Proyectos nacionales

The preceding sections have highlighted the multiple meaning attached to the meaning of resilience. Gunderson (2000, p. 425) remarks that ‘since most management actions are based upon some type of theory, these multiple meanings of resilience can lead to very different sets of policies and action’. Considering the PRQ developed for this thesis: How can shipping companies develop organisational resilience capabilities? a clear definition of organisational resilience is necessary. Carpenter et al. (2001, p. 767) suggest that any study of resilience needs to clarify resilience ‘in terms of what and to what’. Such clarification should take into account the spatial and temporal scales of the system being studied (Carpenter et al. 2001). The multiple meanings of resilience discussed in the preceding sections are influenced by both space and time. For example, studies of HROs consider the resilience of safety and reliability systems within organisations and not necessarily the organisational entities themselves. Engineering resilience with its focus on quick recovery is applicable over short time scales. Resilience under the multiple- equilibrium framework however, takes into account changes occurring slowly (Martin- Breen & Anderies 2011) and therefore applies over longer time scales.

As the unit of analysis in this study is the organisation (shipping company) consideration of the resilience of what question requires clarifying what constitutes an organisation. Puranam, Alexy and Reitzig (2014, p. 163) observe that various conceptualisations of organisations in literature contain common features whereby an organisation may be portrayed as: ‘(1) a multi-agent system with (2) identifiable boundaries and (3) system- level goals (purpose) towards which (4) the constituent agent’s [sic] efforts are expected to make a contribution’. Utilising Puranam, Alexy and Reitzig’s (2014) explanation, an

33 organisation’s boundaries may be identified with reference to the assets it owns and its employment contracts with employees (Puranam, Alexy & Reitzig 2014). However, at any given time, for the same amounts of organisational assets and employees, an organisation may exist in one of a number of alternative states. An organisation can be in a healthy state, unhealthy state or in a catastrophic state (Sundstrom & Hollnagel 2006).

The definitions of resilience discussed in the preceding sections highlight resilience as a normative concept – a desirable capability that enables an organisation to perform in a desirable way such as recovering or adapting successfully from disruptions. As Hamel and Välikangas (2003, p. 54) state, the aim of resilience should be that organisations can undergo change without trauma ‘where revolutionary change happens in lightening quick, evolutionary steps – with no calamitous surprises, no convulsive reorganisations, no colossal write-offs, and no indiscriminate, across-the-board layoffs’. Additionally, business organisations may utilise disruptive change to gain competitive advantage (Seville 2017). Therefore it becomes necessary to not only establish the resilience of what to what, but also for what purpose. Establishing the purpose can help identify which organisational state is being desired, and by whom. First however, it is necessary to identity the entity or person(s) from whose point of view the desirability of organisational resilience is being considered. For example, some terrorist organisations may be resilient (Wheatley 2008), but governments are hardly likely to find their resilience desirable. Taking another example, the capacity to withstand flooding is unlikely to be considered a resilience capability by a desert community for whom threat of flooding may not be relevant (Duijnhoven & Neef 2014). Therefore the understanding of resilience by a desert community is likely to differ from the understanding of resilience by a flood-prone community (Duijnhoven & Neef 2014).

34 Organisations are intentional systems (Hollnagel 2014), that is, they are set up for a purpose. It is logical to assume that the purpose is set by an organisation’s shareholders and stakeholders. It follows therefore that the desired state of an organisation is one where it provides expected value to its shareholders and stakeholders (Fiksel 2003). Fischer and Zink (2012) conceptualise organisations as entities that convert inputs into outputs to meet defined purpose. Resilience links organisational resources and capabilities to outcomes (Burnard & Bhamra 2011). Hence disruptions may be conceived as situations that disrupt the conversion of inputs into outputs that provide value to shareholders and stakeholders. Furthermore, as discussed previously, when disruptions are caused by unforeseen, unpredictable and unfamiliar situations, organisations may be unable to rely on plans based that are based on identifiable risks and predictable situations (Friedman 2005; Leveson et al. 2009; McDaniel 2007; Parsons 2010). For parsimony, this Thesis uses the term ‘unexpected disruptions’ to refer to disruptions caused by unforeseen, unpredictable and unfamiliar situations.

Based upon the preceding discussion, the meaning of organisational resilience used in this thesis is as follows:

Organisational resilience is the ability of an organisation to maintain functionality in a disruptive environment. Maintaining functionality means that an organisation continues to provide value and fulfil expectations – in the manner, and over a period of time – as determined by its shareholders and stakeholders.

By focussing on functionality, the above definition attempts to reconcile the apparent tension between change and stability evident in the literature (Linnenluecke 2017). In order to maintain functionality, an organisation may need to adapt in response to, or in

35 anticipation of, change occurring in its environment. Over shorter time scales however, an organisation must be capable of recovering from any disruption experienced.

As discussed previously in section 2.2, organisations can be conceptualised as systems. Such systems are open systems because they receive input and feedback from external entities (Stenval & Virtanen 2017). Accordingly, a shipping company is conceptualised in this thesis as an open system as shown in Figure 2-4. The shipping company takes inputs from a variety of sources such as ship sale and purchase market, labour market and technology to provide shipping service that creates value for its shareholders, customers and stakeholders. Double-headed arrows in Figure 2-4 indicate that the interaction between various entities is not one-directional. For example, shipping companies are impacted by the freight market but can, in turn, affect the freight market with their actions such as expanding or reducing their fleet capacity (Papapostolou, Pouliasis & Kyriakou 2017). As suggested by various scholars (see, for example, Hollnagel 2014; McDaniel 2007; Palmberg 2009; Perrow 1984; Ryan 2009; Wesnser 2015), these dynamic interactions between the shipping company and its input suppliers and output receivers as well as the interactions between various entities with the economic, social and ecological environments create complexity and uncertainty for decision-makers. This complexity and uncertainty may make it difficult for managers of shipping companies to foresee and therefore plan for any disruption to the conversion of inputs into outputs that provide value to their shareholders, stakeholders and customers.

36 Source: Adapted from Fischer and Zink (2012), Bhaskar, Cahoon and Brooks (2014)