Independent research commissioned by BSI has explored business attitudes to organizational resilience. Two thirds (64 percent) of the 120 CEOs from around the world surveyed for the research admit that the concept of organizational resilience is inconsistently understood across their business , despite 70 percent believing it to be vital to the long-term viability of their operation.
Encouragingly 28 percent of CEOs are confident they secure an advantage in the market from organizational resilience, almost half (49 percent) claiming it enhances their company’s reputation and 39 percent suggesting it has improved their organization’s competitiveness through quicker and better targeted responses to opportunities. The research also found that North American firms are more than twice as likely as European firms to have boosted the quality of their products and services through organizational resilience, something that is most commonly held back by short-term financial thinking, a lack of skills and a failure to focus on the management of resilience.
Worldwide more than half of CEOs (52 percent) attributed failures in organizational resilience to a lack of skills amongst their workforce. In a signal as to the importance of the issue, more than half (57 percent) of CEOs take personal responsibility for driving organizational resilience across their business. Just a quarter (25 percent) entrusted responsibility to colleagues below C-level in their seniority.