Elgar Introduction to Theories of Organizational Resilience

With organizational environments becoming increasingly unstable, uncertain and equivocal, the concept of resilience has become increasingly significant for management studies. Resilience connotes organizational, team and individual capacities to absorb external shocks and to learn from them, while simultaneously preparing for and responding to external jolts. Resilience represents the capacity to bounce back from failures, setbacks, and adversities. Following the mission of Elgar Introductions to Management and Organizational Theory, the book has two main goals. First, it aims at pinpointing the essential aspects of managerial and organizational resilience. Rather than reporting what the extant literature has produced, the book presents concepts and offers insights that stimulate critical thinking. Second, given that the concept of resilience is essentially made of contrasting forces (i.e., adaptation/anticipation, solidity/adaptability, etc.), the volume presents innovative syntheses in which resilience is considered as an overarching whole in which synthesis occurs between contradictory elements. The book illuminates such contradictions originally, rather than confuting them, with which to provide readers with a deeper comprehension of the phenomena, offering solid ground for managers and policy makers’ decisions.