Resilience management: A framework for assessing and improving the resilience of organisations
Sonia McManus, Erica Seville, David Brunsdon, John Vargo
Resilient Organisations Research Report 2007/01. (PDF, 1MB)
Executive Summary
There is an intrinsic relationship between organisational resilience and improving the resilience of communities. Enabling the continued operation of organisations, in and following crises, significantly impacts on the medium to long term recovery and health of the wider community. Increased resilience is also important when considering the interconnectedness of modern organisations, where disruptions can have significant and widespread impacts globally. There is increasing demand for organisations to exhibit high reliability in the face of adversity; decision makers must address not only the crises that they know will happen, but also those that they cannot foresee. The term resilience has been used freely across a wide range of academic disciplines and in many different contexts. There is little consensus regarding what resilience is, what it means for organisations and, more importantly, how organisations might achieve greater resilience in the face of increasing threats. This study offers a definition of resilience that is applicable to organisations.