Level of Organizational Resilience

Level of organizational resilience

As the socioeconomic situation develops rapidly, the life cycle of products has been decreased and customers’ demands are various, therefore, the operation environment of supply chain is become more and more complex as time goes by. In consequence, under the conditions of uncertainty, some terms have been come to people’s mind such as resilience of supply chain, supply chain flexibility and robustness. Supply chain flexibility means that the demander and the supplier set up essences of a contract, which represent the expectations for the future for the demander while for the supplier, it is the evaluation of demand-side fluctuation. As to robustness, it means a state of strong or sturdy in physique or construction. Although “resilience” and “robustness” are usually interchangeable in practice, in the study of supply chain management, they have different connotations. “Resilience” is defined as “the ability of a system to return to its original state or move to a new, more desirable state after being disturbed”(Serhiy Y. Ponomarov, Mary C. Holcomb, 2008). Valikangas (2003) points out that the objectives of resilience is to help company develop rapidly without causing negative effects upon organizations. Thus, resilience focuses not only recovery and preparations for crisis, but also the consistent creativity of the organization.

In this fiercely competitive world, organizations would like to regard themselves as resilient. They are willing to see the world as their consumers see it, to solve their problems along with customers, as a result, they can be nimble and responsive to market change. This kind of customer-oriention is a key factor in organizational resilience. But, easier said than done. The majority of organizations fail to stick to what they say at first place. This failure may result from two sides- external and internal. On the one hand, companies might not understand or do not understand customers externally, on...