Resilience in Organizational Systems

Dear Colleagues,

We live in a world where changes and crises are complex and turbulent (Scott, 2013; Helbing, 2013) and where organizational systems are highly interdependent, which represents a challenge for actors and organizations in their ability to cope with adversities, and calls for the activation of resilience mechanisms. Resilience has been conceptualized well in the organizational sciences (Linnenlueck, 2017; Naderpajouh et al., 2018). Indeed, organizational scholars and practitioners  examined resilience as either an antecedent, process, or outcome and at multiple levels of analysis (Powley, Caza, & Caza, 2020). Moreover, others have conceptualized it as a resource to be activated or as a process as a system recovers from challenging events (e.g., Powley, 2009; Caza & Milton, 2012; Masten, 2015). Resilience has been seen as critically important in decision making and leading in uncertainty (Le Bris, Madrid-Guijarro, & Martin, 2019) due to situational constraints and extreme contexts (Hällgren et al., 2018).

To facilitate the creation of new knowledge about more proactive preparedness for uncertainty, academic research and practice have been interested in exploring a paradigm shift around the umbrella term resilience (Naderpajouh et al. 2018 ; Baggio et al., 2015; Linkov and Trump, 2019). The aim of this special issue is thus to provide a systems perspective on resilience. While we recognize that resilience spans levels of analysis (Sutcliffe & Vogus, 2003), this special issue will focus less on individual, psychological resilience, and instead will favor articles addressing relational and social dynamics that produce resilience (e.g., group behavior or the management of organizational systems). Indeed, we see a lack of work on what resilient organizations do in practice (Duchek, 2020) and we wish to explore organizations that are “resilience professionals” versus more naive organizations (Hannah et al. 2009). Our focus will be on how organizational units and other collectives demonstrate, foster, develop, activate, replenish, or strengthen resilience in their organizational systems. We are inviting article submissions that explore the processes by which leaders, dyads, groups, organizational units, and other collectives demonstrate resilience, the social mechanisms of resilience, the conditions that affect the likelihood of resilience, and the outcomes associated with it.

By definition, resilience concerns itself with both positive and negative phenomenon (Lengnick-Hall et al. (2011). Articles in the special issue will have a general orientation toward resilience as a positive organizational dynamic, but we also welcome topics that highlight the problematics of resilience in organizations.  Further, we encourage authors to seek innovative, and interdisciplinary, explanations for flourishing in the face of setbacks, and encourage submissions that challenge the status quo of research and practice in resilience. Submissions might consider different theoretical interpretations of established literature on extreme organizational contexts or alternative forms of adversity or disruption.

Baggio, J. A., Brown, K., & Hellebrandt, D. (2015). Boundary object or bridging concept? A citation network analysis of resilience. Ecology and Society, 20(2).

Caza, B.B & Milton, L. (2012). Resilience at Work. In K.S. Cameron & G. Spreitzer (Eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Positive Organizational Scholarship. New York: Oxford University Press.

Duchek, S. (2020). Organizational resilience: a capability-based conceptualization. Business research, 13(1), 215-246.

Hannah, S. T., Uhl-Bien, M., Avolio, B. J., & Cavarretta, F. L. (2009). A framework for examining leadership in extreme contexts. The Leadership Quarterly, 20(6), 897-919.

Le Bris, S., Madrid-Guijarro A. and Martin D. P. (2019). Decision-making in complex environments under time pressure and risk of critical irreversibility: the role of meta rules. M@n@gement, 22(1): 1-29.

Le Bris S. 2022, « La capacité d’interrompre la propagation d’une catastrophe ? Place du leader dans le repérage de situations à risques » Sophie Le Bris, Ecole navale, UBO, LEGO, revue Management international, janv, vol 26.

Linnenluecke, M. K. (2017). Resilience in business and management research: A review of influential publications and a research agenda. International Journal of Management Reviews, 19(1), 4-30.

Linkov, I., & Trump, B. D. (2019). The science and practice of resilience. Cham: Springer International Publishing.

Masten, A.S. (2015). Pathways to integrated resilience science. Psychological Inquiry, 26, 187-196

Naderpajouh, N., Matinheikki, J., Keeys, L. A., Aldrich, D. P., & Linkov, I. (2020). Resilience and projects: An interdisciplinary crossroad. Project Leadership and Society, 1, 100001.

Powley, Edward H., Brianna Barker Caza, and Arran Caza, eds. Research Handbook on Organizational Resilience. Research Handbooks in Business and Management Series. Cheltenham, UK ; Northampton, MA: Edward Elgar Publishing, 2020.

Powley, E.H. (2009). Reclaiming resilience and safety: Resilience activation in the critical period of crisis. Human Relations, 62(9): 1289-1326.

Sutcliffe, K.M. & Vogus, T.J. (2003). Organizing for resilience. In K.S. Cameron, J.E. Dutton & R.E. Quinn (Eds.), Positive Organizational Scholarship: Foundations of a New Discipline. San Francisco, CA: Berrett-Koehler (pp. 94–110).

Dr. Edward H. Powley
Dr. Sophie Le Bris
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Behavioral Sciences is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2200 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• organizational resilience
• social mechanisms
• organizational systems
• resilient systems
• relational resilience
• resilience in practice
• resilience in organizations