Congrès EMCSR (Autriche) – 2016

Auteur : Guy Koninckx

The concept of organizational resilience

In common language, resilience refers to the « rebound, the ability to bounce back. » Taken in this sense, resilience goes back to the dawn of time. It is part of the history of humanity. Regarding the concept, it falls within physics. Range of factors and relations between them are involved to talk about resilience in physics. Over time transpositions were made from physics to other disciplines. Wherever Boris Cyrulnik addresses resilience at individual level other researchers are questioning about the « bounces » at organizational level.

And, during the first decade of this century, appears the concept of organizational resilience. It concerns how to run organizations. Where some lead to resource exhaustion, others lead to the emergence of resources, even unexplored. By analogy let us say that the first are like anthropophagous behaviors and the second to anthropogenic behaviors. Without counting those sailing between both. Faced with the same event, different scenarios of rebounds can be observed.