Towards A Theory of Resilient Ecosystems: A System Approach to Organisational Resilience

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This Postdoctoral Fellowship will build upon my PhD research which examined antecedents of organisational resilience in twenty-two heterogenous organisations and their business ecosystems. Through a two-staged data collection between 2017 and 2019, the study suggests that there are various equilibriums of resilience existing in organisations, which are formed by complex interactions of attributes of inter-organisational relationships (IORs). These findings are relatively novel in the literature of management and organisation studies because the mainstream view on organisational resilience is rooted in engineering resilience highlighting the stability of a system near a single equilibrium (e.g., bouncing back). More specifically, by analysing one hundred and thirty-seven events, it is suggested that organisational disruption can arise at any hierarchical level within and beyond organisations and associated effects that can move on a continuum (e.g., fast or slow) at a constant or irregular pace in multiple directions, compounded by changes. However, this study also shows fourteen IOR attributes emerging from one hundred and eighteen activity-based inter-organisational collaborations, which are interacted with each other depending on the nature of disruptions and together shaping organisational resilience. This fellowship will therefore examine the possibilities for expanding the work to the general system level and exploring how these relational attributes can interact for building resilient ecosystems, which is an underdeveloped area but important to be understood in order for sustainable development. In the face of pressing problems intertwined with global and grand challenges (e.g., [digital] poverty, social inequality, climate change, infectious disease), the need for such efforts could not be more urgent because no single entity alone (e.g., individual, organisation, or community) can provide solutions to complex and intractable problems. The United Nations (UN), international organisations, and individual countries actively seek ways to deal with the aforementioned challenges and many of these initiatives (e.g., the United Nations Global Compact) involve businesses and aim to facilitate collaborations among businesses and public and civil society actors. Although there is a considerable progress being made, the role of business organisations in society is still ambivalent resulting in that their contributions are often more symbolic than real, sometimes leading to social misery and environmental disasters (Scherer & Voegtlin, 2020). In addition, the rise of the digital economy (e.g., Industry 4.0) not only has transformed the role of traditional lead firms in the global economy but also fundamentally restructured both the demand and the supply side of traditional value chains (Pananond, Gereffi & Pedersen, 2020). Examples of businesses that fail to survive are plentiful contributing to the high rate of unemployment, which, in turn, has intensified the persistent grand challenges faced by humanity. This is a manifestation of a fallacy in the internal decision-making and incentive structures of businesses that undermines resilience in organisations. I will use the fellowship to establish myself within the community of scholars seeking to contribute to this space, especially at the level of inter-organisational relationships as the connection between different units within the ecosystem.With the mentorship of Durham Professor, Dr. Tyrone Pitsis, who is a leading researcher in complex projects designed to address systems level problems, this postdoctoral fellowship would allow me to achieve the following four key objectives: (1) establishing track record and disseminating PhD research findings through high-quality publications; (2) deepening and broadening my networks within academia and beyond; (3) developing and submitting two research grant applications; (4) advancing my experience and skills in research and teaching.