In this paper, we introduce a framework to understand organizational resilience as an evolutionary process where organizations adapt their configurations to changes in two external conditions: disturbance and munificence. Focusing on the contexts of manufacturing and operations management, we explain the concepts of organizational configuration and resilience. We then present a framework that views resilience driven configuration change as an evolutionary process of variation, selection and retention. We conclude the paper by presenting a typology that shows how different levels of munificence and disturbance combine to produce two types of adaptive resilience (cladogenetic and anagenetic) and one type of non-adaptive or resistance resilience (inertia).

1. AN EVOLUTIONARY APPROACH
TO UNDERSTANDING
ADAPTIVE ORGANIZATIONAL
RESILIENCE
Open Universiteit Resilient Symposium
on March 23-24, 2017
Ian McCarthy, Beedie School of Business, Simon Fraser University
Mark Collard, Department of Archaeology, Simon Fraser University
Michael Johnson, Beedie School of Business, Simon Fraser University

2. INTRODUCTION
● To understand the process of adaptive
organizational resilience as a response
to changes in disturbance and
munificence.
● Use the example of automotive
manufacturing industry.
● Offer an evolutionary process
framework and a typology of resilience.

3. AN EVOLUTIONARY FRAMEWORK OF
ADAPTIVE ORGANIZATIONAL RESILIENCE
Adverse environmental
conditions drive
configuration change
Process of configuration
change
Configuration diversity
Disturbance
Munificence
Variation
Selection
Retention

4. RESILIENCE
Resilience: the ability of a system to cope with
adverse change and still exist (Ge et al 2016;
Mumby et al 2014)
Involves one or more of the following
Withstand the adversity
Adapt to the adversity
Learn from the adversity
(Limnios et al 2014, Hohenstein et al 2015,
Kamalahmadic and Parast 2016):

5. CONFIGURATION THEORY
Configuration theory: sets of firms can share
key characteristics, such as strategy,
goals, practices and structures.
Manufacturing configurations include: craft,
mass, lean and agile.
Configurational research is used to develop
descriptions, explanations and
predictions of organizational diversity.
Adaptive organizational resilience involves
configuration change.
Prior research neglects the process of
configuration change.

6. CHALLENGING ENVIRONMENTAL
CONDITIONS
Environmental disturbances are a
temporary change in environmental
conditions that provide shocks or jolts
to the organization.
These can trigger withstanding and
adaptive resilience.
Examples include: industrial disputes,
scandals, natural disasters and
regulatory change.

7. CHALLENGING ENVIRONMENTAL
CONDITIONS
Environmental munificence is the
extent to which the resources available
to organizations are abundant or scarce.
It impacts both the withstanding and
adaptive forms of resilience
Resources include: raw materials,
supplies, workers, energy and land

8. VARIATION-SELECTION-RETENTION
Evolutionary
process
Definition Automotive
Manufacturing Example
Variation Intentional or blind change in
current configuration routines to
produce a new configuration.
JIT, kanban and kaizen of =
genesis of lean production
Selection Elimination of certain types of
new but unviable configurations
by the market or by the
organization.
Labour disputes, poor
quality, inability to innovate
= fall of UK lean producers.
Retention Selected new configurations are
preserved and copied within and
across industries.
Copying, mergers and
consolidations = smaller
number of lean producers
(Aldrich 1979; McCarthy et al 2005; Simonton 2015)

9. CONFIGURATION DIVERSITY: CLADISTICS
(McCarthy et al 2000, McCarthy 2005)

11. WHY CLADISTICS?
● Organisations and their configurations
evolve - adaptive resilience
● Like organisms, this evolution can be
diverging and tree like.
● Organising knowledge and mapping
relationships.
● Patterns and mechanisms of change
suggest predictive abilities!

12. A CLADOGRAM OF AUTOMOTIVE
MANUFACTURING CONFIGURATIONS
(McCarthy et al 2000, McCarthy 2000)

13. SUMMARY: A TYPOLOGY OF ADAPTIVE
RESILIENCE

14. AN EVOLUTIONARY FRAMEWORK OF
ADAPTIVE ORGANIZATIONAL RESILIENCE
Adverse environmental
conditions drive
configuration change
Process of configuration
change
Configuration diversity
Disturbance
Munificence
Variation
Selection
Retention

15. SUMMARY
This research is not about what makes an organization resilient
It is about understanding the process of adaptive resilience
Disturbance, munificence and resilience interact to drive this
process:
After the 9/11 attack airlines with greatest financial reserves not
only withstood the shock, but reinvented themselves.
Inertia = withstand
Anagenetic resilience and cladogenetic resilience = adaptive
When might one type of resilience perform better than the others?

16. REFERENCES
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