TopIntroduction
This chapter aims to establish relationship between enterprise philosophy and enterprise resiliency in consideration of enterprise immunity as a moderator of the relationship. The author’s studies on ‘disaster resiliency’ and ‘configuration of a culture’ provide an insight that enterprise resiliency is not only surviving business under complex conditions but also it is prospering business under the conditions of ample opportunities. This text argues that plasticity of enterprise immune system is essential to response to the self and non-self elements under both the conditions. This section puts high emphasis on overcoming the confusions of change in view of enhancing actors’ adaptability, ensuring functional variability and promoting cultural comfortability. It discusses the issues of self and non-self and mind-sets of the executives to overcome the confusions of change. Leadership endurance, regulatory parenting, distress tolerance and rumor handling are essential to ensure the actors’ adaptability. Similarly, the patterns of working, eating/benefiting, celebrating, mannering, learning and timing preference are prescribed to ensure cultural comfortability. Inaction avoidance, compliance conformance, defensiveness and innovativeness are determined as instrumental efforts to enhance functional variability in an enterprise.
The notion of enterprise resiliency incorporates the matter of conformance to philosophy and immunity of an enterprise. When changes are compatible to the enterprise philosophy, then the immune system welcomes the changes, but when it finds incompatible to the enterprise philosophy, it prevents the changes.
Resiliency has two dimensions- surviving business in difficulties; and prospering business in opportunities. While surviving business, the immune system is actively fighting in against the unwanted elements to safeguard the enterprise. This does not mean that the immune system is fighting only while surviving the business but also it is fighting in against those elements that it considers the elements are non-self-elements; therefore, the immune system needs to recognize the self and non-self-elements for enterprise resiliency.
A strong enterprise philosophy is strengthening the enterprise resiliency. Enterprise philosophy and resiliency are establishing very close relationships, which is moderated by the enterprise immunity. Stronger the philosophy stronger the resiliency; weaker the philosophy, weaker the resiliency. It is obvious that an enterprise is passing through a series of change and development interventions and resiliency consideration is necessary to facilitate the interventions in a number of ways.
Chris Argyris (1964) suggests an intervention strategy for organizational change and development in four core areas. The organization should provide an environment for development of individual towards personal or psychological maturity, a program for organization change should aim at improving the interpersonal competence of the employees, changes must be introduced to transform the traditional pyramidal form of organization, and adoption of the techniques for programmed learning aimed at individual change should be introduced. Argyris sharpened the various facets of the human relations and participative schools of thought on organizations (Raghavulu, 2012) very well.
Arthur L. Stinchcombe (1965) argues that the key features of organizations in any industry are related to the era in which the industry emerges. Imprinting of such developmental period can have a long-lasting impact in the life of an enterprise. According to Michels's ‘iron law of oligarchy’, the top leaders tend to develop a strong personal interest in maintaining their powers and privileges. The law assumes that self-interest prevents such leaders from doing anything that would risk the survival of the enterprise—even if this means subverting the organization's original goals and principles (Britannica, 2011).
Yehezkel Dror (1971) states about coordination between the human-capacities and policy making capabilities to shape the environment, society, organizations, and human beings. Dror indicates that scientific knowledge is triggering change without supplying new values and belief systems that are most urgent in order to address the multidimensional nature of changes required in societal systems (Haragopal, 1996). Therefore, the enterprises should enable societies to raise the level of rationality as an important component of societal direction system.