{"id":37120,"date":"2020-09-02T10:00:00","date_gmt":"2020-09-02T09:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cupblog.bluefusesystems.com\/?p=37120"},"modified":"2020-09-01T11:07:59","modified_gmt":"2020-09-01T10:07:59","slug":"black-swans-and-generative-resilience","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.cambridge.org\/core\/blog\/2020\/09\/02\/black-swans-and-generative-resilience\/","title":{"rendered":"Black Swans and Generative Resilience"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"bsf_rt_marker\"><\/div>\n<p><em>\u2018Generative resilience\u2019<\/em> distinctively involves the imagination of the new in response to the unimagined \u2013 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 \u2018giving out government to scientists\u2019 (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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>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 <em>\u2018knowledgeable decentralization\u2019<\/em> exhibited superior capacity in the Covid crisis \u2013 as in the example of more horizontal, territorially distributed regional sanitary systems, versus more vertical, hospital-based ones, in the Italian experience.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Still, the comparison between \u2018centralized\u2019 and \u2018decentralized\u2019 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 \u2018single mode\u2019 are relatively fragile, whatever the privileged mode is. Generative resilience in high pressure, high stakes crises as the current one is best supported by <em>\u2018multimodal organization\u2019<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Read the full article \u2018Black Swans and Generative Resilience\u2019 published in <em>Management and Organization Review<\/em> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cambridge.org\/core\/journals\/management-and-organization-review\/article\/black-swans-and-generative-resilience\/56418227E21ED8B8E2603863CDA1D9A5\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">here<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Part of the <em>Management and Organization Review<\/em> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cambridge.org\/core\/journals\/management-and-organization-review\/forum-on-resilience\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Forum on resilience<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\u2018Generative resilience\u2019 distinctively involves the imagination of the new in response to the unimagined \u2013 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 [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":824,"featured_media":36254,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":true,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1426],"tags":[7193,1856,5508,7256,3892],"coauthors":[7842],"class_list":["post-37120","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-business-and-management","tag-covid-19","tag-management","tag-management-and-organization-review","tag-pandemic","tag-resilience"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cambridge.org\/core\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37120","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cambridge.org\/core\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cambridge.org\/core\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cambridge.org\/core\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/824"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cambridge.org\/core\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=37120"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.cambridge.org\/core\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37120\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cambridge.org\/core\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/36254"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cambridge.org\/core\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=37120"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cambridge.org\/core\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=37120"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cambridge.org\/core\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=37120"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cambridge.org\/core\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=37120"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}