We present a literature review about organizational resilience, with the goal of identifying how organizational resilience is conceptualized and assessed. The two research questions that drive the review are: (1) how is organizational resilience conceptualized? and (2) how is organizational resilience assessed? We answer the first question by analysing organizational resilience definitions and the attributes or characteristics that contribute to develop resilient organizations. We answer the second question by reviewing articles that focus on tools or methods to measure organizational resilience. Although there are three different ways to define organizational resilience, we found common ideas in the definitions. We also found that organizational resilience is considered a property, ability or capability that can be improved over time. However, we did not find consensus about the elements that contribute to improving the level of organizational resilience and how to assess it. Based on the results of the review, we propose a conceptualization of organizational resilience that integrates the three views found in the literature. We also propose a four-level Maturity Model for Organizational Resilience – MMOR. Using this model, the organization can be in one of the following levels based on its ability and capacity to handle disruptive events: fragile, robust, resilient or antifragile.

Simulation has become, in many application areas, a sine qua non . Most recently, COVID-19 has underlined the importance of simulation studies and limitations in current practices and methods. We identify four goals of methodological work for addressing these limitations. The first is to provide better support for capturing, representing, and evaluating the context of simulation studies, including research questions, assumptions, requirements, and activities contributing to a simulation study. In addition, the composition of simulation models and other simulation studies’ products must be supported beyond syntactical coherence, including aspects of semantics and purpose, enabling their effective reuse. A higher degree of automating simulation studies will contribute to more systematic, standardized simulation studies and their efficiency. Finally, it is essential to invest increased effort into effectively communicating results and the processes involved in simulation studies to enable their use in research and decision making. These goals are not pursued independently of each other, but they will benefit from and sometimes even rely on advances in other sub-fields. In this article, we explore the basis and interdependencies evident in current research and practice and delineate future research directions based on these considerations.

Our aim is to justify why organizational resilience cannot be measured in an ex-ante way and the consequences we can draw from it. To achieve this goal, we examine the relations between different approaches to organizational resilience and the tight interrelation between organizational resilience and organizational and dynamic capabilities. We argue that most proposals about organizational resilience conceptualization, and the metrics derived from them, are closely related. They represent the same core concepts, facts, and relations. Additionally, far from there being no consensus about organizational resilience, researchers are presenting the same ideas with different terms. This implies that there are no better or worse definitions or conceptualizations for organizational resilience, but models are more or less suitable depending on the approach to be established. We agree with the proposal that organizational resilience is a dynamic capability and, as such, it should be studied and considered. This review led us to conclude that because organizational resilience is a dynamic process, it cannot be measured or estimated in an ex-ante way. The fact that organizational resilience cannot be measured brings us to the question of how organizations can address organizational resilience improvement, evaluate their progress, and the tools they can use.