Identifying effective factors of organizational resilience: a meta-synthesis study

Abstract

All organizations inevitably must deal with various critical situations. This requires providing the necessary resilience-building infrastructure and facilities. A review of the research literature reveals that scholars have examined factors affecting Organizational Resilience (OR) from different perspectives. This paper aims to compile and synthesize qualitative findings of previous research to gain an in-depth understanding and provide a list of effacing factors to organizations on their improvement practices related to OR. In conducting a systematic literature review, 98 articles were selected for final analysis. The data were analyzed, summarized, and synthesized in a step-by-step coding process, where 14 themes were identified as factors influencing OR. The identified factors included flexibility, control, redundancy and resources, planning and preparedness, decision-making, social capital, resilience policymaking, organizational culture, staff, financial and economic viability, collaboration, customers and markets, modernization discourse, and learning. Through a meta-synthesis of qualitative findings, this study is one of the first to form a novel perspective for offering a holistic understanding of affecting factors that provide evidence to support improvement practices in OR.

Keywords

• resilience
• organizational resilience
• meta-synthesis
• effective factors
• qualitative research