WOA 2018

The Workshop of the ASSIOA (Associazione italiana di organizzazione aziendale) 2018 will be held in Rome, Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, on 15-16 February 2018. The theme of the workshop is: "THE RESILIENT ORGANIZATION: DESIGN, CHANGE AND INNOVATION IN THE GLOBALIZED ECONOMY".

Organizations are more and more called to tackle a number of shocks and unpredictable events that influence their actions and performance. Unexpected and sudden exogenous changes such as natural (e.g. earthquakes, tsunamis, hurricanes) as well as man-made disasters (e.g. terrorism, cyberattacks) are increasingly affecting structures, processes and behaviors that organizations design and manage for routine and day-by-day activities. Other major unpredicted disturbances might be related to rapid evolution of market conditions as well as to unexpected consequences of innovative initiatives in organizations. Even activities such as the adoption of new technologies or the implementation of restructuring interventions may often give rise to unexpected consequences that may challenge actions and tasks routinely performed in organizations. The impact of such disturbances may vary a lot. Some organizations have been shown to be more sensitive to shocks, showing rigidities and a generalized inertia to unexpected events. Others are instead more capable to adapt and react. Some organizations are even able to take profit from challenging, new environmental scenarios and change conditions. Resiliency – generically defined as the capacity of a system to resist to disturbances as well as to the speed of return or recovery to its pre-shock state – is of quintessential importance for modern organizations.

The theme of the workshop aims to bring to attention questions about how organizations manage unexpected and sudden changes and shocks. Despite the abundance of studies on this topic, we know little about models (organizational structures), skills and behaviors (people), practices and routines (processes) that enable resiliency in organizations. The workshop welcomes conceptual, empirical and methodological contributions, either in the form of papers or projects, which tackle the theme of resiliency in organizations. Workshop contributions may refer to one or more of the following research areas/tracks: organization, people and processes.

For more information, please visit the website of the event.