Resilience as an organisational capability: A study of how firms survive and outperform in disruptive times

• Main Author: KAPPEL, Dietmar
• Format: text
• Language: English
• Published: Institutional Knowledge at Singapore Management University 2021
• Subjects: Organisational Resilience; Resilience Capacity; Dynamic Capability Theory; Contingency Theory; Systematic Literature Review; Grounded Theory; Business Dynamics & System Thinking; Theory development; Business Administration, Management, and Operations; Operations and Supply Chain Management
• Online Access: https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/etd_coll/346; https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1347&context=etd_coll
• Institution: Singapore Management University

An environment, in which volatility and deep uncertainty represent the leading paradigm, pressures firms to focus their attention on adapting to disruptive environmental conditions. Although scholarly attention in the firm-level resilience construct has increased over the years, a number of important issues remain underexplored. To advance progress in the field, research is needed on the dimensions of resilient response formulation and enactment, the dimensions of the disruptive environment and situational factors as well as resilience as a latent outcome variable. Based on an in-depth, systematic review of the received literature, this thesis aims to extend the firm-level resilience literature by offering two distinct views of how firms develop, nurture and sustain firm-level resilience: One, the conceptual model of resilience capacity proposes a dynamic capability view of the dimensions and capabilities that underpin resilience capacity, thereby informing the capability literature on the capabilities essential to firm-level resilience. Two, the empirical study yields an inductive-contingency-based model of resilience that informs literature on the processes, dynamics and behaviours that underpin resilience response formulation and enactment contingent upon situational factors as well as characteristics of disruptiveness by detailing the dynamic, recursive and reciprocal nature of the relationships within the inductive model. In combination, these two views may provide useful insights to inform scholarship and managerial practise.