There is a large number of definitions of the term "Resilience", below are some of the most frequently cited:
- Adaptability of a living being against a disturbing agent or an adverse state or situation (RAE, 2016).
- Capacity of a material, mechanism or system to recover its initial state when the disturbance to which it had been subjected has ceased (RAE, 2016).
- A phenomenon manifested by people who evolve favorably, having been victims of stress that, for the general population, would include a serious risk with serious consequences (Rutter, 1993).
- Resilience is the process of adjusting well to adversity, trauma, tragedy, threat, or significant sources of stress, such as family or personal relationship problems, serious health problems, or stressful work or financial situations. It means "bouncing" from a difficult experience, as if one were a ball or a spring (APA, 2016).
- It's about the ability to overcome loss and return “to your center,” where you think clearly and can make decisions based on reason. In the field of physics, resilience is the ability of a spring to return to its original position after stretching (Gasca, 2015).
- Ability of a substance or object to regain its shape; elasticity (OED, 2016).
- Ability to quickly recover from difficulties; tenacity (OED, 2016).
- The ability of a substance or object to be able to regress or return to an initial state after bending, stretching, or being compressed (OED, 2016).
- The ability of a person or animal to be able to resist or recover quickly from difficult conditions (OED, 2016).
- Resistance to adversities manifested by some people, children and young people, who evolve favorably despite having been continuously subjected to negative stimuli (ECL, 2016).
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Here are some concepts of organizational resilience:
Capacity of the workers and with it, of the organization, to face the obstacles naturally presented in the business context, be it by internal or external variables, assuming the ability of the members of the organization to face adversities and emerge stronger of the unfavorable conditions of the business environment (Drucker, 2004).
Ability to avoid the negative consequences of an event that has already occurred; also, as the ability to recover after having faced the negative consequences of an event (Medina, 2012).
A resilient organization has a set of capacities aimed at carrying out pertinent actions in the face of specific unexpected risk conditions, which have enough potential to jeopardize the survival of an organization in the long term (Rascón, 2016).
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A basic condition to know how resilient companies are is to know them, there are potential elements within organizations, necessary for building resilience.
One of the most used tools for this type of work (getting to know oneself) is “La Casita de Vanistendael”, which was initially conceived as a “communication tool to understandably present some key elements that contribute to resilience” (Vanistendael, 2016).
Currently this tool has been undergoing some variations and is now used as a qualitative model for identifying resilient elements.
Illustration 1: Little House of Resilience (Vanistendael, 2016).
The elements that make up the “Little House of Resilience” are explained below:
C i m i entos
This first part refers to those basic elements that the company needs to survive, although these are obvious and must be taken into account, especially when the company's problems are related to basic issues, in the case of production.
Subsoil
The subsoil allows establishing how close the relationship is between the company and stakeholders, the important thing about this is to establish in what state the relationships are, how accepted the company is and what perception the environment has.
P irst Floor
The search for meaning is to give a meaning to the company, it has to do with the mission, vision and objectives part, but mainly its objective is to identify what is the true business of the organization.
Second floor
This part encourages organizational introspection, promotes an internal analysis of the company in different fields:
- Sense of belonging: How willing are all employees to fight for the company? Is there a cause with which the employees are identified and who support it so much? What sacrifices would they be willing to make for the company and What sacrifices would the company make for employees? A relevant measurement tool for this case is the turnover rate and how long employees usually last within the organization. A ptitudes: Manage to establish what the company is really good for and what others are not. A m ronment work:What kind of conflicts usually occur within the company? How happy are the workers? In this case it is appropriate to look at fundamental elements for any worker such as work hours, work load, salary, benefits, etc.
E ntretecho
The objective of the ceiling is to see how open the organization is to receive new solutions, to explore new fields and to look at new market trends. The main thing is that companies are always ready for change.
ERIC tool
Knowing the company is an important task, even more so when you want to do a good introspection, but knowing which are your departments or where the real business is generated are not enough concepts for developing resilience. Many organizations know that there are variables that generate great attachment, but that objectively analyzed these are not or should not be so important to the organization.
For the identification of variables it is necessary to separate them into two large groups, the garbage variables and the vital variables. The trash variables are usually those that have been adhering throughout the useful life of the company, often without being aware of it, usually the organization makes them a fundamental part of its processes and makes various sectors of the company turn in function of these. The big drawback with garbage variables is that the company invests many resources in them without being necessary, and when one of them gets out of control the company goes into crisis.
The vital variables are those that really affect the company, that is, if they are directly linked to the proper functioning of the organization, a disturbance in any of these can be vital for the existence of the company.
This is a fundamental part of resilience, although it is not so clear, the identification of variables is a fundamental task for the analysis and development of companies in crisis, usually an out-of-control variable tends to become a future problem.
Sometimes companies with an apparent high degree of resilience often go into crisis and never recover, one factor in common is that they had many problems, in summary their crisis is due to the sum of several unfortunate events.
But which of these events were really problems? Answering this question can be the salvation of many organizations; Sometimes companies tend to use a large amount of their resources trying to solve problems that even become alien to it, which generates both physical and financial waste.
A good tool to prevent this situation is the ERIC matrix, which helps to make sense of the variables, an important action for the future development of any company (Condía, 2011), which is illustrated below:
Illustration 2: ERIC Tool (Condía, 2011)
E l i m i nar
What are the variables, which throughout the process have been given as indispensable, and the company wants to eliminate from its internal and external processes? It is to remember how the initial behavior of the organization was, how it made profits and generated value without depending on so many variables.
R educt
What variables can be reduced, take away weight in terms of importance, that do not affect the objectives of the company? Perhaps there are variables with which it is necessary to live, but the organization can stop depending so much on them. The climate in many cases is the variable that most affects companies and by obligation you have to live with it, but if it is planted or if you have alliances with suppliers located in different areas, the impact of this can be diminished.
I ncrease
What variables can be increased that can be added value? The processes of the companies are usually linked to variables that, depending on the control that the company has over them, achieve a better or worse performance within the market. The interesting thing about this quadrant is to see how to couple certain variables so that they are always in our favor. An example of this is the delivery time, which is very harmful if there is no clear control of it, but if on the contrary, it is fully controlled and it is known in a timely manner how to deliver on time to customers In the case of Fedex, the delivery time may become an added value for the company.
C rear
What variables are feasible to create a new business model? This last quadrant is strongly linked to the concept of resistance to change. Sometimes companies tend to limit their strategies by analyzing variables that have completely lost their strength in the market, the important thing in this case is to be at the forefront of new trends and measure new variables that are really linked to the business objective.
Jim Collis model
Clearly identifying the scenarios (in terms of the state of the company during its productive life) is of great help to the company and to achieve a true degree of resilience. Already knowing that it is or that it was in crisis, it was possible to speak of a true recovery.
Jim Collins' model called “The Five Stages of Decay” explains clearly when a company may be in crisis or when the crisis is simply imminent (Collins, 2010).
Illustration 3: The 5 Stages of Decadence (Collins, 2010)
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Organizations, as good as they are, must recognize that they do not know everything. Some companies, when they have pioneered a product or service, believe in a way that it can dominate market trends, or think that their business is so good and solid that they refuse to accept that there are internal problems or external threats.
Stage Two: The Messy Search for More
Usually the desperate search for more is linked to an uncontrolled desire to want to cover more than necessary. Seeking the growth of the organization is a goal to which many managers aim, but this becomes dangerous when the principles and objectives of the company are ignored, and that is that some companies often seek growth only on a whim, it is like a mysterious obsession with expanding, which lacks any valid justification or meaning whatsoever.
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Being in this stage means being only one step away from the crisis, it could be considered that the denial of risk and danger is a defense mechanism that is activated in companies to continue fighting for what has been done, regardless of what this evil. It is a reaction that allows us to believe that all the time and all the money invested have not been in vain, and encourages us to keep going, no matter how far ahead the gap is.
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The anxious search for salvation, beyond being an organizational move, is a very typical reaction of humans. There are very few people who, when faced with a problem, seek a hard-studied option as an initial solution, which with some sacrifices and some patience manages to be given.
Normally the initial reaction is to look for a practical solution which is easy to implement and especially that of good results in a very short time. This condition is usually accentuated more when despair takes over the situation and the search for a way out is summed up by resorting to anything that may seem like relief.
This type of behavior has a big drawback, there are almost never practical exits and resorting to them a lot can enlarge the problem; Even so, many of the companies' strategies are based on this, an easy and quick way out of the problem, which allows the organization to return to the winning path it once was on and longs to be on.
Q
Being at this stage only means one thing, giving up the fight, which does not mean a cowardly measure of surrender or a mediocre way out in the face of adversity; Giving up the fight many times means that there really is nothing left to do, that the options have already been explored and the best of them is to burn the village to save it. The fifth stage can be considered as the end of the fall of the fourth stage, is when the company decides to stop sinking further and chooses to give up.
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Illustration 4: Model of (Collins, 2010), Modified to the Study of Resilience by (León, 2013).
Resilient companies are basically what the previous diagram reflects, those that after having entered into crisis experience a process of recovery and renewal. They manage to reverse the downward trajectory of the straight in a sustained way, regardless of the type of difficulty they have or have had to face.
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After careful studies it has been possible to show that there are certain factors in common, which can be considered as sensitive when analyzing the behavior of companies, the different management that is given to these can be vital for the durability of any company. and they are exposed next (taken from Medina Salgado 2012 and modified to the study Organizational Resilience: An approximation):
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The good work of a leader is vital for any organization, since it is he who is in charge of guiding the group to that goal that was once clear, but that due to different variables has clouded over the vast majority of the group; but if on the contrary said goal is still clear, it is the leader who must be in charge of maintaining that harmony between the goal and the organization.
OR
Objectivity rather than being a factor is a quality, which the organization must build throughout its productive life, this refers to the ability to visualize the real problem that leads us to the crisis and not its consequences. The importance of objectivity focuses on optimizing resources, which are usually scarce when the company is in a bad moment.
Sense of belonging
When the workers of a company have a sense of belonging, they not only understand the values disclosed by it, but also transmit them and enforce them under any circumstance, and it is this type of thinking that makes companies not only reappear in a solid way but also in turn, they do so independently and without having to commit a single percentage of their capital.
C onclusions
Resilient companies are those that, in times of constant changes derived from economic-social crises and / or the globalization of business, present a superior performance to others and still obtain extra benefits from adverse or unforeseen circumstances.
Beyond their legal existence, organizations, being made up of people, are human-dependent and are subject to the psycho-physical state of their members.
From an intra-business perspective, some aspects of human resource management can contribute to creating resilient organizations. Empathy and social ability - emotional fitness framework
- crystallize the advantages that open and effective communication, empowerment and motivation of people who work in the workplace can give organizations making them truly resilient enterprises (Minolli, 2016).
P r opposite Thesis
Diagnosis to identify in which phase of the Jim Collis model "The 5 Stages of Decadence" the company is in, in order to develop strategies and overcome the difficulties, making it a Resilient company.
A cknowledgements
I thank the Orizaba Technological Institute for providing the tools and human capital to develop professionally and the MAE Fernando Aguirre y Hernández professor of the Fundamentals of Administrative Engineering subject for promoting learning through practice among their students, thus encouraging proactivity and genuine learning.
R e f e r e n c ias
- APA. (October 23, 2016). American Psychological Association. Obtained from American Psychological Association: http://www.apa.org/centrodeapoyo/resiliencia-camino.aspxCollins, J. (2010). How Do The Mighty Fall? Bogotá: Norma.Condía, H. (2011). Management of Personal and Professional Crises from the Resilience Approach. Bogotá: Universidad del Rosario.Drucker, P. (2004). Self Management. Harvard Business Review. ECL. (2016). Catalan Encyclopedia. Obtained from Catalan Encyclopedia: http://www.enccyclopedia.cat/Gasca, L. (September 08, 2015). Forbes. Obtained from Forbes: http://www.forbes.com.mx/el-arte-de-la-resiliencia-o-como-recuperarte-del-fracaso/#gs.9sPgu8QLeón, PA (2013). Organizational Resilience: An Approach. Bogotá: University of Rosario. Medina, C. (June 2012). Autonomous Metropolitan University.Obtained from Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana: http://zaloamati.azc.uam.mx/bitstream/handle/11191/2968/la-resiliencia-y-su-empleo-en-las-organizaciones.pdf?sequence=1OED. (2016). Oxford English Dictionary. Obtained from Oxford English Dictionary: http://www.oed.com/RAE. (October 23, 2016). Royal Spanish Academy. Obtained from the Spanish Royal Academy: http://dle.rae.es/?id=WA5onlwRascón, J. (October 23, 2016). Technological Institute of Sonora. Obtained from Instituto Tecnológico de Sonora: http://biblioteca.itson.mx/dac_new/thesis/501_rascon_jesus.pdfRutter, M. (1993). Resilience: Conceptual Considerations. Journal of Adolescent Health. Vanistendael, E. (October 24, 2016). Bureau International Catholique de l'Enfance. Obtained from Bureau International Catholique de l'Enfance: http://www.jcyl.es/web/jcyl/binario/947/247/S.Vanistendael.pdf? Blobheader
