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Archives of Business Research – Vol. 10, No. 2

Publication Date: February 25, 2022

DOI:10.14738/abr.102.11708. Almufarji, M. B. S. B. A., & Husin, N. A. (2022). The Characteristics of Resilient Organizations Within Crisis Management: A General

Review of the Sultanate of Oman’s Response to Cyclone Shaheen During October 2021. Archives of Business Research, 10(02). 1-

14.

Services for Science and Education – United Kingdom

The Characteristics of Resilient Organizations Within Crisis

Management: A General Review of the Sultanate of Oman’s

Response to Cyclone Shaheen During October 2021

Mohamed Bin Salim Bin Abdullah Almufarji

Faculty of Business and Accountancy, Universiti Selangor, Malaysia

Associate Prof. Dr. Nor Azilah Husin

Faculty of Business and Accountancy, Universiti Selangor, Malaysia

ABSTRACT

Purpose: This paper examines crisis management literature, and historical rare

events, alongside a recent rare event. The purpose of the paper is to ask whether

we, as an industry, are achieving the resilience that technology, and changing

societies require, and are those societies responding effectively to the challenge of

the diversity of this century’s global organizational resilience factor needs, of which

climate change is just one. The paper seeks to facilitate a wider understanding of

the organizational resilience, institutional, and individual limitations, and failures,

contributing to those rare events. Originality: It is clear that with each decade, each

generation, a lack of imagination appears to have corrupted institutional,

organizational, and management responses. During this original literary

presentation, in each situation, whether man-made or natural, greater imagination

or foresight in the application of resilience processes may not have prevented the

event, however they would almost without exception have mitigated the losses.

Approach: Presenting these events in this manner offers real, relatable situations,

and should therefore be more contextual to the reality and purpose of resilience as

an organizational quality. Although the exercise may appear simplistic, simplicity

should not be confused with clarity and candour of an enquiry-based learning

implementation where the research is adapted to respond to its contemporary

environment, and is encouraged by a dearth of plain-speaking analysis of

contemporary responses. Findings: This review of the reaction and response of the

Oman National Emergency Management Centre to the challenges presented by

Cyclone Shaheen, their preparedness, response effectiveness, and recovery... their

organizational resilience.

Keywords: resilience, organizational, crisis management, coping, anticipation.

INTRODUCTION

The likely impacts of ongoing climate change, reported Al Kalbani “will cause serious damage

to the economy of Oman which already suffers from aridity, soil salinity, recurrent drought and

water scarcity.”[1]. Thus, the response to weather patterns in the Gulf of Oman has proven a

driving force towards coherent crisis management in the region. Initially, scholars appeared

united in their definition of organizational resilience with Horne [10] defining simply, the

ability to reverse adversity,” and the following year, he simplified this definition to read as the

“ability to recover.” However, these appear significantly more generic, linguistic definitions

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Archives of Business Research (ABR) Vol. 10, Issue 2, February-2022

Services for Science and Education – United Kingdom

with Oxford Languages offering two responses, “the capacity to recover from difficulty,

toughness,” and “the ability of an object to spring back into shape, elasticity.” Both are, in

simplistic notions, correct, however across the following twenty years, organizational

resilience has seen scholars divert from the simplistic to the complex and use associative

vocabulary, synonyms and paraphrasing to express their own brands of resilience, which,

despite Annarelli and Nonino’s [2], insistence that, “academic literature has reached a shared

consensus on the definition of resilience,” in the construct that has become organizational and

institutional management, that is clearly debatable. The vocabulary of a long list of scholars

includes ‘rare events’ [17] ‘surprises’ [17] ‘disruptions’ [12] ‘crises’ [22] ‘adaptation’[15]and

‘survival’ [13] just a few that emerge from the research, affirming that while there is common

ground, consensus remains elusive. Organizational resilience is a complex organism, in that its

effectiveness is both influenced by individuals, organizations, infrastructure, logistics,

capability, and preparedness factors, while it also meaningfully influences community and

societal security, coherent rural and urban responses, and consequences. In fact, Ruiz-Martin

et al [24] went further, stating that organizational or institutional resilience is, “influenced by

resilient individuals, resilience engineering, infrastructure resilience, cyber resilience, system

resilience, supply chain resilience and business resilience, and in turn influences community

resilience, societal resilience, economic resilience, city or urban resilience, territory resilience

and socio-ecological resilience.” Ducheck [8] explains that there are three key

conceptualizations of organizational resilience that will withstand scrutiny, being those that

treat resilience as an outcome, as an explanation of processes, and those that focus on

capabilities, and perhaps is insistent that all three therefore require analysis or audit in the

wake of, and here we will use the original description, a ‘rare event.’ The outcome, of course,

will be the first element reconstructed as it is an immediate, and very human response to

traumatic events. Who is well? Who is not? Who still needs us? What do we need to do to make

this better? Can we, in fact, put Humpty Dumpty back together again? Which begs the question

that, in all circumstances, in all situations, in all rare events, is response the most desired, and

functionality the most necessary, in terms of organizational resilience? In asking whether we,

as an industry, are achieving the resilience that technology, and changing societies require, and

are those societies responding effectively to the challenge of the diversity of this century’s

global organizational resilience factor needs. Rationalizing historical rare events, as Ducheck

[10] explained, in the light of contemporary organizational resilience processes, may prove

valuable in predicting, not the events, but certainly organizational preparedness and its ability

to effectively respond to their needs. The qualitative depiction of the rare events reviewed in

the following section has been presented as much to explore their diversity as their

prominence, and while there have been greater events, greater disasters, and greater loss of

life, it was that broad diversity of events that the paper sought to include. The decision to review

the Omani reaction through the pages of local media reporting is a reflection of the general

difficulty in obtaining reliable documentation and statistics through ministerial and

governmental agencies. What soon becomes apparent is the unwitting nature of the events

when they are examined retrospectively, and this should not be left to hindsight, but utilized as

part of an educational, learning process in a loosely structured comparison of the events. An

examination of immediate media was the key to the initial approach to examining the Sultanate

of Oman’s response to Cyclone Shaheen. It was clear that sections of the media were allowed

significantly more reporting freedom throughout the crisis, and along with social media, the

population remained well informed throughout, even though there is a cultural tendency

against circulating adverse news. It is clear that being environmentally, climate change aware,