Building and Sustaining Resilience in Complex Organizations

The role of, and the means to achieve, resilience (the capacity to be sustainable through the impact of multitudinous future changes in a connected, dynamic environment) are increasingly the focus of corporate strategy departments and government think tanks. The increasing volatility in economic markets, the natural environment and society generally require new tools to think about, and take meaningful action towards, the achievement and maintenance of resilient policies and practices. The field of Complexity Thinking arguably has a significant role to play in both informing and assisting our organizations in achieving resilience in this context. This workshop aimed to explore the nature of this role and the ways in which Complexity Science may be combined with other disciplines to increase resilience in many areas of human endeavor. We hope that the papers offers here represent a broad basis from which to begin such an exploratory discussion.