Strategic Adaptive Resilience Capacity

This chapter analyzes the adaptive resilience capacity as an organizational strategy. It is assumed that the development of organizational resilience capabilities can support the transformation and adaptation strategies aimed to enhance the socio ecosystem services. One of the organizational capabilities is organizational resilience assuming that adverse conditions have an impact on the organization which may remain vulnerable unless it learns new capabilities and actions, adapts to access changing resources, and creates iteratively new forms and opportunities with the available resources. It is concluded that a strategic adaptive capacity approach to organizational resilience supports the design and implementation of more flexible and progressive strategies to face any kind of environmental disturbances, crises, and shocks to become more competitive in the global marketplace environment.

Adaptive Resilience of Complex Safety-Critical Sociotechnical Systems: Toward a Unified Conceptual Framework and Its Formalization

Resilience is commonly understood as the capacity for a system to maintain a desirable state while undergoing adversity or to return to a desirable state as quickly as possible after being impacted. In this paper, we focus on resilience for complex sociotechnical systems (STS), specifically those where safety is an important aspect. Two main desiderata for safety-critical STS to be resilient are adaptive capacity and adaptation. Formal studies integrating human cognition and social aspects are needed to quantify the capacity to adapt and the effects of adaptation. We propose a conceptual framework to elaborate on the concept of resilience of safety-critical STS, based on adaptive capacity and adaptation and how this can be formalized. A set of mechanisms is identified that is necessary for STS to have the capacity to adapt. Mechanisms belonging to adaptive capacity include situation awareness, sensemaking, monitoring, decision-making, coordination, and learning. It is posited that the two mechanisms required to perform adaptation are anticipation and responding. This framework attempts to coherently integrate the key components of the multifaceted concept of STS Equationsadaptive resilience. This can then be used to pursue the formal representation of Equationsadaptive resilience, its modeling, and its operationalization in real-world safety-critical STS.

A Critical Review of Social Resilience Properties and Pathways in Disaster Management

Resilience as a concept is multi-faceted with complex dimensions. In a disaster context, there is lack of consistency in conceptualizing social resilience. This results in ambiguity of its definition, properties, and pathways for assessment. A number of key research gaps exist for critically reviewing social resilience conceptualization, projecting resilience properties in a disaster-development continuum, and delineating a resilience trajectory in a multiple disaster timeline. This review addressed these research gaps by critically reviewing social resilience definitions, properties, and pathways. The review found four variations in social resilience definitions, which recognize the importance of abilities of social systems and processes in disaster phases at different levels. A review of resilience properties and pathways in the disaster resilience literature suggested new resilience properties—“risk-sensitivity” and “regenerative” in the timeline of two consecutive disasters. This review highlights a causal pathway for social resilience to better understand the resilience status in a multi-shock scenario by depicting inherent and adaptive resilience for consecutive disaster scenarios and a historical case study for a resilience trajectory in a multiple disaster timeline. The review findings will assist disaster management policymakers and practitioners to formulate appropriate resilience enhancement strategies within a holistic framework in a multi-disaster timeline.

Entrepreneurial resilience during the Covid-19 pandemic: navigating survival, continuity and growth

Purpose This study aims to explore how small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in Indonesia display resilience in response to the Covid-19 pandemic. Design/methodology/approach A qualitative research design was used, which involved semi-structured interviews on five creative industry-based businesses in Yogyakarta, Indonesia. A narrative inquiry approach was used to obtain an in-depth understanding of SMEs’ resilience. The data obtained were analyzed using thematic analysis via MaxQDA 2020. Findings The Covid-19 pandemic triggered the emergence of both new opportunities and new constraints for SMEs. These, in turn, significantly interrupt their business model. SMEs are found to navigate survival, continuity and growth by drawing from their resourcefulness and firm-level strategies to cope with the new opportunities and constraints. Research limitations/implications This study was conducted qualitatively based on five SMEs in the creative industry in Indonesia. This limits the ability to compare the findings across different economic sectors. Practical implications SMEs facing emergent constraints may need to find new ways to recombine existing resources and simultaneously seek to innovate their business model. Business owners and entrepreneurs should adopt a positive mindset such as optimism, perseverance and efficacy, to cope with adversity. Growth-oriented SMEs may make use of a competitive mindset such as flexibility, speed and innovation, to spot and exploit opportunities that emerge from the crisis. Social implications SMEs’ resilience should be understood not only in terms of economic survival and continuity but, more deeply, about their social contribution to the localities where they operate. Originality/value This study illustrates the process of how adaptive resilience is adapted and executed by SMEs. It also contributes to entrepreneurial resilience and resourcefulness literature by explaining how entrepreneurs anticipate, respond to and leverage from the crisis.

Retail Policies and Urban Change in Naples City Center: Challenges to Resilience and Sustainability from a Mediterranean City

Political discourses, public discussions, and studies in different fields have increasingly focused on the vulnerabilities affecting cities and on the possible responses to them, which are often traced back to urban resilience and sustainability. Research and debates in the field of retailing and consumption geographies are no exception. To carry out a critical analysis on the retail policies associated with the urban commercial change of the Naples city center, the case study is placed in the context of the literature review focusing on three concepts: spatial vulnerability, adaptive resilience, and territorialized sustainability. The analysis is conducted combining data, policy, and planning documents with long-term field research. The changing relationship between consumption practices, retail dynamics, and policies highlights a sort of hybridization of commercial and consumption central cityscapes, which is produced by the coexistence between retail-led phenomena of regeneration and forms of local resistance. The results of the research highlight, from a Mediterranean perspective, new general insights on the impact of selective forms of vulnerability and on the adaptive resilience strategies adopted, but most of all on the indispensable rethinking of the urban retail governance for the enhancement of urban livability, social cohesion, and locally sustainable lifestyles, activities, and places.

Differential Response of the Microbiome of Pocillopora acuta to Reciprocal Transplantation Within Singapore

As corals continue to decline globally, particularly due to climate change, it is vital to understand the extent to which their microbiome may confer an adaptive resilience against environmental stress. Corals that survive on the urban reefs of Singapore are ideal candidates to study the association of scleractinians with their microbiome, which in turn can inform reef conservation and management. In this study, we monitored differences in the microbiome of Pocillopora acuta colonies reciprocally transplanted between two reefs, Raffles and Kusu, within the Port of Singapore, where corals face intense anthropogenic impacts. Pocillopora acuta had previously been shown to host distinct microbial communities between these two reefs. Amplicon sequencing (16S rRNA) was used to assess the coral microbiomes at 1, 2, 4, and 10 days post-transplantation. Coral microbiomes responded rapidly to transplantation, becoming similar to those of the local corals at the destination reef within one day at Raffles and within two days at Kusu. Elevated nitrate concentrations were detected at Raffles for the duration of the study, potentially influencing the microbiome’s response to transplantation. The persistence of corals within the port of Singapore highlights the ability of corals to adapt to stressful environments. Further, coral resilience appears to coincide with a dynamic microbiome which can undergo shifts in composition without succumbing to dysbiosis.

Challenges Encountered by Healthcare Providers in COVID-19 Times: An Exploratory Study

Healthcare establishments are unique and complex. The Indian healthcare system comprises of public and private healthcare establishments. Different challenges are encountered by the healthcare professionals in their daily operations. The sudden emergence of COVID-19 posed a new threat to the already burdened healthcare system. The pandemic changed the healthcare paradox with newer workplace and societal challenges faced by the healthcare personnel. The purpose of this study is to identify the antecedents of workplace and societal challenges faced by the healthcare personnel. Our study conducted in Kolkata and other adjoining areas of West Bengal included respondents who volunteered for individual in-depth interviews. The sample size was kept at n = 20 after due technical considerations. Freelisting and pile sorting was done to generate clusters. The qualitative study identified five constructs with 18 items under workplace challenges and three constructs with five items under societal/community challenges. Workplace challenges included resource availability, adequacy and allocation, financial issues, perceived managerial ineffectiveness, inconsistent guidelines and perceived occupational stress, while societal/community challenges included dread disease, social adaptiveness and challenges related to essential services. A salience threshold was established and the multidimensional scaling provided four major clusters: financial support and sustainability, adaptive resilience, infection risk mitigation and healthcare facility preparedness. Suggestive actions for the identified challenges were summed as enhanced production of diagnostic kits through public–private partnership models and industrial production reforms. Enhanced testing facility for COVID-19 will help to identify new cases. Financial stresses need long-term sustainable alternative that will avoid pay cuts and unemployment. Treatment regimen, diagnostic protocols, waste disposal guidelines should be worked upon and leading national agencies be consulted for technical support, research and development.

Genome Mining of Secondary Metabolites From a Marine-derived Aspergillus Terreus B12

As an important saprophytic filamentous fungus, Aspergillus terreus is ubiquitously distributed, including soil rhizospheres and marine environments. Due to the prominent capabilities of bioconversion and biosynthesis, A. terreus has become attractive in biotechnical and pharmaceutical industry. In this work, an A. terreus strain, B12, was isolated from sponge in South China Sea, which demonstrated broad bacteriostatic effects against a variety of pathogenic bacteria. The whole genome was sequenced, showing a genetic richness of BGCs, which might underpin the metabolic plasticity and adaptive resilience for the strain. Genome mining identified 67 biosynthetic gene clusters (BGCs), among which, 6 gene clusters could allocate to known BGCs (100% identity), corresponding to diverse metabolites like clavaric acid, dihydroisoflavipucine /isoflavipucine, dimethylcoprogen, alternariol, aspterric acid and pyranonigrin E. However, instead of the putative compounds, several other products were obtained from the B12 fermentation, including terrein, butyrolactone I, terretonin A&E, acoapetaline B and epi-aszonalenins A. Of note, acoapetaline B and epi-aszonalenins A, discovered natural products recently with little information, unexpectedly were reported in this A. terreus strain. The genomic and heterogeneity observed in strain B12, should be at least partially attributed to the genetic variability and biochemical diversity of A. terreus , which could be an interesting issue open to future efforts.