Different response paths to organizational resilience

Abstract

An essential yet understudied aspect of organizational responses to an environmental shock is how managers interpret and respond to their new environments and address post-shock environmental challenges. The post-shock managerial response process can be intense and highly consequential as actors often must challenge the status quo in a compressed period. Decisions are frequently “life or death” in terms of organizational survival. This study analyzed data on resilient organizations’ responses to the COVID-19 crisis and offered a model of organizational response paths to resilience. Our grounded theorizing offers three primary contributions: (1) we add richness to the distinction between organizations that are resilient or not by highlighting different response paths within the organizational-resilience category; (2) we complement the notion of post -adversity growth by explaining how organizations grow during adversity; (3) we move beyond explanations of resilience based on differences in organizations’ resource endowments and instead provide new insights into different paths to resilience based on differences in how organizations interpret and respond to the same adverse event.

How digitalization reinvented entrepreneurial resilience during COVID-19

“…This podcast interviews individuals who are recognized for having created a venture that delivers something novel – a new product, process, or business model. We centered our attention on the “Resilience Series” interviews because they explore how entrepreneurs and leaders responded to the COVID-19 crisis and offer direct insight into entrepreneurs' pathways to entrepreneurial resilience ( Shepherd and Williams, 2022 ). Each entrepreneur was asked a series of questions about their individual story, their actions in founding and growing the venture, and, particularly important to our study, how their companies adjusted during the pandemic times.…”

“…In established successful businesses, organizations adopted three response paths to build resilience during the pandemic: capitalizing resilience (i.e., taking advantage of potential opportunities for growth due to the market conditions), realigning resilience (i.e., redeploying existing resources to better align with the changed market conditions), and repurposing resilience (i.e., permanent restructuration of organizational resources, capabilities and activities to create market opportunities that allow for ongoing functioning) ( Shepherd and Williams, 2022 ). These response paths were associated with the different market reactions (demand of their primary market substantially increased, reduced or substantially reduced), decision-making in the face of adversity, strategic change initiatives and operational activities enacted by the entrepreneurs ( Shepherd and Williams, 2022 ). Entrepreneurial orientation was also relevant to developing resilience of Jordanian small and medium-sized businesses throughout COVID-19, expressed by efficiency, adaptive, collaborative, change and learning capabilities ( Zighan et al, 2022 ).…”

“…Resilience has recently drawn the attention of entrepreneurship scholars and continues to gain traction ( Bullough et al, 2014 ; Corner et al, 2017 ; Shepherd et al, 2020 ), particularly in times of adversity, such as the COVID-19 crisis. Prior work explored resilience during the pandemic in new businesses (e.g., Purnomo et al, 2021 ; Giones et al, 2020 ), small businesses (e.g., Brito et al, 2022 ) and also in successful organizations ( Shepherd and Williams, 2022 ). In this study, we view resilience as a response to the COVID-19 pandemic and explore how successful entrepreneurs build resilience through digitalization and technological breakthroughs during the pandemic.…”

“…Third, we contribute to the entrepreneurial resilience literature by focusing on the enabling or burdening role of digital technologies. Shepherd and Williams (2022) identified three response paths of organizational resilience among successful businesses after the COVID-19 pandemic. We dive deeper into how organizations built entrepreneurial resilience during the pandemic by focusing on the role of digital technologies and identifying specific actions, activities and strategies on how the digital scene shaped resilience in organizations.…”

Me-Search for Generating Ideas for Entrepreneurial Theorizing

“…For instance, even if a COVID-19 paper is accepted for publication, its longevity may be short as (a new) normality returns after the pandemic. For example, in one paper (Shepherd & Williams, 2022), we highlighted Peloton as a resilient organization yet that same organization is now struggling.…”