The Organizational Design Community (ODC) invites you to the following webinar:
Two Faces of Organizational Resilience: Robustness versus Adaptability
Thorbjørn Knudsen
Professor of Strategic Organization at the Frankfurt School of Finance and Management
25th January 2024, Thursday at 9am Eastern Time
This paper re-examines the organizational design paradigms of complex versus modular structures, delineating circumstances where complexity serves as an asset rather than a liability. We introduce the concept of 'reconstructive resilience'-the ability of a fully integrated, complex organization to leverage internal information, enhancing its robustness against random perturbations. However, this complexity, while beneficial for robustness, may also render organizations more fragile to significant external shocks. In contrast, modular organizations are known for their 'adaptive resilience'-their ability in adapting to disruptive technological shifts. Although modularity facilitates adaptability, we show that it does so at an overlooked shortcoming: it implies loss of operational information, which can diminish resilience to frequent minor disturbances, impede self-repair, and potentially affect scalability-attributes that are crucial in stable environments. Through application from information theory, we demonstrate that organizations must strategically balance the tradeoffs between complexity and modularity to optimize their resilience, reconciling robustness with adaptability for sustained efficacy.
About the Speaker:
Thorbjørn Knudsen holds the Professorship of Strategic Organization at the Frankfurt School of Finance and Management. Knudsen has published extensively on organizational evolution, organization design, and strategic decision-making with articles and books in leading outlets. Prior to his tenure at the Frankfurt School, he served as a co-director of the Danish Institute for Advanced Study and as Director of the research unit for Strategic Organization Design (SOD), both at the University of Southern Denmark. Knudsen is a foundational member of the Experimental Organization Science community (EOS), the Theoretical Organization Methods (TOM) society, and the Organizational Design Community (ODC). He has served as Senior Editor of Organization Science and on the editorial boards of the Academy of Management Journal, Journal of Organization Design, Organization Science, Strategic Management Journal, and Strategy Science.
Register here: https://orgdesigncomm.com/event-5551148/Registration
Registration closes on 24th January 10 am (Eastern Time)
The live webinar is open to the public. The recorded webinar is only available for ODC members.
Come join us!
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Karin Hoisl
University of Mannheim & Copenhagen Business School
https://www.cbs.dk/en/research/departments-and-centres/department-of-strategy-and-innovation/staff/khsi------------------------------