Abstract
Previous work has demonstrated that structural forms of empowerment tend to enhance individual and team resilience. However, there is hardly any knowledge about how structural empowerment affects organizational resilience. Moreover, a widespread (though largely untested) assumption is that, in adverse times, power and authority need to be centralized at the top to enhance organizational resilience. This paper explores the effects of empowerment on organizational resilience in an in-depth case study of a Dutch home care organization, in which employees are structurally empowered. The findings from this case study suggest that structural empowerment positively affects organizational resilience, but that this effect is contingent upon a climate of psychological safety as well as top management’s sustained commitment to structural empowerment. We move beyond the extant conceptualization of psychological safety by demonstrating its inter-level nature in the context of structural empowerment, which operates across organizational levels when employees also engage in discussions on tactical and strategic issues. Overall, this study provides an in-depth understanding of how organizations can enhance their resilience by empowering their members, thus also challenging the common wisdom about centralizing power in adverse times.
Highlights
Many organizations today are exposed to unexpected crises and other unprecedented changes, and the consequences can be dramatic for organizations that are unprepared (Beermann, 2011)
The IVT case study suggests that a prerequisite for the beneficial effect of structural empowerment on organizational resilience is the presence of a climate of psychological safety across organizational levels
This study opens up the black box of structural empowerment, by exploring how the latter generates patterns of organizational behaviour which promote organizational resilience
Summary
Many organizations today are exposed to unexpected crises and other unprecedented changes, and the consequences can be dramatic for organizations that are unprepared (Beermann, 2011). Organizational resilience refers to ways to deal with fast, disruptive environmental change (McCann, Selsky, & Lee, 2009) and to the disruptive accumulation of many small environmental changes (Rudolph & Repenning, 2002) These environmental changes may involve unexpected events or so-called acute stressors, and stressors of a more chronic nature (Riolli & Savicki, 2003; Samba & Vera, 2013). In response to these stressors, organizational resilience may involve the handling of day-to-day problems and events (Mallak, 1999) and major changes in organizational strategy and structure. We define organizational resilience as the organizational capability to anticipate, (possibly) prevent, and respond to major crises and other kinds of adversity
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