Call for Papers

The highly dynamic, complex, and turbulent environments of recent times, recently termed as permacrisis (Collins, 2022), pose major challenges to modern organizations and societies whilst adapting to emerging circumstances. When faced with cross-roads or periods of uncertainty and disruption, critical questions for organizations include; what, how much and how fast to change, without disrupting but rather maintaining internal dynamics, logics and mechanisms. These queries are at the heart of resilient thinking, which has become a viable perspective for assessing the fluidity and adaptability of organizations to change (Walker & Salt, 2006; Folke et al., 2010). As a social phenomenon and dynamic process, resilience is located at the intersection between change and continuity (Frigotto et al., 2022). Resilience is underpinned by temporal, spatial and agentic dimensions.
 
On the temporal front, organizational experience grounds the ability to be resilient. Path dependencies and imprinting provide important foundations for adaptation and learning in continuity. Resilience antecedents, like social capital or goal interdependence, set in motion critical mechanisms that may foster adaptation to unanticipated events (Powley et al., 2020). The recent COVID-19 pandemic demonstrates the importance associated with anticipatory measures and flexible planning and strategizing (Linkov et al., 2021). Organizational slack, diversity and loose coupling have been found to be important endogenous factors while responding to external shocks (Young & Pinheiro, 2022). When faced with adversity, resilient actors and organizations adopt flexible and fluid behaviours that consider emergent events rather than sticking to pre-prescribed institutionalized rules and standard operating procedures (Trondal et al., 2022). Over time, both exploration and exploitation strategies are adopted (March, 1991). Experimentation and improvisation become important antecedents for building resilience repositories across the board (Evans, 2011).
 
From a spatial perspective, resilience studies suggest that adversities that appear to be limited to a geography, a knowledge area, a level of action or analysis often result in critical local disruptions underpinned by a multiplicity of feedback mechanisms (Walker & Salt, 2006, Grove, 2018). Flexible and fluid network arrangements spanning organizational, community and national boundaries enhance organizations’ abilities to sense changes in their environments, resulting in the early detection of emerging events, hence fostering resilience (Elston & Bel, 2022). Transnational governance arrangements imply that modern organizations operating in complex institutional environments need to take stock of multiple input variables at different levels when devising adaptation strategies. Successfully navigating complex technical and institutional environments denotes the ability to maintain a certain degree of stability and continuity when faced with internal and external turbulence or adversity (Trondal et al., 2022). ‘Efficiency of function’, the mantra of the knowledge economy, gives way to ‘maintenance of function’ (Holling, 1973), underpinned by key attributes (resilient antecedents) like slack, diversity, and loose coupling.
 
As for the criticality associated with the agentic element (people), studies demonstrate the positive role that mindsets, skills, competencies, and collective memory all have in processes of learning and adaptation (Kayes, 2015). Resilient agents – both inside and across organizations and associated networks – help devise and diffuse critical mechanisms that foster both the adoption and adaptation of resilient features (Comfort et al., 2010). The linkages between change at the micro (agents) and meso (organization) levels are complex and multifaceted, but there is growing evidence of the importance associated with new and emerging practices, e.g., manifested in the form of institutional work (Lawrence et al,. 2011) or the adoption of hybrid(ised) forms (Battilana & Lee, 2014).
 
As both a process and an outcome, resilience has variously been framed along the translation from material engineering into the social sciences resulting in nearly independent research across sub-fields. This is both the greatest strength and the biggest limitation of resilience research, i.e., a multidisciplinary and transdisciplinary interest towards understanding this complex phenomenon combined with fragmented and repetitive conceptual accounts. Resilience is sometimes used as a buzzword rather than a theoretically and empirically robust concept that is useful for investigating change and stability in organizational studies (Hillmann & Guenther, 2021). There is an increasing interest towards resilience in the political and public discourse (cf. Giovannini et al., 2020) and across many disciplines (Frigotto et al., 2022). Recent reviews have explored the different meanings and perspectives adopted (Giustiniano et al., 2018, Giske & Pinheiro, 2020).
 
However, as resilient concepts and terminologies cross disciplinary thresholds and levels and areas of analysis (Burnard & Bhamra, 2011), there is an urgent need to engage in cross-disciplinary dialogues aimed at clarifying and agreeing on their strengths and limitations. The problem of conceptual stretch and analytic ambiguity is not a novel one per se (Davoudi & Porter, 2012), but it has gained new importance as various scientific communities struggle to apply (operationalise) key concepts and methodologies when investigating contemporary phenomena (Young et al., 2022). Likewise, as the resilience concept gains attrition amongst policy making and practitioner communities alike, both prior to and following COVID-19 (Giovannini et al., 2020), a major challenge pertains to careful defining the limits of the phenomena as well as systematically testing the multifaceted methodological approaches – old and new/emerging for assessing resilient behaviour in the real, in contrast to the imagined, social world.
 
Given this, and in the light of the cross-roads topic of the EGOS 2024 Colloquium, this panel seeks to continue past (EGOS Colloquia 2017 & 2021) and ongoing (EGOS 2022) scholarly discussions amongst social scientists on resilient organizations and organising. Key queries include but are not limited to:

• To what extent do past events (e.g. critical junctures and institutionalized rules and norms) determine current and future resilient features and adaptation trajectories?

• How can we unpack the complexity associated with the nested spatial dimensions underpinning modern organizations and organising within the context of local adaptive capacity?

• Whose individuals – in what social settings and hierarchical positions – play critical roles in nurturing resilient features at the meso level, and why (their inner motivations)?

• How can we identify and tackle the limitations associated with resilience as an analytical concept and resilient thinking as a methodological approach to unpack complex organizational phenomena?

• In what way can organizational scholars explore creative synergies with their counterparts in the neighbouring fields of public policy/administration/governance/management?

• Under what circumstances is resilience undesirable or not, and why?

• What types of misuses (and its multifaceted unintended effects) and by whom can resilient behaviour result into, i.e., need to unpack the ‘dark side’ or ‘deviant use’ of resilience?

References

• Battilana, J., & Lee, M. (2014): “Advancing Research on Hybrid Organizing – Insights from the Study of Social Enterprises.” The Academy of Management Annals, 8 (1), 397–441.
• Burnard, K., & Bhamra, R. (2011): “Organisational resilience: Development of a conceptual framework for organisational responses.” International Journal of Production Research, 49 (18), 5581–5599.
• Collins (2022): English Dictionary. https://www.collinsdictionary.com/
• Comfort, L.K., Boin, A., & Demchak, C.C. (2010): Designing Resilience: Preparing for Extreme Events. Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press.
• Davoudi, S., & Porter, L. (2012): “Applying the Resilience Perspective to Planning: Critical Thoughts from Theory and Practice.” Planning Theory & Practice, 13 (2), 299–333.
• Evans, J.P. (2011): “Resilience, ecology and adaptation in the experimental city.” Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 36 (2), 223–237.
• Elston, T., & Bel, G. (2022): “Does inter-municipal collaboration improve public service resilience? Evidence from local authorities in England.” Public Management Review, 25 (4), 734–761.
• Folke, C., Carpenter, S.R., Walker, B., Scheffer, M., Chapin, T., & Rockström, J. (2010): “Resilience Thinking: Integrating Resilience, Adaptability and Transformability.” Ecology and Society, 15 (4), art 20.
• Frigotto, L., Young, M., & Pinheiro, R. (2022): “Resilience in Organizations and Societies: The State of the Art and Three Organizing Principles for Moving Forward.” In: R. Pinheiro, L. Frigotto, & M. Young (eds.): Towards Resilient Organizations and Societies: A Cross-Sectoral and Multi-Disciplinary Perspective. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 3–40.
• Giovannini, E, Benczur, P., Campolongo, F., Cariboni, J. & Manca, A. (2020): “Time for transformative resilience: the COVID-19 emergency.” JRC Research Reports (JRC120489), Joint Research Centre.
• Giske, M.T.E., & Pinheiro, R. (2020): “Resiliency.” In: R. Brinkmann (ed.): The Palgrave Handbook of Global Sustainability. Cham: Springer International Publishing, 1–13.
• Giustiniano, L., Clegg, S.R., Pina e Cunha, M., & Rego, A. (2018): Elgar Introduction to Theories of Organizational Resilience. Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar Publishing.
• Grove, K. (2018): Resilience. London & New York: Routledge.
• Hillmann, J., & Guenther, E. (2021): “Organizational Resilience: A Valuable Construct for Management Research?” International Journal of Management Reviews, 23 (1), 7–44.
• Holling, C.S. (1973): “Resilience and Stability of Ecological Systems.” Annual review of ecology and systematics, 4 (1), 1–23.
• Kayes, D.C. (2015): Organizational Resilience: How Learning Sustains Organizations in Crisis, Disaster, and Breakdown. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Lawrence, T., Suddaby, R., & Leca, B. (2011): “Institutional Work: Refocusing Institutional Studies of Organization.” Journal of Management Inquiry, 20 (1), 52–58.
• Linkov, I., Keenan, J.M., & Trump, B.D. (eds.) (2021): COVID-19: Systemic Risk and Resilience. New York: Springer.
• March, J.G. (1991): “Exploration and Exploitation in Organizational Learning.” Organization Science, 2 (1), 71–87.
• Powley, E.H., Caza, B.B., & Caza, A. (2020): Research Handbook on Organizational Resilience. Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar Publishing.
• Trondal, J., Keast, R., Noble, D., & Pinheiro, R. (2022): Governing Complexity in Times of Turbulence. Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar Publishing.
• Walker, B., & Salt, D. (2006): Resilience Thinking: Sustaining Ecosystems and People in a Changing World. Washington, D.C.: Island Press.
• Young, M., & Pinheiro, R. (2022): “The Post-entrepreneurial University: The Case for Resilience in Higher Education.” In: R. Pinheiro, Frigotto, L., & Young, M. (eds.): Towards Resilient Organizations and Societies: A Cross-Sectoral and Multi-Disciplinary Perspective. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 179–200.
• Young, M., Frigotto, M.L., & Pinheiro, R. (2022): “Towards Resilient Organisations and Societies? Reflections on the Multifaceted Nature of Resilience.” In: R. Pinheiro, M.L. Frigotto, & M. Young (eds.): Towards Resilient Organizations and Societies: A Cross-Sectoral and Multi-Disciplinary Perspective. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 307–331.
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