Today today we can see an unprecedented economic crisis worldwide, that is when most organizations tend to reflect on the results that have been obtained in terms such as the economy and the market, as well as in the productive processes of their organizations, the decisions that have been made and the behavior of the human resource that have driven the results obtained. However, all these individual and collective behaviors have to do with the crises that organizations go through, but most of the time they go into the background so that there is a better focus on other influential aspects for the organization.
However, despite the fact that most organizations have been affected by the economic crisis, not all have reacted in the same way, due to the fact that several organizations have been highly influenced by the psychological aspects of people and organization. as a whole, also in experience and talent, attention to the needs of the individuals who work in the organization and also in society in general.
"That is why some companies should be expected to emerge from this crisis, resistant and strong, while others could weaken and even fail. In all this amalgamation of possibilities, we understand that those organizations that maintain a notable tendency to renew and become stronger in the midst of the crisis, could be considered resilient organizations ”(Salanova, Llorens, Cifre, & Martínez, 2012)
In general terms, the concept of resilience refers to the achievement that organizations have in adapting to change, focusing on positive adaptations to adverse situations that may arise in society, it also allows organizations to avoid trends that are not they can adapt and have the necessary tools to face the unexpected.
This is how we can see that the term resilience can be adapted in a very good way to what organizations are and that is why it is convenient to carry out a deeper investigation of what this term is and all that it implies.
RESILIENCE CONCEPT
The Royal Spanish Academy defines the concept of resilience in two ways, one is attached to living things and the other to materials and mechanisms, the definitions mentioned by the RAE are as follows:
- "The ability of a living being to adapt to a disturbing agent or an adverse state or situation." "The ability of a material, mechanism or system to recover its initial state when the disturbance to which it had been subjected has ceased." As we could see in broad strokes, both definitions refer to the same thing, the difference is that one definition is more attached to the inert and the other to the living.
However, what comes to interest is the concept of organizational resilience. Which is the process of adapting organizations to change, allowing an organization to be modified by presenting some aspect that may affect it for a certain time, and after that time the organization can return to what it was in the beginning.
As it could be seen in the previous definition, the concept of organizational resilience is not understood as an attribute that organizations have in a static way, but is constantly changing. Said in a better way, organizational resilience is the result of different processes that can help organizations keep their resources as efficient as possible, it also seeks to ensure that their processes are flexible, that they can be sustained over time, that they can be stored, that they are convertible and malleable, looking for the ability to avoid many non-adaptive trends that exist in the market today, and thus be able to face them in a positive way.
HISTORY OF RESILIENCE
The origin of the term resilience is somewhat old, however currently this term has been widely used since it has helped to explain a large number of phenomena that have emerged, which have had great attachment to what is the recovery and improvement of individuals and groups.
However, one of the problems of the term "resilience" is that, being a relatively new concept, it has not been possible to give a true meaning to those it is attached to organizations, however, many authors agree that it is a way of adapting to change., always looking for what according to Bartelt (1996) he exposed in his book On resilence: Questions of validity, in which resilience is considered to be a difficult term to grasp and specify in an empirical way and is extremely related to measures of success and situational failure.
CHARACTERISTICS OF THE RESILIENT ORGANIZATION
Resilient organizations have great capacities to carry out actions that lead to defending themselves from a specific condition or can adapt a transformation process, which are eventually influenced by a number of events that are unexpected and their scope is broad, which threatens organizations to endanger them.
The companies with the most resilience are said to have four very important characteristics, which will be mentioned below:
- "They have an organizational ethos of constant effort aimed at generating greater resistance to catastrophes. They present a good knowledge of the situation, of the threats and opportunities faced by the organization, through the active monitoring of strong and weak signals from the context. They have a strong commitment to proactive identification and management of key vulnerabilities. They present a culture that promotes their adaptation, agility and innovation capabilities within the organization. " (Medina Salgado, 2012)
It is also important to mention that these characteristics will depend on each organization since each one presents its own perfect storm, in which there are aspects such as the combination of different events that can be presented which have the ability to lead an organization to a stormy situation.
Another factor that can influence the operations of an organization is the competitive environment in which they are involved, this competitive environment can be understood as all those processes of globalization, which can be the speed with which knowledge circulates to Throughout the world thanks to the means of telecommunication, which over the years have become more advanced and versatile, this means that an organization may find it more difficult to obtain a competitive advantage over its rivals if it supports the technology.
Thus, the existence of increasingly intense competition cannot be translated as that for customers there will be better options for purchasing merchandise, nor will the work carried out within companies be increased. That is why companies must become more resistant and able to position themselves or obtain an advantage over their competitors.
EMPLOYMENT OF RESILIENCE IN ORGANIZATIONS
Eventually organizations have sought to deal with the uncertainty and crisis that may arise frequently, these alternatives may be more or less effective.
Resilience can be used within the strategic processes of an organization, this will happen as long as the viability of the organization can be jeopardized or if a crisis can become emblematic, either due to the effects it causes, its amplitude or even if the problem could become acute.
That is why many organizations currently seek to be able to investigate and have a better understanding of the concept of resilience, with which they seek to obtain the keys that help them to prevent and overcome moments of crisis, which will seek to have greater effectiveness.
Organizations looking for these solutions for moments of crisis have come to investigate other sciences and disciplines in search of being able to foresee and overcome those moments of crisis in which many companies at any time in their existence are involved. Among the disciplines to which many organizations have adhered are the following:
- EcologyAnthropologyLinguisticsPsychiatry
Although resilience is assimilated by the social sciences, two essential moments must be taken into account:
- “The transit of trauma, that is, the ability to pass the critical moment, leaving through a process of reconstruction towards a new identity” (Medina Salgado, 2012)
ERIC TOOL
One of the most important activities that organizations must have is to know themselves very well, and more when you want to do a good introspection, however knowing which departments are generating the true profits for the company is not enough to to develop a correct process of resilience.
In order to identify the variables correctly, they must be separated into two large groups, which are called garbage variables and vital variables. The garbage variables are those that have been taking root in the organization throughout the useful life they have played, while the vital variables "are those that actually affect organizations, that is, if they are directly linked to the proper functioning of the organization, a disturbance in any of these can be vital to the existence of the company ”. (León Sánchez, 2013)
The above is a fundamental part of resilience, although it is not so clear, however, being able to identify the variables is one of the fundamental steps to be able to help a company in crisis, since one of these variables can become a big problem.
A good tool for a company to be supported in a time of crisis is the ERIC tool, which can help the organization make sense of the variables that have been previously identified.
Organizational Resilience ERIC Tool
Remove. Get rid of variables that are not essential within the organization, that is, generate the same value without so many variables.
Reduce. It is to remove weight from variables that are not so important, that is, that do not directly affect the objectives of the company.
Increase. This means giving a kind of added value to some variables, these variables that can be increased are those with which you can have a better or worse performance in the market but that are important for the company's functions, but above all, to generate profits.
Create. This quadrant refers to the fact that companies must evolve and be at the forefront of new market trends, however there are many companies that are highly linked to resisting change, however this could give them an opportunity to improve their resilience.
IDENTIFY THE CRISIS
Once it has been detected what is urgent within the organization that is what really matters for the company and what are the variables that are out of control, we proceed to carry out an extremely important procedure for organizational resilience, which is to detect what is really in crisis.
This helps to provide a good chance of knowing the scenario in which the degree of resilience of each organization can really be assessed.
For this reason, the crisis to which an organization is exposing itself must be promptly identified. Many organizations will be able to say that what is affecting them at a certain moment is that they are not receiving the dividends that they previously received and that is why by separating all the factors it is possible to know what is really affecting the desired dividends. are not reached.
CONCLUSIONS
As you can see, organizational resilience is a very important tool for companies, since it allows to give a more focused perspective to what can be expected from an economic crisis and how an organization could counter it and adapt to changes in society and markets.
REFERENCES
- León Sánchez, PA (2013). ORGANIZATIONAL RESILIENCE: An approach. Bogotá, Colombia: Faculty of Administration, Universidad del Rosario, Medina Salgado, C. (2012). Resilience and its use in organizations. Management and strategy (SF). rae.es. Retrieved on March 1, 2016, from http://dle.rae.es/?id=WA5onlwSalanova, M., Llorens, S., Cifre, E., & Martínez, IM (2012). We Need a Hero! Toward a Validation of the Healthy and Resilient Organization (HERO). Model Group & Organization Management.
