‘Generative resilience’ distinctively involves the imagination of the new in response to the unimagined – indeed a difficult operation, calling for particular forms of thinking, not only for particular structures. In fact, no system is going to be robust if decision making is not robust. The ingredients of robust thinking in the face of risk and uncertainty are in turn difficult to specify. Some of the instruments in the toolkit are indicated in this intervention: the point is not ‘giving out government to scientists’ (with the risk that they will then reason taking into account political utility), but to apply the science-like procedures for rational imagination, information exchange and disclosure, rigorous hypotheses testing, and investment in prevention in the decisionmaking processes of both technical committees and political organs.

On that basis, we can then pose the question of which structures can best support this sort of wise judgment under uncertainty and increase fast intervention capacity at the same time. As it was partially already known from the study of high reliability organization, structures embodying ‘knowledgeable decentralization’ exhibited superior capacity in the Covid crisis – as in the example of more horizontal, territorially distributed regional sanitary systems, versus more vertical, hospital-based ones, in the Italian experience.

Still, the comparison between ‘centralized’ and ‘decentralized’ systems, even qualified in terms of knowledgeability, does not capture the whole story, and the debates on whether centralized or distributed governance is better are partially misframed. If a range of partially contrasting performance criteria are to be met, like velocity in decision making, low error rates, generation of new solutions, and low waste of resources, then a mix of mechanisms is likely to be necessary: wide expert consultation, communitarian support, democratic control, and fast authority-based decisions. Organizations governed in a ‘single mode’ are relatively fragile, whatever the privileged mode is. Generative resilience in high pressure, high stakes crises as the current one is best supported by ‘multimodal organization’.

Read the full article ‘Black Swans and Generative Resilience’ published in Management and Organization Review here

Part of the Management and Organization Review Forum on resilience