to each research question.  It also offers concluding thoughts for organisational leaders and academics considering further research.

First, here’s the abstract:

This work defines the term ‘organisational resilience’ and critically evaluates academic and professional guidance to determine how it might be achieved.  It considers methodologies to measure and benchmark organisational resilience and determines that it is possible to benchmark an individual leader’s propensity for behaviours that are likely to increase total organisational resilience.

Indicative primary research, conducted as part of this work, identifies circumstantial factors that correlate with higher Propensities for Resilient Behaviours (PRB), thus allowing recommendations to be made on how an individual’s PRB might be predicted and increased.

To bridge further gaps in the literature, the study also considered the scope and activities of newly emerging “Resilience” business units.  Primary research determined these business units are not currently scoped to significantly contribute to the overall resilience of an organisation.

70%

For those of you in the UK, that’s the equivalent of a First, even though Cranfield only issue “pass” or “fail” as an actual grade.

Now I can get back into the blog – thanks WordPress – I’ll dripfeed a little more over time and, if anyone wants an edited copy you can just email me for it in PDF format (if you were willing, it would be great to exchange for a review of it – good, bad or otherwise!).

THANK YOU for all your help.

So, let’s start by cutting to the chase – with the conclusions.

Below is my concluding chapter… I’ll start offering other parts over the next few days so you can see how I got here, if you like!

Thank you for all your help.  I’ll make this available in sensible reading formats upon request since the formatting gets somewhat lost in the copy and paste!

Charley

—————–

5. CONCLUSIONS

 “Whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.”

Sherlock Holmes (Conan Doyle, 2006)

5.1 Aims of Study

The aim of this study was to identify factors that contribute most towards organisational resilience; to determine whether an individual leader’s inclination to act in a way that increased the likelihood of total organisational resilience could be indicated (Propensity for Resilient Behaviour – PRB); and to discover circumstances in which individuals were likely to have a higher PRB so that PRB values might be somewhat predicted.

This resulted in 12 research objectives/questions.  The first 6 were determined at the outset of the study, while questions 7-12 were raised as a result of the Issue and Literature Review.   The Issue and Literature Review addressed the first 4 questions and those remaining were included in the primary research phase of this work:

5.11 Initial Objectives

1. Clarification of the term “organisational resilience”
2. Critical assessment of the current “how to” literature to determine how organisational resilience is achieved
3. Determine whether organisational resilience can be measured
4. Determine whether a leader’s individual propensity for resilient behaviours (PRB) can be measured
5. Establish organisational leaders’ understanding of the term organisation resilience
6. Identify circumstances in which a leader’s PRB might be predicted or improved

5.12 Additional Research Questions Arising from Issue and Literature Review

1. Do organisations understand the concept of resilience to be a strategic capability or a functional business interruption management system?
2. What are the scope and responsibilities of business units called “Resilience”?
3. Are organisations with significant ‘moral purposes’ (e.g. charities and not-for-profit) led by people with higher PRBs?
4. Do leaders who believe that accepting constraints to organisational values, strategy, financial and cultural risks is likely to increase resilience have higher PRBs?
5. Does the presence of realistic optimism in the leaders of an organisation impact the propensity for behaviours that contribute to organisational resilience?
6.  Are “Resilience” units assisting with the more difficult aspects of enhancing the resilience capability?

The objectives have been met and the questions answered, at least to an indicative extent.

5.2 Summary of Findings

The summary is ordered in line with the objectives/questions:

1. Clarification of the term “organisational resilience” was achieved by analysing academic texts to determine the following definition:  “Organisational resilience is the strategic and operational, planned and adaptive, capacity of an organisation [in a socio-technical system to eradicate, avoid or minimise organisational crises] to thrive and achieve longevity.”  However, it was acknowledged that though consensus is converging somewhat in academia, those working in industry do not have a uniform understanding of the term.
2. A critical assessment of the current “how to” literature to determine how organisational resilience is achieved was undertaken in the Issues and Literature Review: the list of bullet pointed list of key features begins on page 79.   Findings also show that current professional guidance on organisational resilience focuses only on business continuity, crisis management, risk management, information security and physical security.  Considering the working definition of organisation resilience, the conclusion was reached that while professional standards and advice may assist in the realm of operational resilience and support the overall resilience capacity, it does not in itself enable organisational resilience[1].
3. To determine whether organisational resilience can be measured a number of studies were considered.  A reliable measurement tool was not established, but a benchmarking tool created by Stephenson (2011) in concert with ResOrgs provided a way to gauge an individual’s perceptions of how well an identified resilience factor was being deployed within an organisation.
4. It was surmised that while a leader’s individual propensity for resilient behaviours (PRB) might not currently be measured, their perception of it could be gauged using an adaptation of Stephenson’s (2010) tool.  This was later used in the primary research phase.
5. Primary research was used to establish organisational leaders’ understanding of the term organisation resilience.   Slightly more leaders’ chose a business continuity based definition of the term than a purer organisational resilience option, implying that slightly more consider resilience to be about managing and recovering from disruption or crisis rather than taking the more holistic approach required by the definition above.  However, it was not possible to explore the leader’s views on the term ‘resilience’ further within the survey as non-biased results were required to the questions that determined PRB values.
6. Comparing leaders’ PRB values with circumstantial evidence, both provided by a primary research survey, gave indications of where a leader’s PRB might be predicted or improved.  The survey results suggest that PRB values may be higher when an individual works for a not–for-profit organisation; works in a company that has existed for more than 30 years; has a more pessimistic outlook for their organisation; believes accepting constraints to values, strategy, finance and cultural risks enhances resilience; or believes a new employer would value their ability to demonstrate experience leading incidents, contributing to resilience measures and being able to prove that resilience measures were cost efficient.  The strongest statistical correlation between higher PRB and circumstantial factors, however, belonged to those individuals who work directly with individuals and outputs from a larger number of departments within the organisation.  It was noted that because of limitations to the way this MSc level study was conducted, it must be considered exploratory.  All data findings indicative results that may be of most use to academic and practitioner discussion and for providing a possible basis for further research.   It would also be useful to increase the number of respondents in the sample and to include smaller businesses and start up companies to understand variations for those organisations that have not existed for at least five years and have less than 100 employees.
7. The question of whether organisations understand the concept of resilience to be a strategic capability or a functional business interruption management system was partially answered.  Slightly more leaders consider resilience in light of a business continuity based definition whilst slightly more respondents from “Resilience” business units consider it to be a more strategic capability.  This, perhaps, goes some way to explain the business continuity based remit of “Resilience” units and maybe reflects some of the same challenges risk managers face (see page 28) in terms of getting their knowledge from the operational to the strategic, leadership level of the organisation.
8. It was also noted that the responses to the “Resilience” business unit survey were primarily from public sector organisations. The scope and responsibilities of these units were primarily business continuity and crisis management, with a third of them also including Risk Management and Security in their remit.  Though some units contributed to the other numerous factors identified for organisational resilience, none of them were identified as particular responsibilities of the units.
9. The data intended to determine whether organisations with significant ‘moral purposes’ (e.g. charities and not-for-profit) are generally led by people with higher PRBs was limited by the number of responses received.  While the data set showed that respondents working for not-for-profit organisations had higher PRB scores, there were a limited number of respondents working in this category.  It would be useful to re-pose this question to a larger sample set.
10. Leaders who believe that accepting constraints to organisational values, strategy, financial and cultural risks is likely to increase resilience do appear to have slightly higher PRBs.  On average PRB scores are 6 points higher for those who believe constraints may improve resilience.
11. The presence of realistic optimism from leaders regarding their organisations, flagged as a common trait in resilient humans, does appear to impact the propensity for behaviours that contribute to organisational resilience, but negatively so.  PRB scores are markedly higher for those leaders who are pessimistic about their organisation’s future than in those who are optimistic.
12. As already indicated by the scope of Resilience” units, while they may assist with the more difficult aspects of enhancing the resilience capability, they do not appear to take particular responsibility for any of the areas identified as being difficult, such as strategizing risk information, managing knowledge, and understanding networks in an environment of uncertainty, human nature, complexities, and concerns regarding costs. 

5.3 Conclusion

This study met its overall aims of identifying factors that contribute to organisational resilience and comparing leaders’ propensities for resilient behaviour (PBR) in a variety of circumstances to identify those which might correlate with a higher PRB.   It also contributed new, indicative information that might be used a basis for further research.  While the results of the primary research are labelled ‘indicative’ due to limitations of the study, it is suggested they make a useful basis for further research in the field of organisational management for leaders.

This work acknowledged that there was little consensus regarding the definition of ‘organisational resilience’ and defined it as “the strategic and operational, planned and adaptive, capacity of an organisation [in a socio-technical system to eradicate, avoid or minimise organisational crises] to thrive and achieve longevity.”  While it was not possible to produce an exhaustive list of resilience indicators, considering the body of emerging academic work led this work to assert that some key factors of organisational resilience are:

• strong corporate values
• comprehensive governance
• thorough strategic and operational vulnerability identification processes
• disciplined innovation
• excellent knowledge management
• solid crisis and continuity planning arrangements
• a good understanding of networks, interdependencies and supply chains
• appropriate social capital
• rehearsed resiliency measures
• business continuity and crisis management plans
• a culture that supports and values its people and its resilience capabilities

This holistic view of organisational resilience encompasses both the strategic and the operational elements.  However, it contrasts with current professional advice from standards such as the ANSOR (ASIS, 2009), which approach organisational resilience only from an operational level.   Though advice to ensure the business continuity, crisis management, risk management and security business functions work together closely is sound, and will contribute to resilience measures, they can only offer support and a contribution to the rest of the strategic and operational effort to build organisational resilience.   This does not belittle or devalue the contribution of these business functions; it simply acknowledges that these areas alone cannot achieve organisational resilience.   It is encouraging to note that a subgroup of the UK’s Business Continuity Institute (BCI) on Organisational Resilience has accepted academic input on this issue; information from this study has been used in those subgroup discussions.

The primary research conducted for this work suggests that “Resilience” business units” are primarily concerned with business continuity and crisis management, though a third also assume the risk management and security functions.  These departments are often involved in or contribute to elements of the other strategic and operational organisational resilience tasks, but do not claim them as particular responsibilities of the business unit.   It is somewhat puzzling as to why most of these units are currently called “Resilience” in their current formats, but it is recognised that organisational resilience is an emerging discipline and function, so it is possible that some of these business units may be at the forefront of a general change in approach.

Leaders who desire organisational resilience may find the factors of resilience useful and enlightening.  However, they may also find the conclusion that organisational resilience cannot be truly ‘measured’ somewhat frustrating.  Tools to benchmark individual and group perceptions on how good organisations are at the identified resilience factors are available, as demonstrated by Stephenson (2011), and they can be adapted to offer a tool to benchmark an individual’s perception of their own propensity for resilient behaviours (PRB), as was done modestly for this work.  Of most interest to those leaders who wish to raise (or predict) their own PRB, perhaps, are the indications that certain factors correlate with higher PRBs.   While the indication that working for a non-profit, or an organisation that has existed for more than 30 years, may correlate with a higher PRB may not be useful to most, it may be useful to note the factors over which an individual has a degree of personal control. These include adopting a more constructively pessimistic stance, accepting constraints to values, strategy and culture, and considering their next job.  The most dramatic correlation with higher PRB, however, is also one of the easiest for a determined leader to adopt: working closely or with input from a greater number of functions across the whole organisation raises PRB values and, according to Wooten & James (2008), also equips individuals with vital crisis management capability.

These first findings would benefit from further research with a larger samples and using more sophisticated research methods to target leaders.  It would be useful to move forward by including start-ups and smaller businesses in the research to achieve a broader understanding of PRB values in these circumstances.

Charlotte Newnham

30 December 2011

I know at least one other of my cohort is waiting for their mark now too, and they’ve been told they’ll get it in a week so hopefully mine will arrive then.

Then I can tell you more!