Lecture 2

Question 1

What are dynamic capabilities?

Answer 1

• Dynamic capabilities enable companies to create, deploy and protect the intagible assets that support the superior long-term business performance.
• The foundations of these capabilities consist in skills, processes, procedures, organizational structures, decision rules and distinct disciplines that motivate and
  promote the detection (sensing) and capture (seizing) opportunities in order to reconfigure (transforming) their capabilities.
• Dynamic capabilities consist of creating resource combinations that create value and are difficult to imitate, including an effective coordination of interorganizational relationships on a global basis that is able to provide competitive advantages to the company.

SCA

Question 2

What are the 10 capabilities that Gartner reported that help with organizational resilience?

Answer 2

Alignment: great leadership, disciplined IT investment, compelling vision, continuous strategy, robust relationships.

Anticipation: IT as differentiator, anticipating change, balanced risk taking

Adaptability: fluid culture, enterprise agility

Question 3

What is organizational resilience?

Answer 3

Resilience is the ability to maintain the functionality of a system when it is perturbed or the ability to maintain the elements required to renew or reorganize if a disturbance alters the structure of function of a system (Walker, 2002).

Question 4

What are the four states of the desirability system states?

Answer 4

Rigidity quadrant (L desirability, H resilience)
Adaptability quadrant (H desirability, H resilience)
Transcience quadrant (L desirability, L resilience)
vulnerability quadrant (H dedirability, L resilience)

Question 5

What are the 5 characteristics of high reliability organizations?

Answer 5

1. Preoccupation with failure - small failure must be noticed: focusing on points of failure by
   increasing alertness, fighting inertia, looking for new alternatives, identifying errors, and developing
   processes to prevent mistakes.
2. Reluctance to simplify - “distinctiveness retained rather than lost in a category”: promotes a
   thoughtful, data-driven process that considers the uniqueness of a problem before applying a solution.
   It discourages the form-fitting application or popular ‘best practice’ solutions to problems without
   thorough consideration of the problem’s unique context.
3. Sensitivity to operations – “notice nuances that portend failure”: recognizes that a solution to one
   problem may create another and therefore process-wide measurement is essential. This is
   accomplished through sharing real time data, shifting problems to experts, and engaging in face to face
   communication.
4. An under-specification of structures refers to using the highest level of recognized expertise in
   improving reliability, not necessarily the higher-ranking “boss”.
5. Commitment to resilience – ability to bounce back by “locating pathways to recovery”; encourages
   the use of individual initiative to maintain process improvements long-term (relying on the expertise of
   front-line workers).