Fostering Organizational Resilience : Managing knowledge through practices and routines

Abstract: Background: Challenging times have affected all economic sectors and every business environment. Hence the importance of developing resilience, particularly in startups that are young organizations characterized by dynamism and often lack resources. Knowledge is described in this paper as a crucial resource that, when accurately managed, can be determinant in the startup survival and constitute a critical differentiator and advantage. However, managing and exploiting internal knowledge might not be enough, thus the importance of institutionalizing organizational learning in exploring and further internalizing external knowledge sources. Fostering and strengthening organizational knowledge capability can positively influence the development of resilience in the organization. Research Problem: Previous research has focused on resilience from the individual perspective and has recently centered on the disruption caused by the Covid19 Pandemic. Further research should address resilience from the organizational perspective acknowledging the operational challenges faced in the particular business context of a startup. Moreover, previous research has established organizational learning as both an input and an output of organizational resilience, exhibiting the link between better resilience capacity and higher learning skills. However, further research is needed to correlate the organizational competencies that enable the company to anticipate future issues and their impact on the amount of resilience deployed. Research Purpose: This study aims at exploring how, through knowledge management practices and routines, knowledge as an essential resource can be internalized and utilized in developing a more resilient organization capable of foreseeing and reacting to future challenges. Research Question: How can knowledge management practices and routines be implemented to actively foster resilience? Research Method: Qualitative, retroductive research; Ontology and epistemology – Critical realism; Methodology – Single case study; Data collection - 9 semi-structured in-depth interviews; Sampling –Purposive and snowball sampling; Data analysis - empirical, retroduction, and corroboration. Conclusion: Deriving from our findings a model was developed addressing how organizational knowledge can be fostered through routines and practices to manage internal and external knowledge in developing knowledge capability and institutionalizing organizational learning. Furthermore, consideration was placed on the ability to foresee and react in a timely manner to current and future challenges that might be faced.