Thriving, Not Just Surviving in Changing Times: How Sustainability, Agility and Digitalization Intertwine with Organizational Resilience

Antonio Miceli,Davide Settembre-Blundo,Birgit Hagen,Francesco Sotti,Maria Pia Riccardi

doi:10.3390/su13042052

Antonio Miceli, Davide Settembre-Blundo + Show 3 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.3390/su13042052

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Journal: Sustainability	Publication Date: Feb 14, 2021
Citations: 106	License type: CC BY 4.0

Affiliation: University of Pavia, Gruppo CLAS (Italy)

Abstract

Nowadays, the buzzwords for organizations to be prepared for the competitive environment’s challenges are sustainability, digitalization, resilience and agility. However, despite the fact that these concepts have come into common use at the level of both scholars and practitioners, the nature of the relation between sustainability and resilience has not yet been sufficiently clarified. Above all, there is still no evidence of what factors determine greater resilience to change in an organization that also wants to be more sustainable, especially in times of crisis and discontinuity. This research aims to explore from a theoretical point of view, through the construction of a conceptual model, how these dimensions interact to help the business to become strategically resilient by leveraging digitization and agility as enablers. A new view of resilience arises from the study, which goes beyond the well-known ability to absorb or adapt to adversity, to also include a strategic attribute that could help companies capture change-related opportunities to design new ways of doing business under stress. A key set of strategically agile processes, enabled by digitalization, creates strategic resilience that also includes a proactive, opportunity-focused attitude in the face of change. Strategic resilience to lead to organizational sustainability must be understood as a multi-domain concept quite similar to the holistic view of sustainability: environment, economy and society. Finally, the research offers a set of propositions and a theoretical framework that can be empirically validated.

Highlights

We account for the complexities and interdependencies between environment, social and economic sub-systems of the firm and show that resilience needs to be considered holistically, similar to sustainability, ablers and model a route to build strategic multi-domain resilience, which is hypothesized as a pillar of an organization’s sustainability
Our model illustrates the complexities and interactions that organizations face when dealing with resilience and sustainability on firm level
The multi-domain view that we propose makes interdependencies clear and transparent and can inform prioritization

Summary

Introduction

Organizations to better adapt to change, they must some essential attributes, and nowadays the buzzwords become: sustainability, digitization, resilience and agility. Change can be permanent or discontinuous, incremental or radical, be expected or unexpected, reversible or irreversible and can come with varying intensity and at many different levels. This highlights the degree of complexity and multidimensionality characteristics of change [1] that influence the development and implementation of effective business strategies and solutions. In addition to occasional disruptions and continuous incremental changes, radical changes, discontinuities, crises or “crashes” are becoming increasingly important and frequent, all of which have a great impact on the operations of organizations [2]. The COVID-19 pandemic is only the most recent and dramatic example of a global crisis that highlighted, in a relatively short time, the far-reaching implications and challenges of change as well as the urgency of efficient and effective responses [3]

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