In today's world, with the economic situation we are facing, organizations tend to think more in terms of markets or economies, making the processes or decisions they make obtain the expected results.
It is precisely thanks to the changes that we face every day that we must have the ability to respond and adapt, thus pursuing our well-being. However, although organizations are going through the same situation, they are not having that ability to react to changes, the reason is that they are focusing on other aspects and this could cause them to survive or fail. Within all this, we have that those organizations that are able to survive and face these situations could be considered resilient.
In general terms and throughout the development of this article, this concept of resilience will be understood in more detail, but basically it is to achieve and maintain a positive adaptation to adverse situations.
It refers to the fact that in organizations and in personal life, avoiding non-adaptive tendencies in order to be able to face unexpected things in a positive way.
RESILIENCE
Generalities
(Meneghel, Salanova, & Martínez, 2013) They mention in their article that the word resilience derives from the Latin "resilere" which means to go back, to the original position, highlight and bounce.
This concept has its origin in physics where a comparison is made of a material that returns to its original state after being subjected to some type of force that deformed it.
This term has been used in psychology during the seventies where some researchers such as Rutter and Cyrulnick, based on the concept of physics, used it to describe some abilities of people to accept tragic events in their lives, managing to face the reality and facing adversity, recovering his life and overcoming the consequences that negative events have left behind. (Westrum, Hollnagel, Woods, & Levenson, 2006)
This science concludes that people are capable of developing certain skills that allow them to face problems that arise unexpectedly and that can also be very tragic.
In general, there is a shared idea that resilience is a skill or a process rather than an outcome, and that it is rather recognized as a whole process of positive adaptation in various settings rather than a characteristic of stability.
So to be able to speak of organizational resilience, they must be under a certain level of risk or real threat, since without them there will be no resilience.
Types of resilience
Individual resilience
Some research has shown that for a company to be successful it must have mentally healthy people as a work team.
(Salanova, 2008).
Nowadays, all organizations have constant changes that affect the working lives of employees, so resilience becomes a key element to favor the adaptation and well-being of all.
Collective resilience
The most advanced studies on resilience have been carried out mainly in individuals, however, it must be remembered that people are always immersed in social groups, so it can be thought that part of these results are due to the influence of said groups. (Bandura, 1997)
In a group setting, the concept of resilience is defined as the process to provide the team with the capabilities that are necessary to be able to react to failure or any other threat while ensuring the well-being of the team. (West, Patera, & Carsten, 2009)
Organizational resilience
In organizations this term was not so well known, although it began to be known with the aim of creating scenarios for people to face conflicts.
When you have resilience, the organization has the ability to be able to make decisions quickly in this way it has more opportunities by anticipating threats, and it is also able to exploit all the opportunities that come their way since they are always alert and prepared.
Stages of organizational resilience
According to the author (López, 2009) organizational resilience consists of several stages.
Prevention of negative events
These events can make companies vulnerable and put into crisis, the environment in which they develop is a factor that every day makes organizations more vulnerable, especially those that have to do with globalization issues.
Prevention of negative results
This is to avoid that the negative results generated have a lesser impact on the organization, and that they do not become more serious with the passage of time since otherwise we must always keep in mind that when a company leaves the market others are already ready to enter this allows companies to always have a competitive advantage that makes them stay in the market.
Have a structure
This structure will allow to recover from the negative effects that the events have left by applying some actions that have the sole objective of strengthening the organization.
At present, managers must be prepared for the unstable events that happen in the markets, but above all, always take advantage of the problems they may face since one of the characteristics and virtues of organizational resilience is precisely to convert the difficulties that present themselves on opportunities. (Westrum, Hollnagel, Woods, & Levenson, 2006)
Countries are strong and solid when companies support governments, and one of the causes of this support is resilience, as it seeks to intertwine with other organizations that are resilient in the sector in order to build a solidity that benefits society in general.
Structure and applicability
For organizations to have resilience or not, it is no longer necessary that they are going through a crisis stage because normally companies have suffered in a certain way and at some time some disturbance.
The importance of the concept is to know whether or not companies are prepared to respond to these disturbances since the final objective is to observe what factors must be promoted within the organization to ensure continuous profitability.
The little house of resilience
One of the most used tools to know how resilient companies really are is the "Vanistendae house" which was initially presented as a communication tool to present easy and understandable elements or factors that contribute to resilience in companies. Business.
(Westrum, Hollnagel, Woods, & Levenson, 2006)
Vanistendael's Cottage
Each of the parts that make up this house is presented in detail below:
- Foundations: the first part refers to the basic factors that an organization needs to survive, although it seems that they are very common and logical, they must be taken into account since they often go unnoticed.
Subsoil: here it is very important to establish a close relationship between the organization and the groups that are considered to be of interest, although the most important thing is to know how is the state of the relationships that already exist and what perception is had of the environment that surrounds them.
- First floor: basically it is to make sense of the organization and it is where the importance of vision, mission and objectives comes in, although its main objective is to know what the real business of the company is. Second floor: it arises from organizational introspective, already that promotes a deep and internal analysis of the organization.
Within this second floor we have:
- Sense of belonging: the availability of the people who collaborate in the organization to fight for the benefit of the company, sacrifices that they could and would be willing to make, etc., and one way to measure this is through the turnover rate and time that people last in their work within the company Skills: they allow us to know what the organization is good for and what it is not good for.Work environment: types of conflicts can occur within the company or how much happiness employees can feel, in this case you can know through knowing the work hours, benefits, wages, etc.
And finally there is the:
- Entretecho: the objective of this part is to see how open the company is to receive new solutions, how much they dare to venture into new fields and learn about new trends in the markets.
ERIC tool
Knowing the organization is a very important task, especially when a good introspection is required, but knowing which departments are is not enough to develop resilience.
To identify variables it is necessary to divide them into the garbage and vital variables. Trash are those that little by little have been adhering throughout the entire useful life of organizations, even without realizing it; On the other hand, the vital variables are those that really wreak havoc on the company, since they directly affect the optimal functioning of the organization.
In order to solve this type of problem, an evaluation tool is used and this is very important for the analysis and development of organizations and companies that are in stages of crisis since a variable that is out of control over time they can cause problems.
Some companies that enter crisis stages no longer manage to recover, and this is usually due to a set of unfortunate events, but a good tool to prevent this type of situation is the so-called ERIC matrix, which makes sense of these variables.
ERIC matrix
Eliminate: the action at this stage is to remember the initial behavior of the organization, how it used to generate profits and also how they created value without having to depend on many variables.
- Reduce: it consists of reducing to a minimum the variables that the company has to live with and not depending to a great extent on them. Increase: the important thing is this stage is to couple the variables so that they can always be in our favor. Create: the latter Quadrant is linked to resistance to change within organizations, the important thing is to be at the forefront with trends and measure the variables that have an impact on the initial objective or goal of the business.
Jim Collins' model for crisis analysis
To achieve a high degree of resilience within organizations, it is necessary to know the current state of the productive life of the company, knowing later if it is or was in a crisis stage then it is possible to speak of a recovery.
Jim Collins's model is known as the "five stages of decline" and manages to explain how a company may be entering a crisis or when it is already on top of it.
The five stages of decline (Collins, 2010)
No matter how good organizations are, they must recognize that they do not know everything, some when they become leaders in the sale of a certain product or service consider that they can dominate the market or that they are so good that they do not have threats or problems.
Second stage: The disorderly search for more.
This search is linked to the desire to want to cover more than necessary, seeking and striving to achieve growth is the goal of many managers and directors, although many times that growth is not justified.
- Third stage: Denial of risk and danger.
At this point, the organization is already one step away from the crisis and it can be considered that both the denial of risk and danger with defense mechanisms that are activated in companies to defend what they are already doing, regardless of whether it is correct or no.
- Fourth stage: The anxious search for salvation.
This is a typical reaction in people, since normally when problems arise, a quick solution is sought even if it is not very well thought out, although this type of situation has a big problem and that is that practical solutions almost never exist and if they are implemented for a long time time will cause the problems to increase.
- Fifth stage: The capitulation to the irrelevance of death.
In this case, there is only one option and that is to give up the fight and although it sounds like it is something bad it is not necessarily so, since many times it is because there really is no more to do because all the options have been studied and none is more viable than giving up.
Thesis topic proposal
Impact of resilience in an organization in the Orizaba region.
Overall objective
Determine the factors that could have influenced the recovery of a company from a crisis and analyze which of these factors are the most recurrent within an organization.
Thanks
To the National Technological Institute of Mexico for being my alma mater and to Dr. Fernando Aguirre y Hernández for their support and motivation to carry out these articles on the subject of Fundamentals of Administrative Engineering.
conclusion
In this article, an analysis and review of the concept of resilience in organizations has been carried out, and it was possible to perceive that resilient organizations have their greatest support in the leader of these.
However, it is not enough to want or be the leader of an organization, in order to truly represent it, a series of fundamental characteristics are needed so that the messages that you want to transmit are well received and understood.
Resilience organizations is becoming a more tangible tool, which allows, as mentioned above, to be an evaluator of the company since it can be the difference to have a greater competitive advantage, allowing the organization to anticipate market changes and not only react when change or crisis is already imminent.
References
- Bandura, A. (1997). Self-Efficacy. The exercise of control. Collins, J. (2010). How do the powerful fall? Bogotá, Colombia: Grupo Editorial Norma.Condía, H. (2011). Management of personal and professional crises from a resilience approach López, A. (October 2009). CNN Expansion. Obtained from The positive side of the crisis: www.cnnexpansion.com/manufactura/2009/10/28/el-lado-positivo-dela-crisisMeneghel, I., Salanova, M., & Martínez, MI (2013). The path of Organizational Resilience. Revista de Psicologia, Ciències de l'Educació i de l'Esport, 13-24.Salanova, M. (2008). Healthy organizations and human resource development. Revista de Trabajo y Seguridad Social, 179-214 West, B., Patera, L., & Carsten, M. (2009). Team level positivity: investigating positive psychological capacities and team level outcomes.Journal of Organizational Behavior, 249-267 Westrum, R., Hollnagel, D., Woods, D., & Levenson, N. (2006). A typology of Resilience Situations; Resilience engineering: concepts and precepts.
