Organisational resilience: a qualitative study about how organisations handle trends and their effects on business models from experts’ views

Abstract

Purpose Organisations need to tackle emerging trends that affect business models (BM) by modifying, changing or re‐designing their models. Attending this complex environment by understanding trends and the strategies actors use to handle these competing demands is strategically important for innovation management and sustaining organisations.. Therefore, this study aims to investigate how organisations assess and deal with these complex and relevant challenges. Design/methodology/approach A total of 18 higher management experts between the ages of 27 and 59 years participated in this four-month qualitative interview-based study. The interviews were analysed by using systematic, qualitative content analysis. Findings Results showed that all elements of a BM are influenced by emerged trends, and how organisations deal with them can decide whether the impact poses as risk or offers opportunities. Trends trigger two different strategies – reactive and proactive resilience strategies – which are closely related to the change sensitivity of the attributional resilience model, thereby presenting a crucial factor for enhancing resilience. Nevertheless, the proactive resilience strategy seems to be more promising for enhancing organisational resilience regarding the influence of trends on their BM. Moreover, this study found that the usage of foresight methods might be suitable as an important tool for proactive resilience strategy to modification, change or re-design of BM and consequently anticipate trends. Originality/value Overall, this study is one of the first that explains how BMs are influenced by trends and how organisations handle them by using organisational resilience strategies.