Organisational resilience through the adaptation of process-aware information systems - a System Dynamics approach

Abstract

Organisations, seen as socio-technical systems, are in close interaction with process-aware information systems, not only in an operational sense but also in terms of resilience. The ability of the latter to adapt to external or internal challenges affects the resilience of the whole organisation. This exploratory study aims at finding the resilience dynamics in such complex systems. To this end, the systemic perspective provides useful insights. Employing the concept of requisite variety, we treat disaster events and business challenges as 'variety deficiencies' that need to be addressed through an adaptation process. System Dynamics provides the means to create models that describe and simulate the resilience dynamics of the whole system. The study concludes that resilience and adaptation are a matter of knowledge leverage, while the simulation model highlights the effect of knowledge leverage in the adaptation process.