CRICOS No. 000213J a university for the world real R Applying Resilience in Business (and related) Systems Dr Paul Barnes School of Management

CRICOS No. 000213Ja university for the worldrealR

Applying Resilience in Business(and related) Systems

Dr Paul Barnes School of Management


Resilience is the capacity to cope with unanticipated dangers after they have become manifest, learning to bounce back (Wildavsky, 1991)

It is the buffer capacity or the ability of a system to absorb perturbation, or the magnitude of disturbance that can be absorbed before a system changes its structure by changing the variables. (Holling et al., 1995 )

Ecosystem resilience is the capacity of an ecosystem to tolerate disturbance without collapsing into a qualitatively different state that is controlled by a different set of processes.

A resilient ecosystem can withstand shocks and rebuild itself when necessary. Resilience in social systems has the added capacity of humans to anticipate and plan for the future. (Resilience Alliance, 2005 )

The capacity to adapt existing resources and skills to new systems and operating conditions (Comfort, 1999 )

Some definitions …. of resilience


.. the spontaneous appearance of features that cannot be traced to the character of the individual parts …. the understanding of which depends on …. learning how relatively simple parts, through webs of interactions, lead to complex wholes

An economy, a cell or an ant colony is not merely an aggregation of many components – people, bio-chemicals, or ants – but depends on higher-level organisation that grows out of the interactions among those components.

Telecommunication networks and the WWW, economic markets and supply chains, the human brain all exploit highly irregular architectures, yet operate effectively in the presence of noise and remain (in most instances) resilient in the face of component failures.

and …. Emergence


CONTEXT

IMPACT of aTECHNOLOGY

PotentiallySurprise Free

TechnologicalSurprise

ContextualInnovation

Techno-ContextualSurprise

Planned

Unexpected

Limited Dispersed

1

4

2

3

• Parasitic Vaccines

• DNA fingerprinting

• Pesticides residues in food

• Algal blooms

• Unexpected behaviour of novel GMO’s

• Global warming

• Ozone depletion

• BSE

• nvCJD

The emergence Criticalities


• With the treat of impacts from extreme natural hazards all Infrastructure and networks of infrastructure become critical:

Infrastructure dependencies.

Rinaldi, S.M., Peerenboom, J. P. & Kelly, T.K. (2001) “Identifying, Understanding, and Analyzing Critical Infrastructure dependencies,” in IEEE Control Systems Magazine, December


Infrastructure Inter-dependencies.

Rinaldi, S.M., Peerenboom, J. P. & Kelly, T.K. (2001) “Identifying, Understanding, and Analyzing Critical Infrastructure dependencies,” in IEEE Control Systems Magazine, December


Comparative Spatial Scales: Ecosystems vs. Infrastructure Systems Ecosystem Infrastructure (After Rinaldi et al., 2001)

Part: Smallest part of a system that can be identified in an analysis

Individuals - an individual of the same species 　

Unit: A functionality related to collection of parts (i.e. a steam generator)

Population - a group of individuals of the same species living in the same geographic area.

Subsystem: an array of units (i.e. a secondary cooling system)

Community - all interacting populations living in the same geographic area

System: a grouping of sub-systems (i.e. coal power plant)

Ecosystem - all interacting communities of organisms and abiotic factors of the environment within a defined area

Infrastructure: a complete collection of like systems (i.e. electric power infrastructure)

Biosphere - the global ecosystem, including all the earth’s regions that can support life (land, air, water)

Inter-dependent systems of Infrastructure: the interconnected web of infrastructures.


Resistant and Resilient Systems Behaviour(After Fiskel, 2003)

System States

Resistant Resistant

A

Resilient Resilient

B


A collection of distributed electric generators (e.g., fuel cells) connected to a power grid may be more reliable and fault-tolerant than a central power station.

A swarm of miniature unmanned surveillance drones maybe less costly and more robust than a single conventional surveillance aircraft.

A network of autonomous software agents operating asynchronously may be more effective and speedier than a monolithic software program.

A geographically dispersed workforce linked by telecommunications may be less vulnerable to catastrophic events that could destroy a single facility.

A resilient systems response to ‘pressure’ could result in stronger capacities to sustain functionality (and output) by absorbing external disruption with a reduced tendency the undergo a regime shift.


A Threshold Transition – loss of functionality

Non-function

Functionality

Systems State



• Merrill Lynch– Number of employees lost : 3 – Amount of office space lost: 2,083,555– Physical location affected: 4 World Financial Center, Whole Building – 2002 revenue: $28.5billion– Headquarters: 4 World Financial Center, New York, NY 10080

– Returned back to work within 24hours– Transferring trading operations to London, Tokyo and Hong Kong – Used their web site to communicate relocation and emergency

transportation information to employees

A Resilient Organisation?


Crisis Prone organisations• Cultural beliefs about invulnerability• Non-existent or ineffective internal control mechanisms• Senior management not trained in decision making in crisis contexts• Contingency planning inadequate or non-existent

Accidents in highly complex systems • ‘Cook’ slowly• Occur suddenly

Empirical Findings

Crisis-prone Institutions


Professional Disciplines

Areas of Application

Focus of activity

Selection High-performance teams Globalised Business

Society / Culture Geo-Politics

Multi-organisation

Organisation

Team

Individual

NeurophysiologyCognitive Psychology

Cognitive Science

Corporate StrategyOrganisational TheoryOrganisational Psychology

Management Science

Cultural Anthropology History

Complexity TheoryEconomicsSociology

Political Science

Enhancing Resilience

Leedon, D.K. (2001) Final report: Sense Making Symposium, CCR Program, Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense.


Crisis

Consequence(s)

Pre-Crisis

Post-Consequence

Trigger

Learning

Failure Fractals


Cities as nodes in Resilient systems

Systems of cities


Controlled Functional Loss - as an in-built adaptive (resilient) capacity in systemic management

12

3

Functionality

Systems State

Non-function


Can resilience be a designed into (Business) systems?

If yes, would it confer sustainable advantage?

Are sustainability and resilience synonymous?

Can resilience be a designed into (Business) systems?

If yes, would it confer sustainable advantage?

Are sustainability and resilience synonymous?

Documents

CRICOS No. 000213J a university for the world real R Applying Resilience in Business (and related) Systems Dr Paul Barnes School of Management