Bouncing Back or Bouncing Forward? Knowledge Drivers of Absorptive, Adaptive, and Transformative Resilience in Crises

Dear Colleagues,

In these last decades, black swans—low-probability, high-consequence events—are becoming more frequent than ever and reverberating through all levels of society. Among these events, the COVID-19 pandemic has revealed the complex, interdependent global system and intersected with global megatrends: i.e., an aging population, widening social inequalities, volitile economic growth, the digitization and platformization of society, climate change, and the exponential growth of urbanization. These megatrends are all distributed on a wider economic supercycle and consequently all have dramatically deeper antecedents than their alleged cause. 

The confluence of broader trends with this black swan brings new issues into relief for decision makers, companies, and institutions. Resilience thinking has (re)gained its centrality. But which type of resilience is really needed to face this and future black swans? Is it absorptive, adaptive, or transformative resilience? The question has implications in the present but also going forward with how decision makers, organizations, and institutions prepare for and respond in interdependent systems, where seemingly unrelated trends or events can set off a chain reaction. 

In fact, resilience is a multifaceted phenomenon. It can be understood both as the ability to “bounce back” (i.e., absorbing and adapting) in response to sudden changes and as the ability to “bounce forward” by exploring how knowledge leads to transformations in response to shocks as windows of opportunities.

Moreover, in unpredictable, emerging, and complex environments—as we are dramatically seeing during the COVID-19 pandemic—a crucial aspect is to be able to “bounce forward” (instead of “bouncing back”). In answering to this challenge, knowledge asset dynamics play a crucial role. 

Knowledge asset dynamics clearly emerge from the exploration–exploitation dilemma. In fact, when dealing with a changing scenario where a whole reconfiguration of the environment is needed and consolidated schemes appear no longer useful, exploring knowledge is an effective way to enable a transformative and viable resilience at socio-economic and institutional levels. Moreover, knowledge assets represent strategic resources and sources of organizational value creation: Their effective development and deployment are at the basis of organizational value creation capacity.

In this line, for this Special Issue of Administrative Sciences, we welcome submissions, both conceptual and empirical, from a variety of disciplines, perspectives, and methodological approaches. We also encourage submissions that can craft an open interdisciplinary conversation with other socio-cultural and managerial approaches. 

Topics of this Special include (but are not restricted to) the following:

• Historical antecedents in the interplay between knowledge, resilience, and socio-economic transformation;
• Black swans, knowledge asset dynamics, and resilience;
• Interplay between dynamic capabilities and transformative resilience;
• Knowledge exploration, social innovation, and resilience;
• Knowledge-building processes and sensemaking during crises;
• Designing resilience during systemic shocks;
• The role of companies, institutions, and decision makers in reinforcing and/or balancing systems’ resilient behaviors;
• Resilience as the capability for knowledge exploration;
• Resilience between the exploitation and exploration of knowledge;
• Implementing resilient policies and intervention strategies to address first-order and second-order change.

Dr. Antonio La Sala
Dr. Ryan P. Fuller
Dr. Andrew Pyle
Guest Editors

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• black swans
• mega trends
• megacrises
• knowledge asset dynamics
• resilience
• adaptation
• transformation