This document outlines a research proposal to identify the essential concepts that contribute to organizational resilience. The proposal includes an introduction that discusses the background and research questions. It then reviews relevant literature on resilience at the individual, organizational, and capability levels. The proposed research method is a multi-phase Delphi study involving interviews with resilience experts and a survey of practitioners. The expected outcomes are a summary of the organizational resilience philosophy and framework that organizations can use to increase their resilience.
1. School of Computing
& Security Science
ORGANISATIONAL RESILIENCE:
UNDERSTANDING, AND IDENTIFYING THE ESSENTIAL
CONCEPTS.
Research Proposal Defence
Bruce Braes
Student No: 10169360
Degree: Masters Science (Security Science)
School Computer & Security Science
Principal Supervisor: Dr. David Brooks.
2. School of Computing
& Security Science
AGENDA
•Introduction
- Background, Research Questions, Contribution to
Knowledge
•Literature Review
- Resilience
- Individual Resilience
- Resilient Organisations
- Resilient Capability
-Standards
- Industry
•Underlying Theory
•Research Methods
- Study Design
- Phases One through Four
- Participants
- Limitations
3. School of Computing
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Introduction
• Background To The Study
- The area of study is not clearly defined
- Involves all types of organisations not only
business but also government and not for
profit
- Currently a assortment of behaviours
rather than an ideology
4. School of Computing
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Introduction
Research Questions
1. What are the essential concepts that contribute to making
an organisation resilient as identified by resilience
experts?
2. What are the essential concepts that contribute to making
an organisation resilient as identified by resilience
practitioners?
3. What are the essential concepts that comprise the
philosophy of Organisational Resilience?
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Contribution to Knowledge
- The objective of this study is to extract and
articulate the essential concepts that must be
present to make an organisation either resilient or
more resilient.
- Little or no previous research can be found in this
area
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Contribution to Knowledge
Benefits of The Research
• Organisational Resilience stands at a point where the practical
implementation poses a challenge, not only for
practitioners, but also for researchers.
• Developing the essential concepts will provide a meaningful
contribution to knowledge and deliver benefits to
practitioners.
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Underlying Theory
• Cognitive Psychological Study into knowledge and development and
understanding of concepts
• Short term memory
• Long term memory
• Episodic memory
• Semantic memory
• Concepts
“are continuously contributing to our perceptions, learning, memory
and language”
(Borges, 1964)
• Concepts in the context of this study means
“a unit of knowledge made up of a number of elements which operate
as the characteristics of the concept”
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Literature Review
Resilience
• The concept of resilience in academic terms has its origin in fields
psychology and child behaviour (Coutu, 2002; Reinmoeller & Van
Baardwijk, 2005).
• Resilience is a fundamental quality of individuals, groups,
organisations and systems as a whole to respond productively to
significant change that disrupts the expected pattern of events
without engaging in an extended period of regressive behaviour
(Horne III & Orr, 1998)
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Literature Review
Individual Resilience
• Resilient people deal with traumatic events in life and display
hardiness, an ability to overcome difficulty and recover to continue
with their lives.
(Kobasa, 1982; Kobasa, Maddi, & Kahn, 1982; Westman, 1990)
• It is important to note that some people respond negatively to these
types of situations (for example, substance abuse or violence), while
others continue to lead healthy and dynamic lives.
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Literature Review
Resilient Organisations
• “In terms of its organizational resilience and flexibility, its structure
and communications, al-Qaeda is like a successful, smart company”
(Hoffman, 2004)
• Organisational Resilience remains a theoretical concept and methods
for achieving improved resilience at both operational and strategic
levels within business still challenge both academics and
practitioners .
(Klein, Nicholls, & Thomalla, 2003).
• Traditionally, resilience has been viewed as those qualities that
enable an individual, community or organisation to cope with, adapt
to and recover from a disaster event
(Buckle, Mars, & Smile, 2000;Horne, 1997; Pelling & Uitto, 2001;
Riolli& Savicki, 2003).
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Literature Review
Resilient Capability
• Resilience capacity is a multi-disciplinary quality that allows
an organisation to successfully withstand, respond to and
potentially capitalise on disrupting events.
(Hamel & Valikangas, 2003; Lengnick-Hall & Beck, 2005;
McGann, 2004).
• Provides an underpinning of insight, adaptability, and
robustness. Resilience capacity is embodied in organisational
routines and processes by which an organisation continually
prepares itself to act decisively and move forward, and
establishes a culture of diversity and adjustable integration
that empowers it to overcome the potentially incapacitating
consequences of a disruptive shock.
(Lengnick-Hall & Beck, 2005).
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Literature Review
Standards
• AS/NZS ISO 31000 2009 Risk Management Standard
• AS/NZS ISO 9001 2008 Quality Management System
• AS 8001 2003Fraud & Corruption Control
• AS 8000 2003Good Governance Principles
• AS 3745 2002Emergency Control organisation and procedures for
buildings, structures and workplaces
• IS0 280000 2007 Security Management Systems for the supply chain
• AS/NZ 5050 2010 Business Continuity – Managing disruption related risk
• BS7799 Information Security Management
• BS311000 2008 Risk Management: Code of Practice
• BS25999-2 2007 Business Continuity management
• ASIS SPC. 1 2009 Security, Preparedness and Continuity Management Systems
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Literature Review
Industry
• Traditional risk management systems and solutions are
insufficient to handle today’s expanded spectrum of market
and business risk. As the rate of change in the market
accelerates, companies require an adaptive risk management
approach that both responds to and anticipates business shifts
(Hollnagel, et al., 2005).
• Organisational Resilience marries risk management,
information reporting and governance processes with
strategic and business planning to create an organisation-
wide early warning capability that is embedded in the day
to day operations and culture of the organisation .
(Booz Allen Hamilton Inc & Weil Gotshal & Manges LLP, 2004).
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Research Methods
Delphi Method is based on structural surveys and makes use of the
intuitive available information of the participants, who are mainly
experts.
Participants
The field Organisational Resilience is dominated by specialists in sub-
domains who have grasped the viewpoint and are moving forward
with it and developing into experts.
Experts
“highly skilled, competent in performance in one or more task
domains”
(Sternberg & Ben-Zeev)
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PHASE ONE Establishes baseline
data points
Standards Review
Reiteration
of Data
Responds to
PHASE TWO
Research Question 1
Structured Interviews with Experts
PHASE THREE Responds to
Survey of Practitioners Research Question 2
PHASE FOUR Responds to
Comparative Analysis of results Research Question 3
Phases Two and Three
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Research Methods
• Limitations
•Organisational Resilience is a broad and wide-ranging
•It is heterogeneous and multi dimensional
•Establishing a statistically representative sample of the population is to some degree
not possible.
•Researcher intends to utilise convenience sampling which is a non-probability
sampling technique
• Further limitation may be semantics; different cohorts may have different
experiences; this may then create a vertically heterogeneous semantic net for certain
words or concepts in an otherwise homogeneous group.
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Expected Outcomes
• Authoritive summarisation of the philosophy of
Organisational Resilience
• Detailed explanation of how organisations
benefit from Organisational Resilience
• A basic framework organisation could adopt to
increase resilience