Resilience Capabilities Research Articles

Innovation failure and firm growth: dependence on firm size and age

ABSTRACT This paper investigates whether a firm’s failure in undertaking innovative activities can promote or hamper its growth. It conducts a two-stage regression for the determinants innovation failure and its impact on firm growth by analysing the data of firms in the Korean manufacturing sector. It finds that firms are likely to fail in innovation when they have either low or extremely high levels of R&D intensity, conduct cooperative R&D, or face financial constraints. In addition, it finds that under these conditions, failed innovators have lower rates of growth than successful innovators, but also that firm size and age moderate the negative effect of innovation failure on firm growth. These findings imply that the impact of innovation failure on firm growth differs depending upon internal resources and resilience capability.

Resiliencia e inteligencia emocional en pacientes diagnosticados con trastorno por consumo de sustancias.

El consumo de sustancias psicoactivas se ha relacionado con diversos factores de riesgo y protección en la búsqueda de optimizar la adherencia al tratamiento y prevenir recaídas. Objetivo: Determinar la relación entre resiliencia e inteligencia emocional en pacientes diagnosticados con trastorno por consumo de sustancias. Material y Métodos: Estudio cuantitativo, no experimental, correlacional y transversal. La muestra fue de 43 pacientes, 13 mujeres (30%) y 30 varones (70%), entre 15 y 53 años. Se utilizó la Escala de Resiliencia de Wagnild y Young (α 0,821), y el Inventario Emocional de BarOn ICE (α 0,833). Resultados: Las dimensiones de resiliencia (confianza en sí mismo y perseverancia) tienen influencia significativamente positiva en los factores de inteligencia emocional, i.e., intrapersonal y estado de ánimo general. Conclusiones: En personas con diagnóstico de adicción a sustancias, la capacidad de resiliencia se relaciona positivamente con su habilidad general para afrontar demandas y presiones.

Lean resilience: AURA (Active Usage of Resilience Assets) framework for post-COVID-19 supply chain management

PurposeSupply chain resilience capabilities are usually considered in light of some anticipated events and are as passive assets, which are “waiting” for use in case of an emergency. This, however, can be inefficient. Moreover, the current COVID-19 pandemic has revealed difficulties in the timely deployments of resilience assets and their utilization for value creation. We present a framework that consolidates different angles of efficient resilience and renders utilization of resilience capabilities for creation of value.Design/methodology/approachWe conceptualise the design of the AURA (Active Usage of Resilience Assets) framework for post-COVID-19 supply chain management through collating the extant literature on value creation-oriented resilience and practical examples and complementing our analysis with a discussion of practical implementations.FindingsBuilding upon and integrating the existing frameworks of VSC (Viable Supply Chain), RSC (Reconfigurable Supply Chain) and LCNSC (Low-Certainty-Need Supply Chain), we elaborate on a new idea in the AURA approach – to consider resilience as an inherent, active and value-creating component of operations management decisions, rather than as a passive “shield” to protect against rare, severe events. We identify 10 future research areas for lean resilience integrating management and digital platforms and technology.Practical implicationsThe outcomes of our study can be used by supply chain and operations managers to improve the efficiency and effectiveness by turning resilience from passive, cost-driving assets into a value-creating, inclusive decision-making paradigm.Originality/valueWe propose a novel approach to bring more dynamics to the notion of supply chain resilience. We name our approach AURA and articulate its two major advantages as follows: (1) reduction of disruption prediction efforts and (2) value creation from resilience assets. We offer a discussion on ten future research directions towards a lean resilience.

Organizational learning and unlearning capabilities for resilience during COVID-19

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to empirically validate the positive effect of learning on organizational resilience and, within this relationship, understand the role of unlearning in the COVID-19 crisis context and progress the current knowledge about these concepts.Design/methodology/approachThis paper uses online survey data from German and Austrian organizations’ employees to test hypotheses derived from frameworks by Duchek (2019), Stephenson (2010) and Fiol and O’Connor (2017). The used questionnaire is built out of three pre-tested questionnaires to increase reliability. Conceptually, this paper takes a capability approach and a process perspective.FindingsThe results support the positive effect of organizational learning on resilience, while rejecting the hypothesized moderating effect of unlearning on this relationship. Organizational learning showed to have a particularly strong positive effect on the adaptive capacity of resilience, compared to organizational resilience overall.Practical implicationsTo build a learning capability for organizational resilience, managers should foster an open system culture in their organization, which aims to be generally open to learn and adapt to be able to withstand adversity. During an organizational crisis, managers have the chance to rebuild organizational structures for better information flow, e.g. implementing formal knowledge management structures.Originality/valueTo the best of the authors’ knowledge, this paper is the first to empirically test the causal connection between organizational learning and resilience in the Central European context during the COVID-19 crisis. The inclusion of unlearning enriches the discourse about its conceptualizations and fosters future research.

Retail supply chain network design with concurrent resilience capabilities

In this paper, we address the problem of designing/redesigning a resilient retail supply chain network under uncertainty. Considering pre- and post-disruption scenarios, this study proposes a two-stage stochastic optimization framework with multiple resilience strategies for designing a resilient retail supply chain. We consider facility fortification, inventory prepositioning, direct-to-store delivery, reserved capacity, inventory sharing and multiple set covering as our resilience strategies, covering all the three dimensions of resilience capabilities, namely, proactive, reactive, and network design quality. Taking into account the prominent role of retail outlets during Covid-19 epidemic outbreaks, through a real case study, we evaluate the impact of random and targeted disruptions on the performance of the retail supply chain network and provide managerial insights regarding the right balance between cost efficiency and resilience. Furthermore, we evaluate the effectiveness of these resilience capabilities in a number of simulated scenarios to show their applicability and importance under different disruptive situations. We show that when implemented concurrently, these resilience capabilities have a synergistic effect where the whole becomes larger than the sum of its parts. Subject to extensive stress testing, our results show that using any mixture of these resilience capabilities increases the retail network's resilience while considerably decreasing post-disruption costs.

Experimental study of natural cork and cork agglomerates as a substitute for expanded polystyrene foams under compressive loads

Expanded polystyrene (EPS) is a material that is widely used in energy absorbing applications, especially in helmets, despite its non-renewable origin. Cork and its derivatives, however, are proposed as a substitute for polystyrene foam (EPS) due to their renewable origin and their easy recyclability. In spite of the low-environmental footprint of cork and its derivatives, there is insufficient data on their mechanical behaviour. Consequently, under dynamic and quasi-static loads, four different-density EPS, a natural cork material and five different cork products with different grain sizes and heat treatments were tested. They were compared in terms of their stress–strain and specific stress–strain curve, their volumetric capability to absorb energy, their specific energy, average decelerations and peak deceleration. Finally, EPS foams cannot recover their initial shape upon deformation due to their low resilience capability. This is especially important in applications such as helmets, which are bound to be subjected to multiple impacts. However, cork and its products could have this capability for resilience and would therefore be more suitable for certain applications.

Evaluating the Impacts of Azotobacter chroococcum Inoculation on Soil Stability and Plant Property of Maize Crop

To clarify whether Azotobacter chroococcum iinoculation disturbs soil stability, as well as the variations of plant properties and maize yield, we assessed the impacts of A. chroococcum inoculation on soil stability and analyzed using frameworks of soil resistance and resilience and simultaneously evaluated plant properties and maize yield during a 4-year period from 2016 to 2019. The contents of plant total nitrogen (N) and total phosphorus (P) were apparently increased in A. chroococcum inoculation treatment relative to the control treatment of non-inoculation of A. chroococcum, by changing the contents of soil ammonium-N (NH4+-N) at the seedling stage (+17.78%) and heading stage (+34.48%), as well as soil nitrate-N (NOx-N; −23.94%) and soil available P (Olsen-P; −15.38%) at the heading stage (P 1.5), except soil NH4+-N (RS = 2.19) in 2019. The resilience (RL) values (1.15–1.14) of soil NH4+-N were not markedly different compared with the threshold value of RL (i.e., 1.0), showing that the resilience capabilities of soil property were not altered by A. chroococcum inoculation. The average grain weight over 4 years was obviously higher in A. chroococcum inoculation treatment than that in the control treatment (+17.07%; P < 0.05). These results suggested that A. chroococcum inoculation has no adverse impacts on soil stability and potentially promotes the absorption of plant nutrients and yield improvement for maize crop.

Cyber Resilience Self-Assessment Tool (CR-SAT) for SMEs

On the current environment, companies face risks and threats to the systems they need to operate often known as cyber threats. Most of these companies are small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and they are exposed to these cyber threats. To mitigate the risks and be able to thrive with as little disruption as possible, SMEs require cyber resilience capabilities. However, due to their limited resources, SMEs usually have no dedicated personnel for cyber resilience operationalization and thus lack the experience this discipline requires to implement. To aid SMEs in their cyber resilience operationalization, the current literature offers several kinds of solutions, but these solutions are usually targeted for companies with more resources than SMEs and do not aid in the complete process of assessing their current cyber resilience, deciding actions to improve it and prioritizing these actions. To aid companies in this systematic process to operationalize or implement cyber resilience, this article develops and tests an operational web-based tool in which companies can follow the complete process described before. To achieve this, a cyber resilience framework with the essential policies for SMEs, descriptions of their natural progressions in a progression model and a prioritization of these policies have been developed. In this article, this framework, progression model and prioritization are later transformed into one cyber resilience self-assessment tool (CR-SAT) and are tested in three case studies to qualitatively evaluate the tool by trying to ascertain its usefulness and completeness as well as improving it with the feedback from the end-users.

An Exploration on Supply Chain Resilience Capabilities of Tea Exporting Companies: Special Reference to Pre COVID-19 and During COVID-19 Pandemic

An Exploration on Supply Chain Resilience Capabilities of Tea Exporting Companies: Special Reference to Pre COVID-19 and During COVID-19 Pandemic

Enhancing operational performance through supply chain integration: the mediating role of resilience capabilities under COVID-19 pandemic

Enhancing operational performance through supply chain integration: the mediating role of resilience capabilities under COVID-19 pandemic

Long-Term Resilience Curve Analysis of Wenchuan Earthquake-Affected Counties Using DMSP-OLS Nighttime Light Images

This article demonstrates the potential of Defense Meteorological Satellite Program-Operational Linescan System stable nighttime light imagery for county-level earthquake resilience analysis. In this article, we firstly intercalibrated the nighttime light data and calculated the total sum of stable lights for each of the 261 counties affected by the <italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">Mw</i> 7.9 Wenchuan earthquake from 1992 to 2013; secondly established an earthquake resilience model based on a nighttime light index to analyze the static and dynamic resilience of different counties; and lastly discussed the possible influencing factors from geographic, disaster-related, political and socioeconomic perspectives. The results first show that the static resilience of the extremely hard-hit counties in the Wenchuan earthquake-affected area increased from south to north along the long axis of the intensity zone, and plain and hilly counties exhibited faster short-term economic recovery than plateau and mountainous counties. Moreover, all extremely hard-hit counties except Wenchuan, Dujiangyan and Pingwu recovered to the normal level before 2011, whereas 52% of the counties in the generally affected areas recovered within three years. Through linear regression analysis, we also found that the different earthquake resilience capabilities across counties are most likely related to the soil liquefaction risk, average elevation, land-use degree, and socioeconomic factors, such as the industrial structure, the population age distribution, and social welfare.

Economic and Risk Perceptions Motivating Illegal Migration Abroad: Port Harcourt City Youths, Nigeria

This study contributes to the understanding of the economic and risk perceptions that motivate illegal migration among youths. Using the Theory of Reasoned Action and the Cultural Theory of Risk Perception, this study investigates the economic and risk perceptions related to the livelihood of male and female youths of Port Harcourt City about migration to Europe through the Sahara Desert and across the Mediterranean Sea. Qualitative research techniques were used to source data from Port Harcourt City youths on the lived experiences of irregular migrants in selected countries abroad. A thematic content analysis of the data revealed that the perception of many of the participants on opportunities for decent work abroad is informed by what they see in western films and read on social media platforms. The anticipation of a better life and the hope of earning a stable income motivate them to undertake unsafe migration journeys abroad, regardless of the risks. The study further established that the majority of the youths who embark on dangerous journeys lack in-depth knowledge of the associated risks of traveling through the desert and across the sea, including the dangers of living abroad as undocumented migrants. Based on these findings, the study recommends the need for more awareness-creation and enlightenment of the youths to fully understand the risks and negative aspects of the illegal movement. It also recommends that government agencies and stakeholders in the international community collaborate towards implementing sustainable interventions that will build the resilience capabilities of youths against illegal migration.

What lies beneath resilience: Analyzing the affective-relational basis of shared leadership in the Chilean miners’ catastrophe

This article addresses how shared forms of leadership can activate resilient organizing to cope with catastrophic events by examining the case of the 33 Chilean miners’ rescue who survived confinement at 600 m below ground for 69 days. Qualitative analysis of interview and document data reveals how the miners as a group engaged in the sharing of agency vis-a-vis the task of absorbing strain and anxiety, thus enabling a sophisticated work capacity and a constructive relational dynamic. The miners’ resilient capabilities emerged from the activation of collective resources in three distinct yet complementary modes of interaction: self-organization, collaboration, and mutual caring. Our empirical findings indicate that the distribution of agency becomes essential for the promotion of both collective sensemaking and emotional containment in contexts of crisis. By accounting for such affective-relational underpinning of the sharing of leadership, this article contributes a more nuanced understanding of crisis management and the organization of positive, constructive responses to adversity, breakdown, and conflict.

O papel das comunidades para a construção de cidades resilientes: o caso do Jardim de chuva do Largo das Araucárias, Pinheiros-SP

Atualmente a maioria dos grandes centros urbanos, a exemplo da cidade de São Paulo, têm enfrentado desafios como enchentes recorrentes, aumento das ilhas de calor, contaminação do solo, desigualdade social, dentre outros, os quais resultam da somatória da história local aos crescentes efeitos das Mudanças Climáticas, fazendo com que cidades e seus habitantes experienciem seus limites físicos e anímicos, colocando à prova suas capacidades de resiliência. Frente a esta realidade, nascem novas formas de se pensar e construir as cidades, como o conceito de biofilia, e também de reivindicação, com crescente participação dos moradores, os quais respondem aos desafios através de intervenções urbanísticas que transformam significativamente a paisagem e a dinâmica local. Assim, este artigo tem como objetivo analisar o papel de intervenções paisagísticas originárias de coletivos e comunidades locais para construção de cidades resilientes. E ao trazer uma análise do Largo das Araucárias, faz ainda um paralelo com o conceito de cidades biofílicas.

Rome was not built in a day. Resilience and the eternal city: Insights for urban management

Resilience has been intensely investigated as the viable quality of individuals, groups, organizations, and systems to respond productively to notable change without engaging in an extended period of regressive behaviour. Recently, there has been growing attention to the relationship between resilience and cities. To contribute to this stimulating debate, this paper first provides the theoretical framework and links the concept of resilience to urban studies. Subsequently, it enlightens, through a systems perspective and the aspect-based sentiment analysis (ABSA) methodology, the possibility to enrich the information variety endowment of urban policymakers, generated by new information units, to foster resilience capabilities in the urban context. Specifically, a large-scale text analysis study was conducted on the city of Rome to understand the sentiments expressed within the text generated online by citizens and visitors. The positive or negative sentiments linked to the hidden problems of the urban context were organized within collective perception-based maps for each of the analysed points of interest (POIs). Since cities represent complex decision-making contexts, this study aimed to outline a methodology and a tool that would help foster resilient thinking in urban policies by enriching the diversity of the information variety endowment of urban decision-makers.

Understanding the relationships between global supply chain risk and supply chain resilience: the role of mitigating strategies

PurposeThis study aims to theoretically hypothesise and empirically explore the relationships amongst global supply chain risks, supply chain resilience and mitigating strategies.Design/methodology/approachThe study adopts supply chain resilience as a dynamic capability and resilience capability as a mediating prerequisite in addressing supply chain risk in sourcing, manufacturing and delivery. The moderating role of diverse mitigating strategies is tested to enhance supply chain resilience. Data collected via survey was used for structural equation modelling and additional tests to explore appropriate mitigating strategies for differing risk environments.FindingsAchieving better supply chain resilience capability plays an important mediating role between supply chain risks and resilience, while the relationships depend on the performance of seven mitigating strategies.Research limitations/implicationsThe findings contribute to the theoretical development of risk management issues in global supply chains by suggesting the role of supply chain resilience capability.Practical implicationsThe findings offer managerial guidance on how to mitigate the global supply chain risk through the appropriate practice of strategies to strengthen supply chain resilience in an uncertain environment.Originality/valueThis is the first empirical research examining the impact of mitigating strategies on supply chain resilience. The results provide practical implications for managing uncertain events and offering theoretical insight for future research in supply chain resilience.

Total Defence Resilience: Viable or Not During COVID-19? A Comparative Study of Norway and the UK.

The total defence (TD) concept aims to provide an effective crisis response structure by increasing society resilience. However, the complexity of its structure regarding resource mobilization and management process highlights the need for a complexity‐oriented approach in the operationalising of TD. We study the application of TD during the COVID‐19 crisis and explore what makes the TD a viable system with resilience capabilities in the face the crisis. We apply the Viable Systems Model as a methodology to compare the viability of the United Kingdom and Norwegian TD systems, both of which use systems networks to achieve resilience, and contrast the different outcomes of each country. Our analysis highlights that: Managing the complexity of the TDS requires that all of the involved agencies proactively adopt a transparent approach to a joint decision making. This demands a wide range of sources of innovative solutions at different levels. Joint exercises, developed by the responsible agencies, enhance mutual understating of roles and responsibilities and crisis response structure. This calls for institutionalized support to dedicate resources. To avoid communications challenges, involved agencies in the TDS need to adopt an open messaging strategy, highlighting how to deal with uncertainties in communicating of decisions and action.

Resilience Assessment Framework for Nature Based Solutions in Stormwater Management and Control: Application to Cities with Different Resilience Maturity

Cities face unprecedented demographic, environmental, economic, social, and spatial challenges. In recent years, the implementation of nature-based solutions (NBS) is becoming more relevant in cities to improve urban resilience and to cope with climate change. NBS represent cost effective solutions that simultaneously provide environmental, social, and economic benefits and help build resilience. A comprehensive and multi-dimension Resilience Assessment Framework (RAF) to evaluate the NBS contribution to urban resilience, focused on NBS for stormwater management and control, was developed. This RAF is aligned with the RESCCUE RAF and the main assessment frameworks focused on NBS and urban resilience. This RAF for NBS is driven by the definition of resilience objectives and is able to evaluate short- and long-term changes, considering a comprehensive definition of the urban resilience and addressing the environmental, social, and economic capabilities. Regarding the initial resilience maturity and the available information in the city, three analysis degrees were proposed for the RAF application, namely, the essential, complementary, and comprehensive degrees, for which a pre-defined selection of metrics is proposed. This paper aims to present the application of the RAF essential analysis degree and its extensive validation regarding cities with different resilience maturity and available information. The application to seven cities with different resilience and NBS challenges allowed an in-depth validation of the pre-defined metrics included in the RAF essential analysis. In this sense, the analysis of the resilience maturity of the participating cities is presented, the main challenges and consolidated aspects in the cities are identified, and the cities ready to apply the complementary analysis degree are recognized. To conclude, to validate the essential analysis degree, the assessment of the main requirements of the RAF for NBS are verified, based on the RAF metrics results for the cities. In this light, the main requirements of the RAF for NBS were aggregated in three main categories, namely, NBS aspects, resilience capabilities, and the performance, risk and cost analysis.

Transculturality in higher education

One way in which higher education has responded to globalisation and the emergence of transculturality has been to expand its focus on internationalisation at an unprecedented rate. Traditionally this occurred through international students and their contact with local students. A longitudinal case study into the student experience of transculturality in the Erasmus Mundus Transcultural European Outdoor Studies Masters programme found transcultural self-growth and transcultural capabilities of resilience, intelligence and the ability to work through fatigue to be central to their experience. Using Kemmis and Smith’s (2008a) themes related to praxis (doing, morally committed action, reflexivity, connection, concreteness and a process of becoming) this theoretical article explores the place of critical transcultural pedagogical praxis in supporting transcultural learning experiences of higher education students.

Facilitating Vulnerable Supplier Network Management Using Bicriterion Network Resilience Management Approach

This study aims to enable a high level of coordination to cope with increasing levels of uncertainty by computing supplier- and network-based resilience values. Our case study is based on a real-world highly connected global manufacturing firm based in Korea as a test environment to evaluate a proposed bicriterion network resilience model using resilience and network values, together with an ordering approach. An outranking methodology is used to determine the improvement priorities of suppliers to achieve a high level of overall network resilience. The results show that the effectiveness of a firm’s performance with respect to the entire supply chain may increase or decrease based on its embeddedness and connectivity within the supply network. This study is one of the first to provide an integrative (resilience capabilities and network attributes) approach to the supplier improvement model, future studies are encouraged to expand the model to different network settings.