Unveiling the microfoundation of organizational resilience: evidence from Chinese technology-based firms

As a global public health emergency, COVID-19 has brought uncertainties to the survival and development of new ventures, as well as challenges to the organization’s crisis management capabilities and effective leadership capabilities. Organizational resilience, as a dynamic organizational capability that helps enterprises recover from a crisis, emphasizes the ability of enterprises to adapt, change and rebound after a crisis. The improvement of organizational resilience can enable enterprises to effectively respond to crises and achieve sustainable development. Facing the unpredictable entrepreneurial environment, how to improve the management capability of new ventures and combine limited resources with dynamic opportunities is a topic worthy of further exploration. Entrepreneurial leadership, as a new type of leadership that integrates entrepreneurial spirit and leadership, can create a vision to inspire subordinates, lead enterprises to clarify innovation paths, and explore and develop opportunities. Entrepreneurial leadership is considered as an effective leadership style to lead new ventures to deal with external uncertainties and resist the crisis.Under the guidance of dynamic capability framework, this paper aims to explore how entrepreneurial leaders interact with organizational resilience in a complex environment and promote venture performance in combination with the actual situation in China. Through a questionnaire survey and data analysis of 213 entrepreneurs and senior managers of new ventures in the Yangtze River Delta, this study finds that:（1）Entrepreneurial leadership has a positive impact on the performance of new venture.（2）Entrepreneurial leadership positively affects organizational resilience, and the improvement of entrepreneurial leadership is conducive to enhancing the organizational resilience of enterprises.（3）Entrepreneurial leadership can positively affect the performance of new ventures by improving the organizational resilience of enterprises.（4）Changes in the external environment will also affect this relationship, that is, the stronger the entrepreneur’s perception of the competitiveness and dynamics of the external environment, the stronger the positive impact of entrepreneurial leadership on venture performance through organizational resilience.This paper incorporates entrepreneurial leadership, organizational resilience, performance and environmental characteristics of new ventures into the integrated research framework, and demonstrates how leaders of new ventures in the Chinese context can utilize entrepreneurial leadership to improve their organizational resilience. Theoretically, this paper expands the avenue of dynamic capabilities, provides a new perspective for the relationship between entrepreneurial leadership and venture performance, and demonstrates the mechanism and boundary conditions of organizational resilience in complex situations. Practically, this paper puts the research situation under the background of local environment and national strategy, and points out that new ventures should actively exert entrepreneurial leadership in a crisis state, in order to improve organizational resilience and performance. This research provides corresponding countermeasures for the enhancement of management and organizational capabilities of new ventures in China under the influence of COVID-19.

Error management culture (EMC) has received a significant interest in the service management literature. However, there remains a lack of studies investigating the underlying mechanisms (mediating variables) where EMC affects service innovation within the boundary condition of its moderating variables. This study investigates how EMC influences service innovation through organizational learning capability (OLC) and organizational resilience mechanisms. In addition, this study empirically examines the moderating role of error frequency on the relationship between EMC and OLC and organizational resilience. By investigating 300 service firms, this study empirically reveals that (a) EMC positively relates to OLC and organizational resilience; (b) OLC positively relates to organizational resilience; and (c) OLC plays a mediating role in the relationship between EMC and service innovation. This study also demonstrates that error frequency weakens the relationship between EMC and OLC in service firms.

Under the conditions of VUCA（volatility, uncertainty, complexity, ambiguity）, organizational resilience is a vital ability as well as a salient process to transform a crisis into an opportunity. Based upon a systematic review of most recent publications, this paper offers a more holistic picture of organizational resilience concerning six dimensions, including its definition, antecedent, moderator, process, mechanism, and outcome. Based on a selected set of 21 key journal papers, we develop a more holistic and dynamic definition of organizational resilience, which includes two key dimensions, i.e., bouncing back and bouncing forward; further, three types of organizational resilience are identified: bouncing back, bouncing back plus implicit bouncing forward, and bouncing back plus explicit bouncing forward. We specify the third type（bouncing back plus explicit bouncing forward）as the highest-level organizational resilience to help companies both survive and thrive. We then classify three categories of adversity as the antecedents to organizational resilience, i.e., weak, moderate, and strong adversities. Weak adversities call for more quick bouncing-back capacity to return to its normal state for a company, while moderate and strong adversities require not only bouncing-back capacity to recover and survive but also bouncing-forward capacity to learn and improve in the disruptive environment. For the moderators of organizational resilience, we identify two general types as soft capability and hard capabilities. Soft capabilities are cognitive and emotional capability on individual level and group level and social relation building capability on organizational level, while hard capabilities contain resource storage, organizational framework and strategy. The two sets of capabilities are largely indispensable and often complementary to help organizations become anti-fragile as the most resilient. Regarding the process and mechanism, we differentiate between three stages, i.e., pre-adversity, mid-adversity, and post-adversity, and also different resources and capabilities required at each stage. At the pre-stage, a company should construct and strengthen preparedness and readiness in organizational structure, strategy and resources; at the mid-stage, a company should implement adjustment flexibly and apply creative bricolage; at the post-stage, a company can recover, learn and improve, where adaptability and learning are vital capabilities. Finally, we present the positive outcomes brought about by organizational resilience, and we also point out the potential topics for further research in organizational resilience. In this review paper, we seek to provide core insights into the holistic and dynamic processes and mechanisms of resilience, especially the effect on short-term survival and long-term growth, from the perspective of dynamic capability and the lens of yin-yang balancing. The above six dimensions constitute the building blocks of a new theoretical framework. This paper has the potential to help organizations manage adversity, not only bouncing back to survive but also bouncing forward to thrive with critical insights into how to engage in the research and practice of organizational resilience from the indigenous perspective in the special context of China.

PurposeThe COVID-19 pandemic had brought drastic economic, social and technological changes in society. The drastic changes and uncertainty in the environment had forced various industries to evolve effectively to cope with the unexpected change and subsequently bounce back to regain business success. For instance, private higher learning institutions face steep challenges due to the shortfall of organisational capabilities. The study aims to examine the role of leadership capabilities and organisational resilience in regaining organisational success among higher private learning institutions in Malaysia.Design/methodology/approachAccording to the dynamic capabilities theory, organisational resilience and leadership capabilities are among the highest order of indicators for organisational success. Subsequently, this study examines the mediating role of leadership capabilities on the relationship between organisational resilience on organisational performance. The dynamic capabilities-based framework was tested using the structural equation modelling technique with the use of partial least squares approach. Data were analysed using 120 responses.FindingsBased on the 120-questionnaire survey received, this study found that organisational resilience and leadership capabilities contribute significantly to the performance of private higher learning institutions. In addition, this study found strong support for the mediating role of leadership capabilities to promote performance. The findings have both theoretical and practical implications for post-disaster organisation resilience development.Research limitations/implicationsThe work focuses on values that would have an impact towards organisational performance, which is an important factor of survival in an unpredictable environment. The findings are limited by the indicated constraints used in this study.Practical implicationsOrganisational survival techniques would provide managers, owners and leaders effective techniques that can be implemented to extend and improve the organisation's life cycle. The focus on organisational resilience and leadership factors would greatly improve the overall sustainability and performance of the organisation.Originality/valueThe study contributed by showing the importance, use and interaction needed from organisational resilience and leadership capabilities for them to survive when there is a sudden change in the environment. The timing and uniqueness of the data during the pandemic illustrates how organisations can survive with high levels of weightage towards resilience and leadership. This research is different from other studies as it had examined the impact of values and resilience and leadership in organisations.

The purpose of this study is to analyze the strategic organizational learning approach to dynamic resilient capabilities. A scoping review of the theoretical and empirical literature on organizational dynamic resilience capability reveals gaps to be addressed to improve the conceptualization. Under the assumption of some attributes and properties, it is viable to study the organizational resilience learning process leading to the analysis of the organizational resilience strategies. Resilience is addressed through turnaround and dynamic capabilities. Organizational resilience is critical to possessing dynamic capabilities attracting new resources, design strategies, and learning to overcome rigidity and regain stability.

Organizations regularly face serious challenges due to pandemics, recessions, and financial crises. One reason some organizations cope better than others may be that their management control systems (MCSs) more effectively foster organizational resilience. Despite considerable literature on MCSs and organizational resilience, there is a lack of research on the impact of an MCS’s use on organizational resilience. This study examines and bridges the literatures on MCSs and organizational resilience to illuminate how organizations can better cope with adversity. To identify potential relationships between management controls, MCSs, and organizational resilience, we systematically review the literature and perform a content analysis. We examine the relationships between organizational resilience measures, capabilities, and management controls. We propose the use of resilience-oriented management controls and discuss whether organizations can increase their resilience by building resilience-oriented MCSs. Based on Simons’s levers of control framework and Duchek’s capability-based conceptualization of organizational resilience, we develop a conceptual organizational resilience/MCS framework. Our study reveals relationships and gaps between the literatures on MCSs and organizational resilience and proposes avenues for future research. Our findings suggest that resilience-oriented MCSs are beneficial to organizational resilience.

This paper examines individual and organizational resilience processes among members of The Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan, (RAWA), an Afghan women's underground resistance organization located in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Since 1977, RAWA has used humanitarian and political means to educate, serve, and motivate women and to advocate for peace, secular democracy, and human rights. The authors analyzed 110 qualitative interviews, collected in Pakistan and Afghanistan between December 2001 and July 2002. An iterative coding framework identified processes of resilience and domain specific stressors (risks) and resources (protective factors) at the individual and organizational level. Further analysis found that these process codes clustered by function into components of an operational model of individual and organizational resilience. While individual and organizational resilience are described by the same model, these two levels of resilience were found to operate in synergy as well as in conflict. Although this paper explores a unique setting, we argue that a better understanding of resilience processes in general will come from increased attention to context.

This paper aims to establish a link between aggregate organizational resilience capabilities and managerial risk perception aspects during a major global crisis. We argue that a multi‐theory perspective, dynamic capability at an organizational level and enactment theory at a managerial level allow us to better understand how the sensemaking process within managerial risk perception assists organizational resilience. We draw from in‐depth interviews with 40 managers across the UK's food industry, which has been able to display resilience during the pandemic. In sensing supply chain risks (SCRs), managers within both authority‐based and consensus‐based organizational structures utilize risk‐capture heuristics and enact actions related to effective communications, albeit at different information costs. In seizing, we found that managers adhere to distinct heuristics that are idiosyncratic to their organizational structures. Through limited horizontal communication channels, authority‐based structures adhere to rudimentary how‐to heuristics, whereas consensus‐based structures use obtainable how‐to heuristics. We contribute to the organizational resilience and dynamic capabilities literature by identifying assessment as an additional step prior to transforming, which depicts a retention process to inform future judgements. Our study presents a novel framework of organizational resilience to SCRs during equivocal environments, by providing a nuanced understanding of the construction of dynamic capabilities through sensemaking.

The study assessed the mediating role of green organizational capabilities (green technology development, green operations, and green transactions), in the relationship between green value co‐creation and organizational resilience among Chinese manufacturing firms, that is, firms' ability to build strong organizational resilience in response to the COVID‐19 pandemic. It focused on manufacturing firms operating within Shenzhen, a coastal city located within the Guangdong province in southeastern China. The sample comprised 234 firms. Data were analysed using a covariance‐based structural equation modeling. Findings revealed that green value co‐creation had no direct effect on organizational resilience, rather, its effect was realized indirectly through green organizational capabilities. The study concludes that manufacturing companies can augment their organizational capabilities by leveraging the knowledge of their customers through green value co‐creation to build strong organizational resilience. Theoretical and managerial implications have been provided.

In recent years, a series of uncertain events and sudden changes, such as trade disputes and epidemic diseases, have posed a major threat to the function and survival of organizations. How to cultivate and improve organizational resilience has become a research hotspot in the field of organizational management. Relevant researches on the mechanism of organizational resilience generation and intervention have not yet formed an authoritative explanation and generalization principle, though the important influence of employees’ individual mental traits on organizational resilience has caught more and more research attention.Deploying the large-scale sample survey data from small and medium-sized enterprises in science and technology, this study, inheriting research thought from individual spiritual traits to organizational resilience, explores the influence of craftsman spirit on organizational resilience within the theory framework of work values. Craftsman spirit concerned, which has a profound brand of special times, is the professional faith of employees. The significance and value of craftsman spirit in the new period have been widely discussed by all walks of life in China. More and more studies have defined the craftsman spirit as the working attitude and value orientation of employees, and believe that the craftsman spirit of employees is an important reason for enterprises to stand firm despite the crisis and achieve sustainable development. However, few studies have further explored its influence on organizational resilience. In exploring the effect model of the relationship between craftsmanship spirit and organizational resilience, this study, drawing on the relevant literature on strategic human resource management, underlines the mediating role of strategic consensus. It comes to the conclusion that craftsman spirit imposes a positive effect on organizational resilience. Further mechanism analysis illustrates that strategic consensus can significantly improve organizational resilience, meanwhile employees with craftsmanship spirit are more likely to reach strategic consensus. In view of the above, craftsmanship spirit can exert a positive impact on organizational resilience by promoting strategic consensus.The conclusion of this study reveals the great power of craftsman spirit as an ideal and belief, and explores the strategic path of craftsman spirit to promote organizational resilience, which attempts to make contributions in the following aspects. Firstly, based on the theory of work values, this study reexamines the connotation and characteristics of craftsman spirit in the new era and verifies its positive role in promoting organizational resilience, which further enriches the relevant literature on craftsman spirit and its effects. Secondly, existing researches mostly focus on the influence of individual spiritual traits and emphasize the consequent psychological resources on organizational resilience. This study explores the influence and mechanism of craftsman spirit, a higher order individual value, which replenishes the research on the antecedents of organizational resilience. Thirdly, by referring to the relevant literature of strategic human resource management, the effect model of the relationship between craftsmanship spirit and organizational resilience is constructed through the key of strategic consensus, which provides a new theoretical perspective for the research on the relationship between individual values and organizational behavior. At the practical level, this study also provides a new way of thinking for the important issue of how to promote the joint development of individual employees and organizations, and manifests a guiding significance for the collaborative cultivation of craftsmanship spirit and organizational resilience in Chinese enterprises in the new era.

Seeking sustainable performance through organizational resilience: Examining the role of supply chain integration and digital technology usage

Contemporary organizations face a rising incidence of disasters, extreme events and crises (Boin and Lodge 2021). In parallel, the socioeconomic landscape is increasingly complex which intensifies inter-organizational dependencies and the risk of cascading failures (Ansell et al. 2021). To survive and perhaps thrive, organizations must cultivate organizational resilience (OR). However, their capacity to do so is currently curtailed. Although it is widely recognized that the performance of organizational processes, functions and capabilities is closely aligned to the effectiveness of associated information technology systems (ITS) (Schultze and Orlikowski 2004); models of OR have yet to elucidate mechanisms by which ITS contribute to resilience capabilities (Annarelli and Nonino 2016). In this conceptual paper, which is a work in progress, we reflect upon the nature of interdependencies and tensions between ITS resilience (ITSR) and OR. We adopt a deductive, qualitative approach to systematically compare OR & ITSR. Our comparative analysis is informed by OR models described by Duchek (2020), Sheffi and Rice Jr (2005) and Weick and Sutcliffe (2011), while for ITSR, we employ the Reactive Manifesto as interpreted by Bonér et al. (2014) and Debski et al. (2017). Figs 1, 2 illustrate our interpretation of each resilience construct. As may be seen on Fig. 1 we interpret OR as a three-phase process including preemptive, proactive & recovery phases each possessing associated resilience capabilities. The process may occasion three operational outcomes (or levels of resilience maturity). 1st , 2nd and 3rd order resilience denote organizations that when a disruption occurs, merely maintain key operations, rapidly achieve a return to normal operations or that capitalize on a disruption to achieve an improved post-shock trajectory respectively. merely maintain key operations, rapidly achieve a return to normal operations or that capitalize on a disruption to achieve an improved post-shock trajectory respectively. ITSR is interpreted via the notion, reactive scalability which describes an organizational system that is both responsive and scalable (Debski et al. 2017) i.e., which is able to rapidly achieve (responsive) appropriately dimensioned (scalable) adaptations to intra and extra-organizational changes. Our analysis employs a multi-level approach. The preliminary results of the analysis are presented in Table 1. Upon completion of the analysis, we will elaborate theoretical propositions pertaining to the relationship between the OR and ITSR constructs to guide subsequent empirical research to bridge the theoretical divide between these in reality, indissociable resilience constructs. This comprises the main anticipated contribution.

Although organizational sustainability and organizational resilience are critical dynamic capabilities for business continuity management, especially in times of crisis such as the COVID-19 pandemic, there are few studies that analyze the relationship between these three concepts to understand risks management. For this reason, our study analyzes these relationships to contribute to a better understanding of the subject and to propose future lines of research. We use bibliometric and content analysis, based on the Web Of Science and Scopus databases, during the period between 1998 and 13 May 2021. Main findings indicate that there is a bidirectional relationship between organizational sustainability capabilities and organizational resilience capabilities, but there is not enough evidence of their relationship with business continuity management. Additionally, results allow us to infer that there are four groups of relationships between them: (1) From Risk Management to Business Continuity Management and Organizational Resilience; (2) Resilience and Business Continuity practices; (3) Business Continuity contribution to Innovation and Sustainability; (4) Dynamic Capabilities for Organizational Sustainability and Organizational Resilience to enhance Business Continuity Management. Moreover, different stages were identified to understand the impact of organizational sustainability capabilities and organizational resilience capabilities on business continuity management facing disruptive events.

PurposeAs the risks and uncertainties faced by construction projects increase, the study of organizational resilience becomes more and more important for construction project management. Therefore, this study aims to deepen the understanding of the micro-mechanisms of organizational resilience in construction projects and explore the impact of employee resilience on organizational resilience.Design/methodology/approachBy combining the conservation of resources, this study constructs the mechanism of employee resilience on organizational resilience in construction projects and considers the mediating role of task types. A partial least squares structural equation model (SEM) was used to test hypotheses based on data collected from 224 respondents.FindingsThe results show that employees' work resilience has a direct positive impact on the organizational resilience in construction projects and is also mediated by inter-team tasks. However, the psychological resilience of employees will have a direct adverse effect on the organizational resilience in construction projects and will be mediated by inter-team tasks and intra-team tasks.Originality/valueThis study verifies the impact mechanism of employee resilience on organizational resilience, including direct effects and indirect effects through different types of team tasks, and reveals the micro-mechanisms of using employee resources to build organizational resilience. This article sheds light on how project managers and employees can develop resilience to deal with the uncertainty and complexity of construction projects.

This study investigates the evolutionary mechanism through which digital technology empowers organizational resilience and enhances firm performance in the context of Chinese small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). Against the backdrop of increasing environmental uncertainty and digital transformation, a structural equation model was constructed to examine the relationships among digital technology capability, organizational resilience and firm performance in the context of Chinese small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). relationships among digital technology capability, organizational resilience, and firm performance. Data were collected via a structured questionnaire survey from 300 SMEs. Data were collected via a structured questionnaire survey from 300 SMEs across multiple regions and industries. The empirical analysis reveals that digital technology capability significantly enhances organizational resilience, organizational performance, and firm performance. The empirical analysis reveals that digital technology capability significantly enhances organizational resilience, and resilience, in turn, has a strong positive impact on firm performance. Moreover, organizational resilience fully mediates the relationship between digital technology and performance, suggesting that the effectiveness of digital transformation is realized primarily through the development of digital technology. Moreover, organizational resilience fully mediates the relationship between digital technology and performance, suggesting that the effectiveness of digital transformation is realized primarily through the development of resilient organizational capabilities. These findings provide theoretical support and practical guidance for SMEs to build adaptive, responsive, and high-performance systems in the era of digital economy