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Building resilient organizations: The roles of top-down vs. bottom-up organizing

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  • Stephan Leitner

Abstract

Organizations face numerous challenges posed by unexpected events such as energy price hikes, pandemic disruptions, terrorist attacks, and natural disasters, and the factors that contribute to organizational success in dealing with such disruptions often remain unclear. This paper analyzes the roles of top-down and bottom-up organizational structures in promoting organizational resilience. To do so, an agent-based model of stylized organizations is introduced that features learning, adaptation, different modes of organizing, and environmental disruptions. The results indicate that bottom-up designed organizations tend to have a higher ability to absorb the effects of environmental disruptions, and situations are identified in which either top-down or bottom-up designed organizations have an advantage in recovering from shocks.

Suggested Citation

  • Stephan Leitner, 2023. "Building resilient organizations: The roles of top-down vs. bottom-up organizing," Papers 2305.07352, arXiv.org, revised Jan 2024.
  • Handle: RePEc:arx:papers:2305.07352
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    1. Lyra J. Colfer & Carliss Y. Baldwin, 2016. "The mirroring hypothesis: theory, evidence, and exceptions," Industrial and Corporate Change, Oxford University Press and the Associazione ICC, vol. 25(5), pages 709-738.
    2. Girish Prayag & Samuel Spector & Caroline Orchiston & Mesbahuddin Chowdhury, 2020. "Psychological resilience, organizational resilience and life satisfaction in tourism firms: insights from the Canterbury earthquakes," Current Issues in Tourism, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 23(10), pages 1216-1233, May.
    3. Stephan Leitner, 2023. "Designing organizations for bottom-up task allocation: The role of incentives," Papers 2301.00410, arXiv.org.
    4. Friederike Wall, 2018. "Emergence of Task Formation in Organizations: Balancing Units' Competence and Capacity," Journal of Artificial Societies and Social Simulation, Journal of Artificial Societies and Social Simulation, vol. 21(2), pages 1-6.
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