The term “resilience” is ubiquitous in literature; it appears in numerous forms and each use may have a different definition and conceptualization that varies significantly across disciplines. (Linnenluecke, 2017) (Long et al., 2016)
Resilience in business and management disciplines has often been interpreted as the ability and swiftness in which individuals, organizations, or systems should be able to return to normal condition or functioning after experiencing a substantial shock that disturbs its state. However, the emphasis on bouncing back fails to consider disturbance as a ‘window of opportunity’ for transforming to a radically different and more desirable trajectory”. (Davoudi et al.,2013)
Hence, by acknowledging the role of social actors in business research, we can adopt a more contemporary definition of resilience as “the capacity […] to persist, adapt, or transform in the face of change” (Wieland & Durach, 2021) (Duchek, 2020)
Nowadays, in a rapidly changing technological, organizational and threat environment, the enhancement of cybersecurity and resilience of organizations, communities, and nations requires in-depth knowledge, expertise in diverse fields and continuous learning. (Vain, & Kharchenko, 2016).
In fact, looking back at the peaks of the COVID-19 health crisis, it can argued that the said pandemic can be perceived as a “stress test” of unprecedented dimensions, challenging the resilience of business models, interconnected systems, societal institutions, and even entire economies. (Tressel & Ding, 2021).
For instance, one of the direct impacts of the pandemic was the mass adoption of teleworking arrangements that are based on remote access to systems and critical data. This widespread and sudden shift to working remotely for a prolonged time have inevitably emerged new vulnerabilities and more cybersecurity challenges. (Gaidosch & Adelmann, 2020).
This demonstrates that “going back to normal” may not be aligned neither with a resilient business world nor with its interconnected network systems. Hence, now is a perfect time to analyze the shortcomings and lack of resiliencies of current models and systems, in order to learn from this pandemic and help businesses, institutions, societies, and economies to gain additional resilience.
References
Davoudi, S., Brooks, E., & Mehmood, A. (2013). Evolutionary resilience and strategies for climate adaptation. Planning Practice & Research, 28 (3), 307-322.
Duchek, S. (2020): Organizational resilience: a capability-based conceptualization, Business Research 13 (2020), 215-246.
Gaidosch, T. & Adelmann, F. (2020). Cybersecurity of Remote Work During the Pandemic. International Monetary Funds (IMF) : COVID-19 Special Series.
Linnenluecke, M.K. (2017), Resilience in Business and Management Research: A Review of Influential Publications and a Research Agenda. International Journal of Management Reviews, 19: 4-30.
Long, S., Downing C., & Nepal B. (2016). Proceedings of the American Society for Engineering Management (ASEM) International Annual Conference. Charlotte, North Carolina, USA.
Tressel, T. & Ding, X. (2021). Global Corporate Stress Tests : impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic and Policy Responses (Working Paper). International Monetary Fund (IMF) : Monetary and Capital Markets Department.
Vain, J. & Kharchenko, V. (2016). Enhanced Education for Cybersecurity and Resilience. Information & Security: An International Journal, Volume 35, Issue 1, p.5-8
Wieland, A., & Durach, C. F. (2021). Two perspectives on supply chain resilience. Journal of Business Logistics, 42 (3), 315-322.
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