Most organisations operate in a turbulent environment characterised by volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity. Disruptive and unpredictable forces of change are key features of this environment and sustainability of organisations has become fragile and unstable. Organisations that are able to grow and thrive within this environment have adaptive capabilities to learn (Ovans, 2005) and adjust faster with more confidence compared to their competitors. Leadership is a decisive influence in the creation of a competitive advantage within thriving organisations. Leaders absorb high levels of turmoil, unpredictability and uncertainty and need to respond to regular shocks and surprises in a productive manner so that the organisation can be responsive to threats and opportunities. The ability of leaders to offer this type of leadership is determined by their own levels of leadership resilience. Leadership resilience is a capability that can increase or diminish depending on the leader’s ability to learn and adapt following unexpected disruptive experiences, continued adverse conditions or while dealing with persistent pressure. Practices associated with self-renewal offer leaders, opportunities to develop disciplined intentional processes of change and adjustment. These are based on a state of awareness regarding one’s level of internal well-being, energy and balance, aimed at replenishing or strengthening resilient qualities and protective factors. Leadership development programmes can make a significant contribution to sustained leadership being effective, by developing personal strengths and strategies that can buttress tough resilience capabilities in leaders. The main research problem in this study was to explore the relationship between leadership resilience and self-renewal practices. To address the main and identified sub-problems, a literature study was conducted focusing on the main components of resilience with specific reference to resilience in leaders, while exploring self-renewal practices that can be used by leaders to improve their resilience. A web-based survey with a questionnaire was administered to a target group consisting of middle and senior managers who have participated in leadership development programmes at the Leadership Academy of the Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University Business School. The survey was a self-reporting instrument that included the Leadership Resilience Profile developed by Dianne Reed and Jerry Patterson (2009) as well as a section focused on self-renewal practices that included physical, spiritual, cognitive and socio-emotional renewal practices. The results from the empirical study revealed that the levels of leadership resilience are related to the self-renewal practices of leaders. The study identified spiritual self-renewal as most significant to leadership resilience. Higher levels of resilience were demonstrated with regard to value-driven leadership, optimism, courageous decision-making and self-efficacy. Senior managers reported higher levels of self-efficacy as compared to their counterparts at middle level management. The study identified adaptability, perseverance and social support as resilience capabilities that leaders should grow. In general, lower scores were obtained for self-renewal practices than for resilience levels. Leadership development initiatives that integrate resilience capabilities and self-renewal practices will create an adaptive resource within organisations. Supporting the development and maintenance of strong leadership resilience capabilities will contribute to the development of adaptive organisations that are able to navigate turbulent conditions with confidence.

Background: the impetus for this study emanated from Covid-19 crisis in the context of Sweden's business environment in which numerous disruptions in business operations have been experienced. Organizational resilience has been selected as a positive strategic response by which resilience capabilities of sit-in restaurant managers in handling disasters and crises play an integral role so as to achieve future organizational success and continuity.  Purpose: To apply resilience theory and develop some underlying themes from effective application of  resilience strategies in sit-in restaurants during Covid-19 crisis. This thesis sought to identify similarities and differences in the application of organizational resilience strategies during crises. Resilience strategies categorized into four by Hillmann and Guenther (2020), that is, organizational flexibility, organizational adaptive capacity, organizational change capacity and organizational buffering capacity  were tested and laid the foundation for development of new theoretical framework.   Methodology: A qualitative study that involved six sit-in restaurants were randomly selected and the underlying themes of their resilience capabilities were analyzed. Semi-structured interviews and questionnaires were used to gather empirical data. Six interviews were conducted in which sit-in restaurant managers in Sweden were the interview participants. Findings: Research findings revealed that some sit-in restaurant managers were more resilient than others thereby contributing to survival of restaurants that they managed during crisis. Some managers only applied a selection of resilience strategies leading to declined resilience capabilities in managing crises contributing to business failure whereas an integrated approach in application of all resilience strategies contributed to effective crisis management. These findings laid the foundation for the development of new theory in organizational resilience.

Ce travail de recherche traite de l’engagement organisationnel au sein d’une association de Microfinance au lendemain d’un changement organisationnel. Une stratégie de sortie de crise a été mise en place dans le cadre dudit changement et a eu une incidence sur les contrats psychologiques des agents organisationnels et par conséquent sur les relations qui les lient à leur organisation (association).Notre objectif à travers l’adoption du contrat psychologique comme grille de lecture des contrats d’AL AMANA est d’expliquer les processus d’évolutions des contrats psychologiques individuels et collectifs des agents organisationnels suite à l’évènement du changement qui constitue, comme nous le verrons, un incident critique. Cela permettra de déterminer les facteurs intra-organisationnels et extra-organisationnels de l’évolution des contrats psychologiques qui impactent la résilience de l’organisation observée au sein de l’association et permettant la sortie de la crise. / This research is about the organizational commitment within a microfinance association after an organizational change. An exit strategy was put in place as part of this change and had an impact on the psychological contracts of the organizational agents and consequently on the relations that bind them to their organization (association).Our objective through the adoption of the psychological contract as a grid for reading AL AMANA's contracts is to explain the processes of evolution of the individual and collective psychological contracts of the organizational agents following the change event which constitutes, as we will see, a critical incident. This will help us to determine the intra-organizational and extra-organizational factors of the evolution of the psychological contracts that impact the resilience observed within the association and allowing it to exit the crisis.

The notion of ‘organizational resilience’ has risen exponentially in recent years; it is the ability of an organization to ‘bounce back’ and continue key functions during disruptive events. The rise follows the will to better face the unforeseen and complex adversity that modern times throws at organizations. This study, following a single-case exploratory research design, aims to establish knowledge regarding organizational resilience in the humanitarian sector; by exploring the policy and practice of the United Nations. The author builds an Analytical Framework based on the leading research in the field of organizational resilience, in order to grasp an understanding of the organization's different beliefs, capabilities, and proficiencies necessary to establish and maintain a resilient organization. Concluding with the statement that while there are areas of challenges, the humanitarian sector provides a case not only to scrutinize, but also to learn from.

Research intentionally addressing how leadership attributes and behaviors collectively contributed to the socioecological perspective of organizational resilience were not found. This is a problem for organizations who must hire without benefit of how a collective leadership effect might influence their psychological capital. The purpose of this study was to explore whether or not self-efficacy, psychological empowerment, personal resilience, and leadership style were associated with or predicted organizational resilience among clinical managers in an academic medical center setting. Metatheory of resilience and resiliency was used to frame the study. A quantitative correlational design was used. Self-reported data was collected via the Leader Efficacy Questionnaire, Psychological Empowerment Instrument, Connor and Davidson's Resilience Scale, Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire, and Workplace Resilience Instrument. Intellectual stimulation (rs .480, Ï? .432, p = .00), personal resilience (rs .483, Ï? .465, p = .00), and self-efficacy (rs .522, Ï? .462, p = .00) had the highest statistical correlations to organizational resilience. Negative predictor effects were found for personal resilience and idealized attributes ascribed to self-oriented versus other-oriented resilience qualities, x2(2) = 50.70, p < .01, and p < .05 respectively. Resilience is important for organizational survival and adaptation to the external and internal forces of change. Resilient organizations with available reserves can collaborate with community leaders to optimize the social, environmental, and economic determinants of health foundational for community resilience and positive social change.

This dissertation examines how resilience against disaster is produced on a daily basis by Emergency Managers and private sector continuity professionals working in New York City. Drawing on ethnographic observations and in-depth interviews, it uses disaster anticipation as a case study in inter-organizational reliability and the interplay between materiality and culture in the processual reproduction of social life. I find that disaster risk managers conceptualize disasters as situations of abrupt mismatch between available material resources and the exigencies of critical tasks and routines. They use three interrelated types of strategies to anticipate these crises: (1) conducting persistent active monitoring and routine intervention in the organizational environment; (2) planning for the consequences, rather than triggers, of disasters; and (3) building a creative capacity to preserve or restore access to resources critical for the reproduction of social and organizational routines. Taken together, I argue, these strategies shed new light on how organizations collaborate across boundaries to build resilience against unexpected shocks. The empirical data provides a lever into deeper puzzles in sociology: how can we account for both the durability of social structures and sudden social change? In other words, what can we learn about the way social life is reproduced by better understanding the work of professionals employed by the state and major corporate firms to proactively manage the events that threaten to punctuate that continuity? This research advances the literature on organizational reliability, as well as the material turn in institutional theory, drawing attention to the role of material resources in the production and reproduction of cultural schemas.

This thesis presents a framework for resiliency planning in state departments of transportation and other transportation agencies. The development of this framework is motivated by the need for more resilient transportation systems, due of the increasing frequency and the effect both natural and man-made catastrophic disasters have on transportation systems. The resiliency framework is based on the urban transportation planning framework and is thus applied in the broader context of general transportation planning. The resiliency framework is then applied in a preliminary review to three statewide transportation plans to show the resiliency deficiencies of those plans and how the framework may be applied to increase resiliency. These plans are selected from three different states with diversity of locations and without any preconceived notions about their incorporation of resiliency in their planning process. This preliminary review reveals a reactive nature towards investments that increase an agency’s resilience. This may be attributed to the problem of limited funding for transportation investments, as well as, limited knowledge by the transportation agencies about the return on such resiliency investments, mostly due to the uncertainty associated with the occurrence of catastrophic disasters, especially the predictability of weather-related events. However, post-disaster transportation system overhauls provide enough evidence for the need for more systemic ways of addressing resiliency in planning processes.

Impacts from climate change already pose major challenges for organizations and industrial systems, and vulnerabilities are expected to increase in the future, particularly in vulnerable sectors and locations. Findings by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) suggest that climate change related vulnerabilities of organizations and industries, but also of settlement and society as a whole, are mainly related to changes in the intensity and/or frequency of extreme weather, rather than to gradual climate change impacts. Organization researchers and managers, however, have not yet systematically considered the organizational implications of changes in trends of weather extremes, such as changes to the intensity and/or frequency of storms, floods, and droughts. While companies in the reinsurance industry (e.g., Munich Re, Swiss Re) have begun to undertake research into changes in trends of extremes, most current debates on climate change and corporate response are mainly focused on adaptation – that is, longer-term adjustments that organizations can take in response to policy and legislative changes and the observed gradual warming trend. The question of how organizations can cope with more frequent and/or intense weather extremes has largely remained outside of these debates. The thesis advances the notion that the resilience concept which originated in disciplines such as ecology and engineering may provide insights into dealing with new types of environmental change arising from changes in patterns of weather extremes. It emphasizes that organizational adaptation and resilience potentials are context-specific and related to the characteristics of particular climate change impacts. While organizations may be able to undergo steady adaptations to gradual climate change (such as gradual increases in mean temperatures), they might not be able to handle disruptions that go beyond this gradual trend and are related to changes in extremes. Included in this thesis are five papers that seek to provide a foundation for understanding, assessing and evaluating organizational responses to more frequent and/or intense weather extremes. The first paper serves as an introduction to the thesis, assesses the literatures on organizational adaptation and resilience, and proposes an initial model that draws together the different streams of literature on climate change, adaptation and resilience. The second paper extends on the themes of the first paper and provides a discussion of the concepts of adaptation and resilience, as well as their applicability to different types of climate change impacts. The third paper serves as a method paper and discusses assessment methods and pathway to study organizational resilience. The key difficulties identified in this paper are the uncertainties about future climate change outcomes across temporal and spatial scales and a lack of insight into what leads to organizational resilience, or which variables should be measured in a given study. The fourth paper is an empirical study about the 2009 Victorian Bushfires. While individual extreme events cannot be directly linked to climate change impacts, this study highlights that part of the problem in drawing out the resilience of organizations to an unprecedented and ‘more-severe-than-expected’ extreme event is that a range of contingent variables across organizational and societal and ecological levels are potentially relevant. The last paper discusses the potential inability of organization to adjust to changes in climate and weather, and implications in terms of a necessity of a geographical shift of organizational and industrial activities. The thesis highlights gaps in our understanding of organizational challenges and suggests avenues for future research.

Background and problem: Due to disruptions in the business environment, the importance of organizational resilience has become increasingly important. The availability of resources and the strategic management of these resources are important for maintaining organizational resilience. This study contributes to the literature by addressing the strategic management of organizational resilience in SMEs and how they maintain resilience, since the SMEs’perspective has not been adequately researched in prior literature. The study is also of practical importance given SMEs’ prominent contribution to the economy. Purpose: The purpose of this study is to investigate how SMEs employ strategies to maintain organizational resilience, including how they deploy their resources and capabilities to maintain organizational resilience. To do this, disruptive events faced by SMEs are also explored. Method: The study adopts a qualitative multiple case study method. Primary data has been collected through interviews, with the chief executive officer of seven SMEs operating in Sweden. Conclusion: The empirical findings reveal strategies that SMEs adopt for maintaining organizational resilience. Categorizing these strategies into resource-based strategies and capability-based strategies reveals how SMEs, which are often limited in resources, focus on developing dynamic capabilities to maintain organizational resilience. The finding also shows that the strategies employed can be proactive and emergent, where these either work separately or combined in a process where proactive strategies can support the emergent strategies.

Resilience har över tid fått ökad uppmärksamhet då det i dagens samhälle är avgörande attkunna hantera tillfälliga störningar till följd av oväntade världshändelser. Studien syftar till attundersöka hur företag i praktiken definierar resilience samt vilka förutsättningar de har för attskapa resilience i sin verksamhet. Genom att göra en jämförelse av två företag som driverolika verksamheter, ett handelsföretag och ett industriföretag, ämnar studien att ökaförståelsen för hur företagets förutsättningar att hantera störningar skiljer sig åt. För attbesvara studiens frågeställning jämförs H&amp;M:s och Volvos definition och förhållningssätt tillresilience samt hur de förberett sig och hanterat de störningar som haft påverkan på derasverksamheter under 2022. Studiens teoretiska referensram tar avstamp i forskningpresenterad av Buyl et al., (2022), Denyer (2017), Duchek (2019) samt Madani &amp; Parast(2021) som betraktar resilience som en process. Därtill kompletteras den teoretiskareferensramen av forskning om organisatoriska egenskaper som påverkar resilience sompresenteras av Burnard et al. (2018). Det empiriska underlaget har samlats in via en kvalitativmetod (en dokumentstudie) och består av årsredovisningar och kvartalsrapporter somkompletteras av artiklar publicerade i Dagens industri. Studiens slutsats är att det undersöktaindustriföretaget har större utmaningar att skapa organisatorisk resilience än det undersöktahandelsföretaget. Detta då Volvo varit mer begränsat av störningar som inträffat och tvingatsanpassa sin verksamhet därefter medan H&amp;M har kunnat agera med en större handlingsfrihetoch därtill infört åtgärder som på lång sikt kan förväntas bidra till företagets framgång.