A dynamic perspective on the resilience of firms: A systematic literature review and a framework for future research

This study aims to answer the following research question: how is the resilience of firms defined in the business and management field? In doing so, we answer recent calls for research about a more thorough conceptualisation of the resilience of firms and its definition. We conducted a systematic literature review of 66 selected papers published between 2000 and 2017. By means of inductive content analysis, we analyse the definitions of ‘resilience’ and elaborate a novel conceptual framework that introduces a dynamic perspective on the resilience of firms. The proposed framework overcomes existing definitional fragmentation and raises awareness of the temporal dimension in the conceptualisation of the resilience of firms. We contribute to extant business and management literature on the resilience of firms by proposing a model that articulates two main paths for explaining organisational resilience, i.e. absorptive resilience and adaptive resilience paths. We also identify a set of key capabilities needed to be successfully resilient at the different stages of the two paths.