Influence of Institutional Context on Organizational Resilience: A Phenomenological Study of Resilience Practitioner

Organizations face highly disruptive events affecting profitability, operational status, and survivability. The effective implementation of protective measures designed to enhance organizational resilience is a popular approach to addressing the risks associated with disruptive events, but there is a lack of understanding of how the institutional context influences organizational resilience. The phenomenological study focused on exploring the experiences of the ten purposefully selected organizational resilience subject matter experts to gain an understanding of the influences of institutional context on the resiliency of organizations in the United States. The problem addressed in the study was the failure of company management to understand how institutional contextual factors influence organizational resilience (Linnenluecke, 2017). The purpose of the phenomenological study was to identify how institutional context influences organizational resilience as experienced by resilience practitioners and present them as a set of guidelines. The central research question was how does institutional context as seen by practitioners influence resilience in organizations throughout the United States. The experiences expressed by the participants produced the themes (i.e., resilience enablers, social capital transparency, management priority, and critical infrastructure) that indicated the institutional contextual influences on organizational resilience. The three guideline recommendations are (a) the examination of the institutional context from a social capital perspective; (b) the importance of organizational resilience as a management strategy and priority; (c) the use of organizational resilience standards or practices to enhance an organization along with the acknowledgement of the importance of change management practices to facilitate the change initiatives.