Decision Premises, Learning and Organizational Resilience Addressing Novel Adversities

AbstractOrganizational resilience is traditionally associated with the ability to understand and to respond to the ongoing situation, even under unusual conditions. The capability to detect novel and unexpected situations plays a fundamental role in this process. Following (Simon‚ 1991), we believe that decision premises affect the problem representation and, ultimately, the possibility to detect, interpret and respond to novel situations, thus enhancing resilience. From this perspective, the ability to expand the perceptual limits of observation and to conceive a novel representation of the problem requires revising the initial decision premises. This theory of how organizations learn how to solve novel problems provides the foundation to introduce a role designed to legitimately challenge the decision premises and, ultimately, the spectrum of alternatives that are taken into consideration as possible solutions. To illustrate our proposal to increase organizational resilience, we introduce an exemplary real case stemming from the practice of the emergency management organizations under scrutiny of our research team; this case is reconstructed as a conversational narrative of the two key participants.

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Guiding Principles for Community Engagement: Reflections on a School-Based Sustainability Project

Journal for Social Action in Counseling & Psychology ◽

10.33043/jsacp.5.3.44-69 ◽

2018 ◽

Vol 5 (3) ◽

pp. 44-69 ◽

Cited By ~ 2

Author(s):

Charlotte Blythe ◽

Niki Harré ◽

Sindra Sharma ◽

Victoria Dillon ◽

Briar Douglas ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Professional Practice ◽

Research Team ◽

Phenomenological Study ◽

Action Research Project ◽

Environmentally Sustainable ◽

School Based ◽

Guiding Principles ◽

Key Staff ◽

Key Participants ◽

Research Team Member

This article describes an action research project in which community psychologists worked with a school community to promote environmentally sustainable practices. Our research team had five guiding principles: strengths-based, empowerment, role modeling, communication, and measurement and feedback. Here we describe a phenomenological study of how we experienced our principles and how key participants from the school perceived our professional practice. Each research team member completed a self-reflective survey and key staff and students from the school were interviewed. Amongst other benefits, the principles were valuable in promoting coherence within the research team, guiding decision-making and providing a framework for critical reflection. Recommendations are given for researchers and community practitioners interested in initiating sustainability projects with local organizations or using a similar principles-based approach in other collaborative endeavors.

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SHAPING OF ORGANIZATIONAL RESILIENCE IN AN UNSTABLE WORLD: POSSIBILITY OR NECESSITY?

Problems of Management in the 21st Century ◽

10.33225/pmc/16.11.68 ◽

2016 ◽

Vol 11 (2) ◽

pp. 68-70 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Iwona Gorzeń-Mitka

Keyword(s):

Supply Chain ◽

Business Models ◽

Modern World ◽

Organizational Resilience ◽

Organizational Efficiency ◽

Trade Offs ◽

Innovative Products ◽

New Business ◽

Key Participants ◽

New Business Models

Increased complexity of economic, social and technological systems cause that crises, uncertainty and risk have become an integral part of modern world. Undoubtedly, today’s organizations face the necessity of dealing with a growing number of various risk factors-generators: disasters, sudden bankruptcies of key participants of supply chain, loss of reputation, highly innovative products/technologies entering the market or risk resulting from introducing new legal regulations (Gorzeń-Mitka, 2015). Thus, U.Beck’s statement that the 21st century can be described as the century of risk seems right (Beck, 2009).Operation of companies in the current environment requires effective trade-offs among economic, environmental and social outcomes while maintaining the longevity of organizational efficiency (Eltantawy, 2016). For example, Maslaric et al. (2013) indicate that, modern trends in new business models, which assume a strive for continuous improvement in efficiency by cutting costs and reducing waste in every supply chain processes, create a new risk perspective. In this situation, striving to achieve balance between organizational efficiency and organizational resilience is more than a necessity. This has caused seeking for new approaches to protect value and results of our activities. One of them is creation of resilience. According Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary word "resilience" has two meanings: the ability of people or things to feel better quickly after something unpleasant and the ability of a substance to return to its original shape after it has been bent, stretched or (Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary, 2016).

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“What’s the problem?”—Toward a framework for collective problem representation in emergency response management

Journal of Emergency Management ◽

10.5055/jem.2020.0504 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 18 (6) ◽

pp. 511-524

Author(s):

Tove Frykmer, PhD candidate

Keyword(s):

Emergency Management ◽

Emergency Response ◽

Hierarchical Structures ◽

Problem Representation ◽

Key Factors ◽

Comprehensive Overview ◽

Emergency Situations ◽

Societal Needs ◽

Increased Risk ◽

Multiple Actors

Responding to today’s often transboundary emergencies, frequently characterized by unclear root causes and indistinct responsibilities as well as multiple actors, will require that responding actors come together to meet societal needs and solve problems arising in relation to those needs. In collective problem solving, representing the problem is crucial, especially in emergency situations, where problems are changing and interacting with each other and are difficult to define. There is however a lack of problem representation research in general and in emergency situations specifically. The purpose of this paper is to contribute to emergency response management (ERM) research by investigating this previously unexplored part in two ways. First, a conceptual framework for investigating collective problem representation in ERM is introduced. The framework provides a complementary perspective on how to evaluate the handling of emergencies, at a level of detail that is currently lacking in many ERM evaluations. Second, the framework is used to investigate the process of achieving a collective problem representation in ERM, to provide insights into what facilitates or impedes this process. Based on 21 interviews with ERM professionals, hierarchical structures, relationships, and legislation and regulations are identified as key factors that impact the formation of a collective problem representation. Possible implications, when this process fails, are a risk of suboptimal emergency management and an increased risk of solving the wrong problem right due to misaligned response goals or a lack of comprehensive overview. Also, the risk of a potential mismatch between stipulated and actual collaboration is identified.

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