Read the following note on organisational resilience and on the basis of the motivation stipulated for the proposed study answer all questions that follow. Organisational

Question

85 users unlocked this solution today!

Read the following note on organisational resilience and on the basis of the motivation stipulated for the proposed study answer all questions that follow. Organisational Resilience 21st century organisations are increasingly being bombarded by volatility, uncertainty, disruptions, complexity, ambiguity, and turbulence (VUDCAT). As a result, the management of crises and disasters has become key areas of concern for both business practitioners and academic. Natural disasters, terrorist attacks, economic recession, pandemic disease such as COVID-19, equipment failure and human error can all pose both a potentially unpredictable and severe threat to the continuity of an organisation's operation (Bhamra et al., 2011 Zolli & Healy, 2012 Xiao & Cao, 2017).

While COVID-19 has caused an exceptional level of disruption, it is not the only threat to value chains. Other sources of disruption include force-majeure events (such as climate change or natural disasters), macroeconomic and political conditions (including trade-policy or regulatory changes), malicious actions (cybersecurity, intellectual-property theft), and counterparty issues (such as financially fragile suppliers). Recent research from the McKinsey Global Institute (MGI) has highlighted that disruptions from a shock in one of these categories is frequent, and that on average, a shock lasting more than two months occurs every 3.7 years (Behnam, Foster, Gambell & Karunakaran, 2020). It has been argued that the COVID-19 crisis could be the 'imperative of our time' (Smit, Hirt, Buehler, Lund, Greenberg and Govindarajan, 2020). And Sneader and Singhal (2020) noted that it could bring a dramatic restructuring of the economic and social order.

Why are some organisation able to successfully rebound from environmental turbulence, recover fast and quickly get back in the game with new strategies, business models and products while others fail to rise from such environmental knocks and eventually cease to exist? Even perennially successful companies are finding it more difficult to deliver consistently superior returns. In their article, 'The quest for resilience' which featured in the Harvard Business Review, Hamel and Vlikangas (2003) alluded to the steady dissipation of firm value "as the enemies of momentum have multiplied". Technological discontinuities, regulatory upheavals, geopolitical shocks, industry deverticalization and disintermediation, abrupt shifts in consumer tastes, and hordes of non-traditional competitors are just a few of the forces undermining the advantages of incumbency (Hamel & Vlikangas, 2003:52). An analysis by Booz Allen Hamilton reported that only 17% of organisations are resilient.

Continued success no longer hinges on momentum rather, it rides on resilience. Resilience is the ability to dynamically reinvent business models and strategies as circumstances changes. Strategic resilience is not about responding to a onetime crisis but, about rebounding from a setback. It is about continuously anticipating and adjusting to deep, secular trends that can permanently impair the earning power of a core business. It is about having the capacity to change before the case for change becomes desperately obvious. To thrive in turbulent times, companies must become as efficient at renewal as they are at producing today's products and services. To achieve strategic resilience, companies will have to overcome the cognitive challenge of eliminating denial, nostalgia, and arrogance the strategic challenge of learning how to create a wealth of small tactical experiments the political challenge of reallocating financial and human resources to where they can earn the best returns and the ideological challenge of learning that strategic renewal is as important as optimization (Hamel & Vlikangas, 2003:52). According to Neilson, Pasternack and Van Nuys (2005:85), resilient organisations are "highly adaptable to external market shifts, yet focused on and aligned behind a coherent business strategy". The ultimate goal of resilience is creating "a company where revolutionary change happens in lightning-quick, evolutionary steps - with no calamitous surprises, no convulsive reorganisation, no colossal write-offs and no indiscriminate, across-the-board layoffs" (Hamel & Vlikangas, 2003:54).

The COVID-19 crisis has provoked divergent, even dramatic, reactions, with some industries taking off and others suffering badly the effect has shaken up historic norms. When the economy settles into its next normal, such sectoral differences can be expected to narrow, with industries returning to somewhere around their previous relative positions. What is less obvious is how the dynamics within sectors are likely to change. In previous downturns, the strong came out stronger, and the weak got weaker, went under, or were bought. The defining difference was resiliencethe ability not only to absorb shocks but to use them to build competitive advantage. Over the course of a decade, companies can expect losses of 42 percent of a year's profits from disruptions (Lund et al., 2020).

In another recent research by the McKinsey Global Institute (MGI), which evaluated 1,500 companies by "Z-Score," which measures the probability of corporate bankruptcy (the higher the score, the stronger the company's financial position), the main finding was that the top 20 percent of companies, which were referred to as the "emerging resilients", that had improved their Z-Scores during the current recession had increased their earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization (EBITDA) by 5 percent the others had lost 19 percent (Levy, Mysore, Sneader & Sternfels, 2020). The emerging resilients, the evidence showed, were pulling away from the pack.

Again, the past can be a prelude. McKinsey research on the 2008 financial crisis found that a small group of companies in each sector outperformed their peers. They did get hurt, with revenues falling about the industry average, but they recovered much faster. By 2009, the earnings of the resilient companies had risen 10 percent, while that of the nonresilients had gone down almost 15 percent. What characterized the resilient companies was preparation before the crisisthey typically had stronger balance sheetsand effective action during itspecifically, their ability to cut operating costs.

The implication is that there is a resiliency premium on recovery. Top performers won't sit on their strengths instead, as in previous downturns, they will seek out ways to build themfor example, through M&A. That's why we expect to see substantial portfolio adjustment as companies with healthy balance sheets seek opportunities in a context of discounted assets and lower valuations.

The organisational resilience literature highlights three dimensions of resilience capacity - cognitive resilience, behavioural resilience, and contextual resilience. Cognitive resilience is about firms possessing a deep understanding of what is happening around and formulating responsible. Behavioural resilience enables firms to avoid simple, knee-jerk reaction when something goes unexpected occurs and contextual resilience revolves around internal social connections (Lengnick-Hall and Beck, 2005 Vickers, 2019).

The COVID-19 crisis has created an imperative for companies to reconfigure their operationsand an opportunity to transform them. To the extent that they do so, greater productivity will follow.

Source: the note above was synthesised from multiple sources.

The motivation for the proposed study.

The COVID-19 pandemic has been a relentless destroyer of brick-and-mortar businesses and has created economic and job crises as public health officials warn against in-person interactions. The ongoing, unprecedented turbulence across all sectors of the South African economy requires the urgent attention of organisational leaders and business researchers alike to help businesses survive and build better.

While the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic is not yet won, with a vaccine in sight, there is at least a faint light at the end of the tunnelalong with the hope that another train isn't heading our way. 2021 will be the year of transition. Barring any unexpected catastrophes, individuals, businesses, and society can start to look forward to shaping their futures rather than just grinding through the present. The next normal is going to be different. It will not mean going back to the conditions that prevailed in 2019. Indeed, just as the terms "pre-war" and "post-war" are commonly used to describe the 20th century, generations to come will likely discuss the pre-COVID-19 and post-COVID-19 eras.

In many respects COVID-19 pandemic provides researchers with an object of investigation that could not have been created any better under laboratory conditions. A comparative study is based on the idea that we can make useful and insightful comparisons in ways that are not casual or artificial, but actually contribute to our understanding of organisational behaviour by using a large-scale statistical comparison of two historical moments separated by the COVID-19 pandemic. In keeping with this vein of thought, one could refer to the COVID-19 pandemic as a "natural experiment".

As a business researcher with a keen interest in organisational resilience, you consider the COVID-19 pandemic as a natural experiment and a unique opportunity for comparative observation of how some businesses figure out how to operate in new ways by developing resilience that enables them to absorb shock and come out of a crisis better than the competition. In this regard, you are proposing a study with a sequential explanatory mixed methods design.

The tentative topic of the proposed study is:

An examination of the resilience capacity of JSE-listed companies before and after the COVID-19 pandemic

The research objectives of your study are:

• To determine the pre-COVID-19 resilience capacity of JSE-listed companies
• To determine the post-COVID-19 resilience capacity of JSE-listed companies
• To understand what separates the resilient JSE-listed companies from the non-resilients and
• To make practical recommendations to the management of JSE-listed companies on improving their resilience capacity.

REQUIRED: Please outline how you would go about conducting the proposed study with reference to the following: 1.1 State the aim of the proposed study. (2 marks) 1.2 Drawing on the four research objectives, formulate FOUR (4) research questions that your study will attempt to answer. (4 marks) 1.3 Research design primarily reflects the purpose of research thus, before the design of a study can be developed, its purpose should first be formulated. In this regard, specify with explanation a purpose for the proposed study. (4 marks) 1.4 Briefly explain the concept of research design and on the basis of the information provided above, unpack the research design for the proposed study. (4 marks) 1.5 Based on the design you have chosen, discuss the methodology you would follow with regard to: 1.5.1 The Sampling Methodology: Briefly discuss the sampling methodology that you would use for the proposed study by answering the following: 1.5.1.1 Identify the target population and specify a sample size for the study. (2 marks) 1.5.1.2 State your methods of sampling, and explain why the chosen methods are appropriate for the study. (4 marks) 1.5.2 The Method of Data Collection: Briefly discuss the data collection approach that you would use for the proposed study by answering the following: 1.5.2.1 What data collection instruments and or methods would you use to collect your data? Provide a rationale for, and justify the appropriateness of, the proposed data collection methods. (4 marks) 1.5.2.2 What would inform the content of your proposed data collection instruments? (2 marks) 1.5.3 The Method of Data Analysis: Briefly discuss the data analysis approach that you would use for the proposed study by answering the following: 1.5.3.1 Briefly discuss what methods of data analysis would be used in your study (note: you are required to specify and explain, where necessary, the methods of analysis you would employ for each of the analysable research questions in 1.2). (4 marks)