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We were motivated to organize this conference because understanding the dynamics of resilience has assumed greater urgency and currency in the face of a host of sociopolitical, technological and economic trends. Although resilience is often mentioned in organization theory, it has received little independent attention. The bulk of what we know about resilience has grown out of research on vulnerable children in education and psychology. Little systematic attention has been paid to understanding why and how it is that some organizations and the individuals and units of which they are comprised experience adversity and successfully adjust and thrive amidst these conditions while others fail to do so. This is not to say that resilience has been absent, but resilience often appears as residual to explain instances when an organization unexpectedly survives or thrives. Consequently it has been inadequately theorized and understudied empirically. Moreover, studies of organizing in the face of adversity have tended to focus on failures and decline and maladaptive or pathological cycles such as downward spirals, vicious cycles and tipping points. The goal of this conference
was to reverse that trend. By bringing together a set of interested scholars, some who have begun to investigate resilience (at multiple levels of analysis and across multiple industries) we hoped to generate both greater theoretical understanding of resilience and fruitful ideas for future avenues of research.
On October 27-29th, 2005, we held the first Resilience Conference here at the Stephen M. Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan. Forty scholars and doctoral students came together to discuss resilience in the context of organizational studies. The conference consisted of a combination of presentations and small group sessions that stimulated participants to grapple with questions of what resilience in organizations is and is not, to identify puzzles or gaps in the literature related to resilience, and to consider how a resilience approach might add value to their own research.
This conference builds on work being done at the
Center for Positive Organizational Scholarship (POS) and is an outgrowth of the blossoming resilience pod which began at the first POS conference in 2003. The conference is sponsored by the
Interdisciplinary Committee on Organizational Studies (ICOS) and the
Office of the Vice President of Research at the University of Michigan.
For more information on the conference, please contact:
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