A Framework for Resilience Thinking

AbstractThe first step to achieving an understanding of how complex adaptive systems such as enterprises can be made more resilient is to understand what is meant by ‘resilience’. Resilience as a concept has been contextually developed in a wide range of disciplines, providing a variety of resilience concepts of various foci and potential relevance to enterprise systems. This paper demonstrates how the use of systems thinking principles and systems thinking methods have contributed to the development of a research framework for enterprise resilience, by drawing together resilience concepts from multiple disciplines. Soft Systems Methodology is used to draw together viewpoints from fields including ecology, physics, sociology, psychology and disaster management. The incorporation of an enterprise system model enables resilience concepts to be contextualised for enterprises and is used to develop a set of key features of a resilience system, providing a framework to guide further research. Significant contributions are an inclusive theoretical framework for a resilient enterprise and an example of the use of systems thinking methods as a means of organising multi-disciplinary research, including the novel use of Wilson's Enterprise Model in developing the theoretical framework

Mediating Effects of Positive Thinking and Social Support on Suicide Resilience

Suicide has been the second leading cause of death for 18- to 24-year-olds in the United States since 2011. The stress experienced by undergraduate college students has the potential to increase one’s risk for suicide. Resilience theory was used as a theoretical framework to examine the interplay between risk and protective factors. A cross-sectional and correlational design was used to assess the mediating effects of positive thinking and/or social support on suicide resilience in 131 college students 18 to 24 years old who completed an online survey. The study found an indirect effect of self-esteem on suicide resilience through positive thinking and social support indicating that as self-esteem increases, positive thinking and social support also increase, which leads to an increase in resilience. The study also found a direct effect of self-esteem, positive thinking, and social support on suicide resilience. The findings inform the development of tailored interventions to build suicide resilience in college students

Supporting Disaster Resilience Spatial Thinking with Serious GeoGames: Project Lily Pad

The need for improvement of societal disaster resilience and response efforts was evident after the destruction caused by the 2017 Atlantic hurricane season. We present a novel conceptual framework for improving disaster resilience through the combination of serious games, geographic information systems (GIS), spatial thinking, and disaster resilience. Our framework is implemented via Project Lily Pad, a serious geogame based on our conceptual framework, serious game case studies, interviews and real-life experiences from 2017 Hurricane Harvey survivors in Dickinson, TX, and an immersive hurricane-induced flooding scenario. The game teaches a four-fold set of skills relevant to spatial thinking and disaster resilience, including reading a map, navigating an environment, coding verbal instructions, and determining best practices in a disaster situation. Results of evaluation of the four skills via Project Lily Pad through a “think aloud” study conducted by both emergency management novices and professionals revealed that the game encouraged players to think spatially, can help build awareness for disaster response scenarios, and has potential for real-life use by emergency management professionals. It can be concluded from our results that the combination of serious games, geographic information systems (GIS), spatial thinking, and disaster resilience, as implemented via Project Lily Pad and our evaluation results, demonstrated the wide range of possibilities for using serious geogames to improve disaster resilience spatial thinking and potentially save lives when disasters occur

Learning from Resilience: Cities towards a Self-Organizing System

The study exploits the development of a new field of research with the aim of reading uncertainty and transformation at cities by revealing resilience systems thinking theory for urban studies. The paper first generates understanding the resilience framework and its critical identities. Secondly, the city is introduced as a complex living organicism. Here the complexity of cities is conducted in the context of a self-organizing organism while conserving their spatial structure, function and identity. At this juncture; cities and their built environment are proposed in the framework of ‘being able to absorb uncertain perturbation and adapt itself through an adaptive cycle;  of which key attributes of resilience is figured out a novel method for urban studies to be used to detain the taxonomies of uncertainty at the identity of the built environment. The study is concluded by impelling resilience as novel frontier thinking for postulating the ways of assessing a self-organizing city thinking towards the uncertainty of change

The Mediating Effects of Positive Thinking and Social Support on Suicide Resilience Among Undergraduate Students

Suicide has been the 2nd leading cause of death for 18-24-year-olds in the US since 2011. The stress experienced by undergraduate college students has the potential to increase ones’ risk for suicide. Resilience theory was used as a theoretical framework to examine the interplay between risk and protective factors. A cross-sectional and correlational design was used to assess the mediating effects of positive thinking and/or social support on suicide resilience in 131 college students 18-24 years old who completed an online survey. An indirect effect of self-esteem on suicide resilience was found through positive thinking and social support indicating that as self-esteem increases, positive thinking and social support also increase, which leads to an increase in resilience. The study also found a direct effect of self-esteem, positive thinking, and social support on suicide resilience. The findings inform the development of tailored interventions to build suicide resilience in college students

Strengthening Resilience by thinking of Knowledge as a nutrient connecting the local person to global thinking: The case of Social Technology/Tecnologia Social

In this chapter, we describe the Knowledge as a Nutrient framework that emerged from these conversations. We describe how it relates to the Tecnologia Social policy approach to sustainability, developed in Brazil (Dagnino et al. 2004, Fundação Banco do Brasil 2009, Costa 2013), which is not well known in the anglophone world. Tecnologia Social was both inspired by and rooted in Paulo Freire’s pedagogical thinking (2000, Klix 2014).   We show how this framework has the potential to increase community resilience and adaptive capacity, not only for communities that face and must adapt to climate change but for all communities in the throes of complex social, ecological, economic and political transitions.This research was supported by the International Development Research Centre, grant number IDRC GRANT NO. 106002-00

'Resilience thinking' in transport planning

Resilience has been discussed in ecology for over forty years. While some aspects of resilience have received attention in transport planning, there is no unified definition of resilience in transportation. To define resilience in transportation, I trace back to the origin of resilience in ecology with a view of revealing the essence of resilience thinking and its relevance to transport planning. Based on the fundamental concepts of engineering resilience and ecological resilience, I define "comprehensive resilience in transportation" as the quality that leads to recovery, reliability and sustainability. Observing that previous work in resilience analysis in transportation has focussed on addressing engineering resilience rather than ecological resilience, I conclude that transformability has been generally overlooked and needs to be incorporated in the analysis framework for comprehensive resilience in transportation

Investigating flood resilience perceptions and supporting collective decision-making through fuzzy cognitive mapping

Improving flood resilience of communities requires a holistic understanding of risks and resilience options as well as the preferences and priorities of different stakeholders. Innovations in risk and resilience assessment have helped communities to identify gaps in their flood risk management strategy but selecting and implementing resilience solutions remains a big challenge for many decision-makers. In addition to traditional appraisals and cost-benefit assessments this also calls for a participatory process in which various stakeholders are encouraged to adopt a system-level approach in identifying interventions that can maximise a range of benefits and co-benefits. In this study, we investigate how a combination of modelling and measurement methods can help decision-makers with their flood resilience strategies. We apply a participatory system thinking approach combining Fuzzy Cognitive Mapping (FCM) with a flood resilience measurement framework called Flood Resilience Measurement for Communities (FRMC). We first investigate stakeholders' biases on flood resilience interventions, and then lead them through a system thinking exercise using FCM and FRMC to elicit mental models representing important aspects of flood resilience and their interrelation. These are then aggregated, representing the collective perceptions and knowledge of stakeholders, and used to identify the most beneficial resilience actions in terms of direct and indirect impacts on flood resilience. We apply this approach to the case of Lowestoft, a coastal town in England exposed to significant flood risk. Developed in close collaboration with the local authorities, the ambition is to support decision-making on flood resilience interventions. We find that this combination of methods enables system-level thinking and inclusive decision-making about flood resilience which can ultimately encourage transformative decisions on prioritization of actions and investments

Enhancing Coastal Resilience: Perspectives on Valuing RI Coastal Lands

This paper discusses coastal resilience as an organizing framework for future policymaking, coastal planning, and insurance decisions, and explores the different perspectives of the value of ecosystems held by various stakeholders in Rhode Island’s coastal communities. A grounded theory approach was used in an effort to abstract general insights from the substantive but isolated areas of coastal management and economics. Special attention is given to the perspectives of municipal decision makers, the National Flood Insurance Program, natural economists, and real estate developers. We have (1) conducted a statistical analysis of environmental spending of RI towns, (2) identified key models for ecosystem services valuation, (3) researched the major threats to coastal ecosystems, and (4) explored how the coastal resilience theme might shape the future of the coast. Elements of the study rely on the formulation and testing of hypotheses. However, the analysis was primarily a demonstration of the inter-disciplinary emergent thinking that this paper proposes will provide solutions for coastal communities’ most pressing issues. The framing question is how social, personal, and environmental goals align when coastal resilience is enhanced, and how stakeholders can utilize these new decision-making tools to achieve increased communication and a more accurate understanding of the perceived value of ecosystem services

Organizational Resilience: A Paradox-Based Conceptualization

The concept of resilience has recently gained significant popularity in organizational research. It is considered to be a very promising concept for explaining how businesses can survive and develop in the face of adversity or instability.  Past literature focuses on various perspectives of organizational resilience and frameworks mainly based on processes, resources and capabilities. However, a significant amount of these studies have focused on polarized attributes resulting in contradiction of studies which blurs the conceptualization of organizational resilience. The purpose of this study is to address this gap by critically evaluating the phases or dimensions of the organizational resilience process and its contradictions in order to improve the understanding of this complex and embedded construct. Findings in the study reveal that the contradictions which are encountered in different phases of the organizational resilience process are paradoxical tensions.  Paradoxical thinking refers to opposite demands that are contradictory or polarized but are interconnected and such tensions should be managed by both/and approach instead of either/or approach. The anticipation phase consists of opposite tensions of opportunities or threats, the concurrent phase consists of tensions of stability or adaptability, and finally, the reactive phase consists of tensions of growth or performance. Therefore the new framework conceptualizes organizational resilience dimensions to be managed as a paradox to enhance the understanding of the concept of organizational resilience and thereby facilitate its operationalization. The proposed conceptual framework configuration can add to the business and management literature by enhancing the comprehensive conceptualization of organizational resilience. Keywords: Conceptualization, Dynamic capabilities, Organizational resilience, Paradoxical thinking, Resilience proces