Resilience Uncovered: A review of professional resilience measurement methodologies

Abstract

Recent policy developments on the global, regional and national levels have materialised strategic goals for building resilience. Implementing resilience fundamentally requires operationalising the concept in order to make it measurable. This thesis scoped for professional resilience measurement methodologies across grey literature and analysed their organisational purposes and specifics of measurement indicators in the light of cohesion and collaborative potential. 55 methodologies from 52 organisations were found. It was concluded that resilience measurements are mainly used for strategic programming and monitoring and evaluation purposes. Overall, the methodologies clearly delineated to six sectoral groups; development/humanitarian, safety/disaster risk management, critical infrastructure/utilities, social welfare, economic and environmental. All of the sectoral groups were conceptually cohesive among their resilience operationalisations. Cross-sectoral cooperation was estimated based on the rates at which disaster risk management, climate change adaptation and complexity were integrated within each sector. Development/humanitarian and safety/disaster risk management sectors both integrated climate change adaptation with a high prevalence. On the other hand, disaster risk management was integrated by safety/disaster risk management and critical infrastructure/utilities sectors with a high prevalence. When it comes to the measurement designs, it was noted that higher scale measurements were more prominent in using secondary data sets than lower scale measurements. Furthermore, it was observed that qualitative measurements were somewhat more common (52.8% of all methodologies) than quantitative measurements (43.8%). The research aim was fulfilled by establishing scientific knowledge on how resilience is operationalised by professional organisations. Based on the resilience operationalisations, resilience seems to be used in a somewhat isolated manner among sectors. While in-sector conceptual cohesion exists, the outcome goals and used concepts vary between sectors. When it comes to inter-organisational cohesion, it was concluded that conceptual heterogeneity exists among most of the identified sectors.

Popular Abstract

Those who have faced and discussed resilience in their work in academics or elsewhere know that the concept is difficult to penetrate and apply. Many have noted that resilience’s multi-faceted nature is largely impacting its practical use. To provide contextual understanding about this issue, the thesis focused on identifying professional resilience measurement methodologies, deriving and analysing their organisational purposes, conceptualisations of resilience and measurement practicalities. The idea was that discussing resilience and implementing resilience are fundamentally two different approaches, the latter of which provides pragmatic knowledge about resilience’s organisational relevance. Overall, 55 methodologies were identified from 52 organisations. Interestingly, the most prominent organisational purposes were related to project programming (65.5%) and their monitoring and evaluation (25.5%), both mutually non-exclusive. When it comes to the sectors that utilise resilience measurements, the derived organisational sectors were development/humanitarian (43.6%), safety/disaster risk management (21.8%), critical infrastructure/utilities (14.5%), social welfare (7.3%), economic (7.3%) and environmental (5.5%) sectors. Overall, qualitative and quantitative measurements were both present at 52.8% and 43.8% prevalence, respectively. In practical terms, several observations with critical value were made. It was noted that resilience definitions were largely ignored in the resilience measurement operationalisations. Hence, collaborative negations for projects involving resilience should always include discussions determining how the concept is operationalised and measured in the project. Furthermore, the thesis determined that resilience seems to be used in a somewhat isolated manner between the identified organisational sectors. Each sector utilised ‘sector-specific’ resilience outcome goals and conceptual operationalisations of resilience, which establish in-sector conceptual cohesion, but at the same differentiate each sector from another. For future research, the thesis suggests that studying how resilience is used inside organisations, and more specifically determining what type of information roles it fulfills, can help to link the research of resilience to the research of organisational change. Moreover, studying how the implementation of resilience affects network dynamics, especially in knowledge networks such the humanitarian cluster system, can help to record lessons learned to support the future implementation of resilience frameworks elsewhere.

• author: Miettinen, Markus Samuel
• supervisor: Henrik Tehler
• organization: Division of Risk Management and Societal Safety
• course: VBRM15 20171
• year: 2017
• type: H2 - Master's Degree (Two Years)
• subject: Technology and Engineering
• keywords: Resilience, Measure, Decision-making
• language: English
• id: 8928351
• date added to LUP: 2017-11-20 09:37:28
• date last changed: 2017-11-20 09:37:28