This book is aimed at contemplating and reflecting on future course of action for businesses in order to become more resilient. It discusses various predicaments and prospects around building enduring organizations. By demonstrating how to build strong and resilient systems that can survive catastrophes witnessed in the past few years, it offers practical solutions by discussing the current researches, the-oretical insights, experiences and lessons which can inspire and empower business leaders, academics, students, policy makers and other stakeholders in economics.

With organizational environments becoming more 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. This book pinpoints the essential aspects of managerial and organizational resilience and offers insights that stimulate critical thinking. As the concept of resilience is essentially made up of contrasting forces, the volume presents some innovative synthetic interpretation that allows a deeper comprehension of the phenomenon and provides managers and policy-makers with a solid basis for taking their decisions.

WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO BE A "RESILIENT" ORGANIZATION? It means you are not a prisoner of past performance, good or bad; you don't rely on the right leader alone for success but build the capability to be resilient into the organization. You constantly rehearse the culture of anticipating and responding to change, and you innovate even when you don't yet need to. You don't just survive, you thrive--amidst challenge and opportunity. This essential guide, written by a renowned expert in global resilience strategy, shows you how to be smart about success and failure. With these field-tested forward-focused tools, you can: SURVIVE SHOCKS AND SETBACKS TURN THREATS INTO OPPORTUNITIES ANTICIPATE CHANGE BEFORE IT HAPPENS ENSURE YOUR SUCCESS IS SUSTAINABLE As a bonus, the book features Postcards from the Resilient Edge, a powerhouse selection of frontline lessons from leading corporations that demonstrate ways you can marshal skill and master luck to take control of your organization's destiny. THE DEFINITIVE GUIDE TO THE NEW RESILIENCE MOVEMENT One of the most powerful trends born of the New Recession, resilience has become the operative word for business leaders and entrepreneurs facing an unpredictable market. On the forefront of this movement, global innovator and strategy consultant professor Liisa Välikangas has created a step-by-step system of proven survival strategies you can put into action immediately. Whether you need to bounce back from a downturn, take the fight to new competitors, or change your game plan at a moment's notice, The Resilient Organization shows you how to rethink your current strategies--and rebuild your company’s foundation--using four basic tools . . . INNOVATION with high impact and low overhead DESIGN that is robust, sustainable, and evolvable ADAPTABILITY to changing circumstances STRENGTH in the face of adversity By creating a culture of resilience in your organization, you'll be prepared for any challenge the future might hold. The Resilient Organization's fascinating case studies provide real-world examples of resilience in action: how to recover faster from hardships, how to experiment on new opportunities in a timely manner, how to avoid repeating bad business decisions, and when to scrap old strategiesthat just don't work anymore. Using the timetested principles of resilience, you can find golden opportunities in any situation--whether it's tough competition, reduced resources, or a roller-coaster market. If you're strategically resilient, you not only survive crises, but you can turn these crises into opportunities. LIISA VÄLIKANGAS, PH.D., is professor of innovation management at the Aalto University School of Economics (formerly Helsinki School of Economics) in Finland. She is the cofounder and president of Innovation Democracy, a nonprofi t global organization dedicated to supporting local innovation and entrepreneurship. Her research on innovation, strategy, and organization has been published in Harvard Business Review, MIT/Sloan Management Review, and The Wall Street Journal. With Gary Hamel, she coauthored the Harvard Business Review article "The Quest for Resilience" and cofounded the Woodside Institute, a research organization dedicated to advancing management innovation. Professor Välikangas currently divides her time between Helsinki and California.

Disasters both natural and human-induced are leading to spiralling costs in terms of human lives, lost livelihoods and damaged assets and businesses. Yet these consequences and the financial and human crises that follow catastrophes can often be traced to policies unsuited to the emerging scales of the problems they confront, and the lack of institutional capacity to implement planning and prevention or to manage disasters. This book seeks to overcome this mismatch and to guide development of a policy and institutional framework. For the first time it brings together into a coherent framework the insights of public policy, institutional design and emergency and disaster management.

The factor that makes some communities rebound quickly from disasters while others fall apart: “A fascinating book on an important topic.”—E.L. Hirsch, in Choice Each year, natural disasters threaten the strength and stability of communities worldwide. Yet responses to the challenges of recovery vary greatly and in ways that aren’t explained by the magnitude of the catastrophe or the amount of aid provided by national governments or the international community. The difference between resilience and disrepair, as Daniel P. Aldrich shows, lies in the depth of communities’ social capital. Building Resilience highlights the critical role of social capital in the ability of a community to withstand disaster and rebuild both the infrastructure and the ties that are at the foundation of any community. Aldrich examines the post-disaster responses of four distinct communities—Tokyo following the 1923 earthquake, Kobe after the 1995 earthquake, Tamil Nadu after the 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami, and New Orleans post-Katrina—and finds that those with robust social networks were better able to coordinate recovery. In addition to quickly disseminating information and financial and physical assistance, communities with an abundance of social capital were able to minimize the migration of people and valuable resources out of the area. With governments increasingly overstretched and natural disasters likely to increase in frequency and intensity, a thorough understanding of what contributes to efficient reconstruction is more important than ever. Building Resilience underscores a critical component of an effective response.

This book is aimed at contemplating and reflecting on future course of action for businesses in order to become more resilient. It discusses various predicaments and prospects around building enduring organizations. By demonstrating how to build strong and resilient systems that can survive catastrophes witnessed in the past few years, it offers practical solutions by discussing the current researches, the-oretical insights, experiences and lessons which can inspire and empower business leaders, academics, students, policy makers and other stakeholders in economics.

Psychological resilience has emerged as a highly significant area of research and practice in recent years, finding applications with a broad range of different groups in many settings. Contemporary discourse is not limited to ways of effective coping with adversity but also introduces mechanisms that can lead to enhanced capacity after dealing with difficult circumstances and recognises the importance of enriching the field with varied perspectives. The Routledge International Handbook of Psychosocial Resilience is a comprehensive compendium of writings of international contributors that takes stock of the state-of-the-art in resilience theory, research and practice. The Routledge International Handbook of Psychosocial Resilience covers the many different trajectories that resilience research has taken in four parts. Part One delineates the ‘Conceptual Arena’ by providing an overview of the current state of theory and research, exploring biological, psychological, and socio-ecological perspectives and discussing various theoretical models of personal and social resilience. The ‘Psychosocial Correlates’ of resilience are discussed further in Part Two, from personal and personality correlates, socio-environmental factors and the contextual and cultural conditions conducive to resilient behaviour. In Part Three, ‘Applied Evidences’ are introduced in order to build upon the theoretical foundations in the form of several case studies drawn from varied contexts. Examples of resilient behaviour range from post-disaster scenarios to special operation groups, orphaned children, and violent extremism. Finally, Part Four, ‘Proposed Implications and Resilience Building’, sums up the issues involved in discussing post-traumatic growth, wellbeing and positive adaptation in the varied contexts of personal, familial, organizational and societal resilience. The volume provides a comprehensive overview of resilience theory, practice and research across disciplines and cultures, from varied perspectives and different populations. It will be a key reference for psychiatrists, psychologists, psychotherapists and psychiatric social workers in practice and in training as well as researchers and students of psychology, sociology, human development, family studies and disaster management.