Defining, Conceptualizing, and Measuring Organizational Resilience: A Multiple Case Study

Ruijun Chen,Yingqi Liu,Yaping Xie

doi:10.3390/su13052517

Ruijun Chen, Yingqi Liu + Show 1 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.3390/su13052517

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Journal: Sustainability	Publication Date: Feb 26, 2021
Citations: 70	License type: CC BY 4.0

Affiliation: Beijing Jiaotong University, Fuzhou University

Abstract

Organizational resilience is an important means of coping with crises. This concept has received much attention within both academia and industry. However, research on the definition and measurement of organizational resilience is still in the exploratory stage. To date, studies on organizational resilience have yielded mixed conclusions, which makes it difficult to provide specific recommendations for coping with crises. This paper uses an exploratory case study approach to explore the process of organizational resilience among six highly resilient companies: Southwest Airlines, Apple, Microsoft, Starbucks, Kyocera, and Lego. We employed grounded theory to distill the main characteristics of organizational resilience, to explore and validate its structural dimensions, and to develop a measurement scale for organizational resilience. Further, we conducted reliability and validity analysis, exploratory factor analysis, and validation factor analysis on the 526 valid data collected. Results show that organizational resilience includes five dimensions: capital resilience, strategic resilience, cultural resilience, relationship resilience, and learning resilience. The measurement scale has good reliability and validity, which better reflects the notion of organizational resilience. This study bridges the gaps in the existing literature on organizational resilience and its measurement scales, and provides a foundation for future research.

Highlights

IntroductionWith the globalization and the internationalization of business activities, crises seem to have become regular events in the development of organizations [2,3]
Today’s business environment is increasingly complex and volatile [1]
We explore the dimensions of organizational resilience using grounded theory, develop measurement scales, and conduct empirical tests by combining theories and research results related to organizational resilience

Summary

Introduction

With the globalization and the internationalization of business activities, crises seem to have become regular events in the development of organizations [2,3] These “black swans” (small probability but high impact events) or “gray rhinos” (large probability and high impact potential crises) include the September 11 attacks, the 2008 financial crisis, the 2011 tsunami in Japan, the 2013 Ebola virus in Africa, and the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. These events pose increasing challenges to the survival and development of organizations [4].

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