2314: Perspectives on Organizational Resilience-Seeking (13076)

Organizational resilience has become an increasingly important concept for strategic entrepreneurship scholarship given the growing frequency and impact of exogenous shocks faced by firms today. In addition to facing competitive threats and rapid technological change (Sirmon, Hitt, & Ireland, 2007), new and established firms must learn to navigate adversity driven by crises like the COVID pandemic, geopolitical conflicts, climate events, financial shocks, and cybersecurity threats (You, 2023). Organizational resilience refers to a firm's ability to maintain positive adjustment when faced with adversity, bounce back from disruptions, and potentially emerge stronger and more resourceful than before (Vogus & Sutcliffe, 2007; Williams, Gruber, Sutcliffe, Shepherd, & Zhao, 2017; You & Williams, 2023). Conceptually, organizational resilience relates to several theoretical topics at the intersection of strategic management and entrepreneurship (Ireland, Hitt, & Sirmon, 2003). To adapt effectively, “firms need the agility to design and implement strategic changes effectively, which requires fluidity, speed, and mindsets that encourage innovative thinking and resilience” (Hitt, Arregle, & Holmes Jr., 2021: 263). This relates to dynamic capabilities research on sensing windows of opportunity, seizing opportunities by mobilizing resources, and transforming a firm for continual renewal (Ireland, Withers, Harrison, Boss, & Scoresby, 2023; Teece, 2007). Studying organizational resilience may also involve examining crisis management, stakeholder impact mitigation, adaptation and change, ownership competence, real options to minimize losses and capitalize on changing events, and temporary non-market strategies (Foss, Klein, Lien, Zellweger, & Zenger, 2021; Iqbal, Pfarrer, & Bundy, 2022; Kuratko & Audretsch, 2009; Mellahi, Frynas, Sun, & Siegel, 2016; Trigeorgis & Reuer, 2017). Recent research has introduced resilience- seeking as a potentially distinct category of strategic entrepreneurship undertaken by firms when the nature of adversity suddenly shifts from competition-driven to crisis-driven adversity. Defined as an “adaptive process by which a firm leverages new resource endowments to change action repertoires and transform itself in response to crisis-driven adversity” (Browder, Dwyer, & Koch, 2023: 25), resilience-seeking differs from conventional advantage-seeking and opportunity-seeking behavior focused on value capture and creation absent existential threats to a firm and its stakeholders. Organizational resilience studies emphasize the role of distinct resource endowments (e.g., financial, digital, social) that can equip firms with sensing, seizing, and transforming capabilities for resilience-seeking prior to and during crisis-driven adversity (Audretsch et al., 2024; Browder et al., 2023; Williams et al., 2017). Yet, there remains a dearth of research to guide resource endowment investment, matching, and durability for resilience-seeking across adversity episodes. In light of increasing interest in studying organizational resilience in a variety of organizational contexts (Williams & You, 2021), the purpose of this panel symposium is to engage leading scholars in discussion about resilience-seeking and its conceptual place in strategic entrepreneurship research. Scholarly understanding of resilience has been hampered when applied to organizations partly due to its metaphorical use rooted in individual psychology, ecology, and materials science and engineering in isolation (Linnenluecke, 2017; van der Vegt, Essens, Wahlström, & George, 2015; Williams et al., 2017; You, 2023). While these scholarly works have profoundly enriched our insight into organizational resilience, the literature remains extensively fragmented. For example, organizational resilience has been conceptualized at times as a “capability, capacity, characteristic, outcome, process, behaviour, strategy or approach, type of performance or a mix of these” (Hillmann & Guenther, 2021: 8). Thus, organizational scholars need to continue to clarify its boundary conditions and nomological network. Against this backdrop, we have assembled a panel of experts to explore and debate important perspectives on organizational resilience-seeking. While interest in resilience has received increased scholarly attention across many of the Academy’s divisions since the onset of COVID, we aim to cultivate dialogue with a particular focus on strategic entrepreneurship that will resonate with scholars in the ENT, STR, and OMT divisions. As such, the aim of the symposium is to advance both strategic entrepreneurship and organizational resilience research. First, incorporating resilience concepts in strategic entrepreneurship research can help scholars examine how firms maneuver crisis-driven adversity when advantage-seeking and opportunity-seeking priorities yield to other objectives, such as stakeholder safety and reliable operations for public wellbeing (Weick, Sutcliffe, & Obstfeld, 1999). Second, integrating strategic entrepreneurship perspectives in organizational resilience research can help advance a uniquely organizational understanding of resilience by studying how firms convert crises into windows of opportunity and by empirically examining strategic actions as units of analysis before, during, and after crisis (Dushnitsky, Graebner, & Zott, 2020; Simsek, Heavey, & Fox, 2017).