Managing in turbulence: how the capacity for resilience influences creativity

Abstract

How do companies manage to compete in a marketplace marked by turbulence, and not be outcompeted? In our study we assess the resources used to create resilience in organizations and how each of these resources relates to organizational creativity. We show that organizational resilience is positively related to organizational creativity. Specifically, our study highlights that cognitive, emotional, and structural resources are important resources for organizations wanting to become creative. Our results are based upon a pilot in‐depth qualitative case study followed by a survey of medium‐sized firms. The results in our study advance the emergent literature on resilience and on the practical applications of resilience in organizations. From a practical point of view, managers may realize that they have to develop a capacity for resilience (i.e. what they have to do) in order to have a creative organization, but a far bigger challenge is to understand the how; how the capacity for resilience is built. Our research shows that if managers truly want to manage in turbulence and still have a creative organization, they need to put a strong emphasis on the soft skills in the organization, in addition to the structural resources.

Resilient employees are creative employees, when the workplace forces them to be

“…Employees' resilience can spur beneficial behavioural outcomes such as proactive work behaviour (Caniëls & Baaten, 2019) and extra-role behaviour , but we know of no research that investigates its influence on the development of disruptive ideas that upset the organizational status quo. Moreover, our focus on the connection between employees' resilience and creativity complements and extends research that has investigated this connection at the organizational level (Richtnér & Löfsten, 2014).…”

“…Employees' resilience can spur beneficial behavioural outcomes such as proactive work behaviour (Caniëls & Baaten, ) and extra‐role behaviour (Meneghel et al, ), but we know of no research that investigates its influence on the development of disruptive ideas that upset the organizational status quo. Moreover, our focus on the connection between employees' resilience and creativity complements and extends research that has investigated this connection at the organizational level (Richtnér & Löfsten, ). Notably, by considering how individual employees' resilience levels may spur their development of disruptive ideas, we address how this personal resource influences daily work activities, such as creativity, rather than taking a restrictive view of its role solely in response to extreme organization‐level crises (Stokes et al, ).…”

Management Education in Turbulent Times

“…Practically, organizational and personal resilience are argued to be related, and rely on 'soft skills' as well as adequate resources to enable change (Richtnér and Löfsten 2014). However, there needs to be some concern for how this feeds into moral decision making if our responses to turbulence are not to involve a 'race to the bottom'.…”

The Search For Understanding Organizational Resilience

“…! use the necessary mechanisms to gather knowledge from various sources to identify opportunities (to benefit from the advantages of change) and cope with challenges (Richtnér and Löfsten, 2014).…”

“…In other words, the literature has started to develop and some conceptual models have been created. In addition, some authors have conducted empirical studies (Mafabi et al, 2012;Akgün and Keskin, 2014;Richtnér and Löfsten (2014). However, it is obvious that there is a significant gap in this area.…”