Surviving or flourishing? Integrating business resilience and sustainability

Abstract

PurposeBusinesses are always seeking resilient strategies so they can weather unpredictable competitive environments. One source of unpredictability is the unsustainability of commerce's environmental, economic or social impacts and the limitations this places on businesses. Another is poor resilience causing erroneous and unexpected outputs. Companies prospering long-term must have both resilience and sustainability, existing in a symbiotic state. This paper explores the two concepts and their relationship, their combined benefits and proposes an approach for supporting decision-makers to proactively build both characteristics. Design/methodology/approach The paper looks at businesses as complex adaptive systems, how their resilience and sustainability can be defined and how these might be exhibited. It then explores how they can be combined in practice. FindingsThe two qualities are related but have different purposes, moreover resilience has two major forms related to timescales. Both kinds of resilience are identified as key for delivering sustainability, yet the reverse is also found to be true. Both are needed to deliver either and to let businesses flourish. Practical implicationsAlthough the ideal state of resilient sustainability is difficult to define or achieve, pragmatic ways exist to deliver the right direction of change in organisational decisions. A novel approach to this is explored based on Transition Engineering and Robustness Engineering. Originality/value This paper links resilience and sustainability explicitly and develops a holistic pragmatic approach for working through their implications in strategic decision-making.

Putting resilient sustainability into strategy decisions – case studies

“…This paper builds on theoretical and field research detailed in Winnard et al (2014aWinnard et al ( , 2014b which explored how to improve the strategic sustainability and resilience of organisations as complex adaptive systems. Organisational resilience was defined as combining:- capacity to continue functioning when disrupted  capacity to recover from disruption  adaptive capacity for developing new abilities and resources, ideally proactively Organisational sustainability seeks to:- reduce negative and improve positive impacts of activities, restore natural capital, enhance human and maintain ethical capitals.…”

“…Organisational resilience was defined as combining:- capacity to continue functioning when disrupted  capacity to recover from disruption  adaptive capacity for developing new abilities and resources, ideally proactively Organisational sustainability seeks to:- reduce negative and improve positive impacts of activities, restore natural capital, enhance human and maintain ethical capitals.  maintaining economic capital to operate long term (Simplified from Winnard et al, 2014b) Sustainability and resilience are related concepts but focus on different areas; both are required (along with other qualities) for organisations to flourish. "If improved sustainability must be the ultimate and always moving goal defining the direction of travel, then resilience is the ability not to be pushed off course along the way" (Winnard et al, 2014b).…”

“… maintaining economic capital to operate long term (Simplified from Winnard et al, 2014b) Sustainability and resilience are related concepts but focus on different areas; both are required (along with other qualities) for organisations to flourish. "If improved sustainability must be the ultimate and always moving goal defining the direction of travel, then resilience is the ability not to be pushed off course along the way" (Winnard et al, 2014b). Sustainable organisations can improve their resilience by finding and managing or exploiting new sustainability risks and opportunities, proactively adapting to short-and long-term change.…”

“…The combined approach was christened SuReSDS™, for Sustainable Resilient Strategic Decision-Support (Winnard et al, 2014a(Winnard et al, , 2014b. It is novel as there are no fully-realised openly available approaches for resilient sustainability (see Bocken et al, 2013, Winnard et al, 2014b. SuReSDS™ enables decision-makers and strategy analysts to integrate new sustainability and resilience information into decisions.…”

“…This approach is for use within strategy formation from alternative business models to products-and-services design. The combined approach was christened SuReSDS™, for Sustainable Resilient Strategic Decision-Support (Winnard et al, 2014a(Winnard et al, , 2014b. It is novel as there are no fully-realised openly available approaches for resilient sustainability (see Bocken et al, 2013, Winnard et al, 2014b.…”