Exploring the Intellectual Structure of Research in Organizational Resilience through a Bibliometric Approach

Abstract

Organizations, businesses, and communities at large are exposed to unprecedented adversities, uncertainties, economic, social, and ecological shocks and disruptions caused by natural disasters, climate change, political turmoil, global recession, economic instability, fluctuations in energy-source prices, war and terrorism dilemmas, pandemics, and several other newly rising social turbulences. This situation has forced stakeholders to revisit and redefine their strategies to effectively and efficiently combat adversity and uncertainty within their business domain. One concern attracting attention is organizational resilience. Strategists and decision-makers are keener to secure, sustain, and progress against unpredicted shocks by making organizations highly resilient. The present research provides in-depth insight into the foundation, evolution, progression, and dissemination of organizational resilience as a promising research field, doing so by deploying advanced bibliometric techniques on the Elsevier Scopus-listed dataset of all 484 published journal articles up to 31 December 2022. Herein, it is inferred that the concept of organizational resilience is evolving and has great potential to become a key research domain due to ever-increasing adversities around the globe.

1. Introduction

This research study’s intent is to understand the evolution, progression, pattern of publications, and dominating subthemes within the domain of organizational resilience (OR) as an emerging field of research. Additionally, it aims to trace the regions, countries, institutions, and authors who have contributed substantial research to shape the current research drive on OR. Further, it enlightens potential future research in light of the adversities and uncertainties faced by businesses, societies, and organizations. The statistical analyses of the temporal pattern of the emerging OR research theme provide an in-depth insight into this field for both academicians and practitioners.

This study envisioned OR through the lenses of “Social Turbulence” and Big Challenges”, which envision communities as being exposed to vulnerability and uncertainty more frequently and are hence in need of well-thought-out responses to such turbulence and challenges. “Big Challenges” are predominantly caused by social, economic, and environmental factors, and their nonlinear nature, uncertainty, spontaneity, and speed pose an increased risk of transforming situations into crises [1].

In socially turbulent times, the environment becomes volatile, business norms shift to unstable paradigms, routine functions face unique disruptions, confusion reigns, it is more difficult to reach consensus, existing solutions are inadequate, and devastating events become crises. To deal with such vulnerabilities, social turbulence demands swift, comprehensive, and customized responses from societies, organizations, and individuals [2,3]. The perceived consequences of vulnerability create space for urgent responses. The pattern of urgency in response is determined by the organization’s level of preparation, ability to anticipate challenges, capacities, capabilities to bounce back, and ability to identify opportunities lurking in the murkiness of crises [4,5].

Sources of social turbulence include but are not limited to political, social, economic, geographic, and environmental factors. Equally, each such event has its own diverse dynamics, so a proven response in one situation might be ineffective and irrelevant in other situations.

The uniqueness of each turbulent event demands a versatile and local approach to tackle it effectively; for instance, political unrest might have an entirely unique set of contributing factors, and therefore a very targeted and situational response might be necessary for effective resolution. Conversely, social turbulence caused by a global pandemic of uncertain traits (for instance, COVID-19) posing high uncertainty, rapid spread, and severe disruptions makes the response more uncertain, escalates confusion, earns the least consensus, and ignites agitation [6,7,8].

A resilient organization prepares itself through a learning process to combat uncertain disruptions effectively in a social turbulence environment. The organizational learning process entails (I) scientific approaches to enhance organizational ability to predict and forecast the most unlikely future disruptions; (II) building organizational capabilities to absorb uncertain shocks to lessen damaging impacts on organizational processes; (III) creating and promoting a culture of adaptability and hence the ability to secure adaptive scenarios in vulnerable circumstances; and (IV) striving through the disruption with the aim of excelling in the post-disruption era rather than just struggling to survive. OR research aims to create valuable knowledge for organizations to attain greater vigilance, preparedness, and action plans for unexpected, uncertain, and devastating vulnerabilities.

Contrarily, a brittle organization attains the least resiliency, behaves haphazardly in crises, and finds it hard to absorb disruptions and bounce back. A brittle organization finds itself in a disastrous situation in times of social turbulence caused by uncertain vulnerability and sudden shocks; these organizations are characterized by an inability to forecast disruptions and failure to absorb shocks, resulting in reactive rather than adaptive behavior and an inability to perceive disruptions as opportunities and instead retreating into survival mode. A brittle organization always perceives social turbulence as a source of disastrous consequences, whereas a resilient organization takes social turbulence as an opportunity to test its capabilities and bounce back with more profound achievements [9,10,11].

Usually, organizations are well prepared for routine challenges; however, challenges posed by abrupt, unpredicted, and uncertain shocks are not those for which organizations are prepared. An organization’s ability to anticipate, absorb, and respond to such disastrous events is considered OR. The unprecedented emerging adversities and uncertainties facing organizations in the form of natural disasters, political turmoil, economic instability, ecological disorder, pandemics, and social dilemmas are demanding new organizational paradigms and proactive strategies to combat, absorb, rebuild, and ultimately sustain organizational performance [12,13]. Such shocks, disruptions, and adversities are inevitable for almost all organizations, and avoiding such situations becomes most likely impossible [14,15]. Exposure to such adversities causes huge economic, social, and psychological damage, and organizations are threatened, even for their survival [16,17]. To prepare for such unpredictable and unforeseen events, organizations need to build their ability to recover quickly and effectively and become resilient. Resilience is the ability of an organization to bounce back effectively, efficiently, and powerfully by absorbing unusual shocks and extraordinary disruptions [18,19,20,21].

Uncertainty associated with adversity may have damaging consequences due to the low ability to predict the occurrence of such events and their timing. This situation highlights the need for organizations to develop the ability to anticipate extraordinary disruptions well in advance of their occurrence. An organization can enhance its ability to forecast such events by incorporating both quantitative and qualitative approaches [22,23,24,25]. Making well-informed judgments based on the real-world database can minimize the level of uncertainty. The market expertise of experienced employees might also aid organizational anticipation of the potential occurrence of unusual events.

The concept of resilience evolved from an individual paradigm to combat highly depressive shocks in one’s personal, professional, or societal life: divorce, severe financial losses, death of dear ones, betrayal by close friends, job terminations, sustained long-term unemployment, losing respect or dignity in the community, and other disruptions [26,27,28,29,30]. The ability to recover from such miseries with minimum damage and bounce back to normal life is a huge challenge that requires a set of attributes that are either built-in or need to be learned [31,32,33,34].

The philosophy behind OR is similar in many ways to that behind individual resilience [35,36,37,38,39]. However, here the adversities are being collectively faced by organizations, and many internal and external stakeholders could be potential victims. The response in such situations is more likely to be collective than individual. The response mechanism is multidimensional, as adversity might have different degrees and consequences. Given this, defining the dynamics of OR becomes more challenging [40].

The recent unprecedented development in the field of network construction and pattern recognition for large datasets has attracted immense attention from researchers seeking to explore their field through a more scientific approach in an effective, quantitative, and reliable manner [41,42]. The bibliometric data is highly enriched with plenty of valuable observations, for example, publication title, authors’ details, publication year, outlet source of publication, main and sub-research domains, contributing institutions and countries, etc.

Bibliometric analysis has been made simpler and more powerful through the development of advanced computer-based bibliometric analysis programs. There is frequent evidence of published research that deploys bibliometric methods to synthesize a research concept and its evolution.

The development and progression of any research concept, theme, or theory is a scientific outcome of effective, authentic, valuable, and replicable published work in different kinds of outlets, for example, journals, conference proceedings, books, newsletters, etc. These published works create an impact on the landscape of any research field that reflects the intellectual structure, knowledge streams, and dynamics of both horizontal and vertical progression. Exploring the foundation, evolution, dissemination, clustering, and spread of the research field is characterized by several bibliometric attributes [43,44,45,46,47,48,49,50].

To explore the foundation and evolution of OR as a research concept, a bibliometric analysis approach has been deployed here. Bibliometric methods inspired several researchers [51,52,53,54,55,56,57] and the frequency of deploying these techniques has shown an increasing trend over the last decade.

This paper is further comprised of a literature review section, research methodology, and bibliometric statistics on several characteristics. Then, in the next section, the results of data analyses, important findings, critical discussion, and conclusive remarks are provided. Finally, research implications and methodology-related limitations are mentioned.

2. Literature Review

Individuals, businesses, organizations, communities, and even countries often face uncertain, unpredictable, and unprecedented events that might pose very complex challenges [58,59]. Depending on the magnitude and severity of the disruption caused by these events, the affected entity might face the threat of its survival. Such adversities, although rare, might cause serious financial damage [60,61]. Therefore, a proactive approach towards formulating a policy for dealing with such adversities is essential for all kinds of entities. An emerging approach that promotes the theme of dealing with adversity is “Resilience”. The entities (individuals, businesses, communities, and countries) that are characterized by resilience are known as being resilient [62,63,64,65,66].

Change is an inevitable reality that brings several challenges to organizations. Often, organizations consider change to be a regular feature of their operations; therefore, almost every organization has a risk management plan to deal with the changes associated with their businesses. More often, these changes are well anticipated ahead of time, and preparation for such situations is almost a routine job. The predictable nature of events allows organizations to develop a proactive plan to deal with them. However, events of unpredictable and unprecedented nature can hardly be dealt with via routine risk management plans. The severity of such catastrophic occurrences might pose threats even to an organization’s ultimate survival. Many organizations did not bounce back to their normal status once they were exposed to any of the unpredicted adversities and turbulence. As the occurrences and severity of such uncertain adversities are becoming more frequent in recent times, organizations need to become resilient [67,68,69,70,71,72].

2.1. Organizational Resilience

The notion of resilience has been defined and discussed in several contexts, and therefore, it is hard to derive a common definition across all disciplines. However, some common grounds and overlapping themes can be identified from the available definitions of OR: (1) elasticity of a system to absorb a shock(s) and return to its pre-shock status; (2) capacity to combat unforeseen adversities, disruptions, and shutdowns; (3) a learned approach towards the process of efficient anticipation of any potential adversity; the ways to engage and channel organizational resources to cope with the adverse situation; and finally, raising the level of adaptability by smoothing the transformative process among the internal stakeholders [73,74,75,76,77,78,79,80,81].

A resilient organization is characterized not only by its ability to secure survival out of adversity but, in some instances, by its ability to perform even better. OR is an outcome of several organizational factors: human resources, technology, operations, a strategic plan, risk management, data-driven strategies, and organizational synergy. It is argued that resilience within these organizational factors would ultimately lead an organization down a resiliency path [82,83,84,85,86,87].

OR is attributed to many organizational factors: resources, capabilities, and structures. It is argued that an organization with abundant resources, a high level of capabilities, and efficient structures could achieve resilience against any type of severe adversity. Resource enrichment boosts an organization’s ability to combat unforeseen challenges and disruptions in times of crisis. Given the traditional approach to resilience as anticipation, coping, and adaptation, a resilient organization develops its ability to anticipate any sudden change that could escalate into a major threat and thereby proactively enhances its capabilities through available resources and infrastructure in multiple ways to prepare itself to combat adversity. Finally, resources acquired, increased capabilities, and an efficient structure facilitate an organization’s adaptation process. This approach of anticipation, coping, and adaptation is a continuous process and brings learned experience to an organization, which, through an effective knowledge management process, becomes an asset for future adverse events [88,89,90,91,92,93,94,95,96,97].

Several key areas have been identified by the researchers that provide a basic foundation for an organization to become well-versed in the three stages of resiliency: anticipation, coping, and adaptation. These factors include but are not limited to leadership, infrastructure, environment, culture, knowledge economy, business model, innovation, and resilience plans.

The advocacy behind the role of leadership in developing and promoting resiliency suggests that leaders are policymakers who provide a roadmap to their organizations. Leaders can comprehend the philosophy behind the mission of becoming a resilient organization; it is their understanding and ideology about the resiliency theme that can drive, lead, and promote the propagation of the value and vitality of this ever-needed characteristic [98,99,100,101].

Further, as resilience is not a one-time achievement but a permanent behavior and capability that might be challenged and tested under several different settings and circumstances over time, it should be realized and embedded within organizational culture as a permanent trait. Leadership is critical to the process of cultivating resilience in the workplace during all three stages of resilience. Leaders who can foresee and anticipate adversity ahead of its actual occurrence could lead and guide organizations in much more effective ways during and after a disruption. The real challenge during the adversity cycle is to absorb the social, economic, and psychological shocks with the least damage to the organization. Finally, leaders can promote positivity among internal stakeholders toward accepting and fighting back against unexpected interruptions and shocks [102,103].

2.2. Resilient Organization

A resilient organization considers continuous improvement and upgradation and never assumes a perfectionistic approach towards their processes and systems; it believes that preparation for unexpected shocks is much more complex than preparing for day-to-day business challenges. Resources required to tackle and respond to routine process disruptions can be managed in a well-planned manner; however, the nature of sudden and uncertain disruptions can hardly be thought of well ahead of their occurrence; therefore, practically, it is quite challenging to plan a response to an uncertain vulnerability [104,105,106].

A resilient organization learns from each disruption and builds their knowledge, experience, and other skills to accumulate resources as a means of combating the future. This learning becomes an integral part of organizational systems and, in future crises, helps an organization face, respond to, and emerge strongly from such disastrous events much more effectively than brittle organizations. A resilient organization develops a sense of system awareness and calibrates the system very minutely by paying deep attention to process deviations. This proactive approach to system behavior helps organizations cultivate the ability to foresee uncertain future vulnerability with confidence. Acting upon minute process details can nurture a culture that elevates a positive attitude towards such disruptions. An organization that creates a culture rooted in proactive behavior is likely to more effectively face uncertain and sudden disruption [107,108,109,110].

A resilient organization acts in a highly reliable manner in times of crisis and transforms apparent threats caused by sudden disruption into potential opportunities. In comparison to a brittle organization, a resilient organization has better chances of not only anticipating, absorbing, responding to, and bouncing back to its former state but also excelling much ahead of that prior state. This transformation is due to organizational structure, culture, and resources. A resilient organization believes in the continuous improvement of its systems and works to promote its capabilities. The essential capabilities to achieve OR are routinely addressed. The capabilities should be targeted to promote OR include competence, skills, and knowledge of uncertainty regarding organizational processes and systems [111,112,113].

In recent times, bibliometric methods have been deployed across various fields of research, for instance, service management, quality control, technological innovation, construction management, web accessibility, fuzzy sets, green supply, sports management, etc., to explore the associated research domain in a quantitative manner. This study is mainly meant to explore OR as a distinct research domain by deploying bibliometric methods.

3. Methodology

For data collection and further bibliometric analyses, a three-stage, step-by-step process is followed. In the first stage, from the Elsevier Scopus database, research articles essentially containing “organizational resilience” words in the publication title were searched and downloaded in RIS. and CSV. file formats with all bibliometric characteristics. In the second stage, the dataset was refined by editing/eliminating articles with incomplete bibliometric characteristics. In the third stage, publication year-wise trends, prominent authors, frequent publication outlets, contributing institutions, and countries are analyzed. Finally, more advanced bibliometric analyses—citations, co-citations, and biblio-graphing coupling—were conducted. Details of all the above-mentioned analyses are provided in the subsequent sections.

3.1. Research Questions

This study was meant to find answers to the following research questions:

• RQ 1. What is the publications trend in OR research and is it progressive or not?
• RQ 2. Which are the more influential authors and most cited publications?
• RQ 3. What is the intellectual structure of OR research and its main research themes?

3.2. Articles Search and Selection Process

Elsevier’s Scopus database is one of the most comprehensive sources for bibliometric data. To ensure relevance, ethnicity, and accuracy, the research journal articles published with titles including “organizational resilience” or “resilient organization” were included in this study. This practice minimizes the selection bias against any other selection approach: keywords, article contents, and subjective selection. The research on OR has been published in several languages; however, herein are articles published in English. Although the concept of resilience is associated with several domains, such as individual resilience, team resilience, and organizational resilience. However, this paper focused only on OR research. The following selection protocol extracted 484 journal articles having all essential bibliometric characteristics: publication’s title, details of authors, publication year, pages’ range, volume number, journal title, source intuitions, and countries. Further, each data item contains the full coverage of both cited articles by an article and articles that cited a particular article; analysis of citations’ data is essential to tracking the progression of any research field. The retrieved data was further analyzed through Bibexcel version 2017 and VOSViewer version 2019 software. These publications were initially analyzed as depicted in Section 3.1 and subsequently processed as described in Section 3.3.

3.3. Bibliometric Analyses

• At step 1, the collected research articles (484) were ranked according to the number of citations for each article until 31 December 2022. The rationale behind this ranking procedure is the acknowledgement of a publication by the researchers’ community through citing others work, and the frequency of citations suggests the level of ethnicity and credibility of the research article. The article by Lengnick et al. (2011) [88] had the highest number of citations (652);
• At step 2, the Average Weighted Citations Rate $\left(AWCR\right)$ was calculated for each article having at least one citation. It is proposed herein that the age of publication and potential accessibility to the researchers’ community have a direct positive impact on its citations.

This measure of AWCR is calculated by dividing the total number of citations by the number of years since an article has been published. Let an $i^{th}$ research article be published in the year $Y_O$ and $T_C$ be the number of times it is cited by other publications until the current year $Y_C$, then the AWCR for $i^{th} article$ would be calculated as follows:

$$AWCR=\frac{T_C}{Y_C-Y_O+1}$$

(1)

This procedure standardized each article on the same scale and therefore eliminated the bias of overrepresentation of older articles. For instance, the second most cited paper (339 citations) by Gittell et al. was published in 2006; having 17 years of publication age, this paper has an AWCR of 19.94, which is simply an average number of citations per year.

• At step 3, cluster analysis was performed to form groups of publications with common themes. The VOSViewer software, used herein, deploys a similarity index measure approach to form clusters of publications. These measures are labeled as either an association strength index, a proximity index, or a probability infinity index. Let $\left(y_1, y_2,y_3,\dots ,y_n\right)$ be the $n$ number of publications in a dataset, and each pair of $i^{th} \mathrm{and} j^{th}$ publications has $K_{ij}$ number of co-occurrences, $Z_{i }\mathrm{and} Z_{j }$ be the total number of co-occurrences of each $i^{th} \mathrm{and} j^{th}$ publication; then the similarity measure index can be computed as:

  $$S{I}_{ij }=\frac{K_{ij}}{Z_i{Z}_j}$$

  (2)

Further, the mapping of these clusters is computed on the basis of the degree of similarity between the publications; the higher the matching similarity index of any two publications, the more likely they are to be mapped within a cluster. Whereas, if the dissimilarity between any two publications is high, then these publications would be mapped into two different clusters. Mathematically, this problem is dealt by minimizing the objective function by

$$V\left(y_1, y_2,y_3,\dots ,y_n\right)={\displaystyle \sum }_{i<j}S{I}_{ij} {\left|\left|y_i-y_j\right|\right|}^2$$

(3)

Herein, vector $\left(y_1, y_2,y_3,\dots ,y_n\right)$ represents location of the $i^{th}$ publication on a bi-dimensional map. The notation $\left|\left|yi-yj\right|\right|$ describe the Euclidean norm. The minimization is performed under constraints, such as

$$\frac{2}{n\left(n-1\right)}{\displaystyle \sum }_{i<j}\left|\left|y_i-y_j\right|\right|=1$$

(4)

4. Bibliometric Characteristics

The vitality of any research theme or concept is reflected in the frequency of publications over a long period of time. A consistent publication progression is essential to establishing, refining, and enriching an independent domain of research. For the categorization of any research article into a specific or interdisciplinary field, usually keywords are considered. This approach may sometimes lead to an inappropriate inference if keywords are not well rooted in the core target area of that publication. Therefore, to minimize selection bias in targeting publications within the OR domain, publications having OR in their title were considered herein.

4.1. Temporal Progression of Publications in OR

The very first research article that specifically targeted OR was presented at a conference held in Miami, USA, in 1997 [16]. Followed by a journal article [17], published in 1998. These two publications proposed an emerging concept of OR and how to transform a traditional organization into a resilient organization. The concept of OR remained overshadowed by similar concepts, for instance, security management, risk management, business continuity, etc., until the first decade of the 21st century. As shown in Figure 1, a significant progression has been observed since 2011 within the OR research domain because the world has witnessed unprecedented disasters like 9/11, which have tremendously changed the shape of businesses and communities across the globe. The recent research output in OR is evident; about 29% of overall publications were conducted during the last three years, 2020–2022. This trend is expected to continue in the future as more and more adversities emerge across the globe. There is an obvious need to explore and promote OR characteristics across organizations and societies to better prepare them to combat disruptive and unforeseen incidents and adversities. It is quite surprising that in the twenty-year period from 1997 to 2016, from first publication in OR, only 138 articles were published, while only in the one-year period of 2022, there were 120 articles published. This huge increase in the number of OR publications reflects the vitality of OR issues related to modern-day challenges.

4.2. Top 12 Publishing Authors in OR Research

The creation and dissemination of knowledge related to a specific research field are highly influenced by the frequency of research conducted and published by an investigator or a group of investigators. Figure 2 provides the details of authors, along with the number of publications, who have published at least four research articles in OR. These 12 most published authors have contributed around 12% to OR’s overall research output.

4.3. Top Source Journals of Research in OR

The intellectual structure of any research domain is attributed to a variety of publishing outlets. Publishing research in any credible, authentic, highly ranked journal has not only a positive impact but also enhances the ethnicity, credibility, and repeatability of publication. The OR research has been published across a variety of research journals; details are provided in Figure 3. The most prolific outlet for OR research was the Sustainability journal, with 19 publications. The second most frequent outlet was the Journal of Business Continuity and Emergency Planning, with 12 publications. The top 14 outlet journals of OR only published 87/484 publications, which suggests that OR research has been published across several outlets in different research domains with marginal numbers of publications. This trend could infer that OR research has several traits that are associated with several other interdisciplinary research areas.

4.4. Top Source Countries of OR Research

It is ascertained that a research domain evolves, excels, and progresses when it is replicated across different cultures, businesses, communities, and countries. The three leading active research countries in the OR field are the USA, UK, and China, with 193/484 publications. Most of the OR research was produced in industrial countries with strong economies. This pattern could be linked to a high potential for exposure to adversities and uncertainties associated with political, social, or economic landscapes—for example, the 9/11 terrorist attack in the USA, the emergence of COVID-19 in China, and Brexit in the UK. Figure 4 provides details of countries with at least 12 publications. It is to be noted that a publication might have authors from more than one country.

4.5. Top Funding Institution in OR Research

In the modern era, conducting research is a relatively expensive venture, and authors often require significant funding. Therefore, promoting the research role of funding intuitions and agencies is inevitable. Figure 5 provides the names of funding agencies along with the number of funded projects.

4.6. Top Research Host Intuitions in OR Research

Figure 6 provides the details of active research institutions in OR. These research intuitions are shaping the OR as a separate research domain and providing ample knowledge and a roadmap to define and implement a resilience framework for organizations. The University of Canterbury, UK, has produced the highest number of publications in OR with 21 publications, followed by the University of Technology, MARA, with 8 publications. The top 12 host institutions of research in OR collectively produced 90/484 publications.

4.7. Reoccurrence of Authors’ Keywords

Keywords are proposed to depict core concepts addressed in a specific research publication. Keyword co-occurrence analysis is meant to trace and track the development of a common intellectual structure and knowledge stream. In the bibliometric approach, it is assumed that the co-occurrence frequency of core keywords reflects the common pool of target concepts across the publications. In the Scopus database, there are three types of keywords: authors’ keywords, indexed keywords, and all keywords. Herein, authors’ keywords are deployed for co-occurrence analysis of keywords to explore potential sub-themes within OR publications. There were 2239 authors’ keywords across all 484 publications. Editing is carried out manually to eliminate common keywords not related to OR specifically. The dataset was filtered by imposing a minimum of five occurrence criteria, resulting in 122 keywords; the top 100 co-occurring keywords are processed in VOSViewer. Figure 7 provides a pictorial network of authors’ keywords. The curves connecting one keyword to others reflect the commonly used keywords simultaneously across two or more publications; e.g., resilience capacity, resilience capability, and business continuity are reported as keywords in more than one publication. Herein, the selection of keywords clearly establishes the foundation of the organizational domain and its main concerned areas. For instance, keywords like crisis management, emergency response, disaster management, vulnerability, uncertainty, disruptions, environmental turbulence, etc.

4.8. Authors Coupling with the Highest Bibliographic Frequency

Bibliographic coupling (BGC) counts the number of co-cited references common between two publications. It is assumed that sets of papers based on commonly cited sources are similar to a high degree to each other in terms of intellectual structure and knowledge domain. This bibliometric feature may contribute to the emerging property of previous knowledge; the OR publications revealed that there were 1126 authors of all 484 research publications. For the BCG analysis, the top 100 publications were extracted by filtering through at least 23 citations. A network diagram is generated through VOSViewer of the top 100 bibliographic couplings (BGC), shown in Figure 8. Herein, the size of each publication’s author(s) is produced relative to the strength of BGC; for instance, Iengnick-Hall had 652 total citations, and his publication achieved the highest BGC link strength, followed by Gittell and Ortiz-de-Mandojana, respectively. Secondly, keywords are represented by temporal occurrences; for instance, keywords disaster, operational resilience, business continuity, coping, and keystone vulnerabilities were frequently reported in the 2015–2017 period. While in recent publications from the 2020 to 2022 period, keywords such as absorptive capacity, system dynamics, COVID-19, and environmental uncertainty are more prevalent in OR research.

4.9. Countries Involved in OR Research

To assess whether the OR research is limited to a certain region, or it is a global phenomenon, a mapping is used through VOSViewer to mention source countries; the size of each square representing each country reflects its research contribution; further, the curves linking one country to others depict authorship between authors from two or more countries. The mapping in Figure 9 suggests that OR research is a global phenomenon and is being conducted across all regions. Further, authorship between authors from different countries is also evident by interconnected square boxes through curves. Herein, BCG analyses revealed distinctive research themes that emerged from the work of the founding authors.

4.10. Co-Cited Authors in OR Research

In bibliometric analysis, co-citation counts the number of publications that are being cited together by a third publication. Co-citation analysis provides a measure of the progression potential in the future of a research field, theme, or concept; more clusters of common streams of knowledge would be produced. These measures also suggest the spread of research themes into interdisciplinary fields. Herein, in Figure 10, publications having a common stream of research areas are categorized accordingly. Publications within one region, highlighted with the same color, evolved within a similar intellectual structure, and the subjects of these publications are highly correlated to each other. In revealing the potential research stream within the research domain of OR, the co-citation analysis identified four major sub-fields and many trivial areas. Each distinctive cluster is represented by a specific color. For instance, in the red-shaded cluster, Prayag, Lengnic, and Kantur are three more frequently co-cited authors. Similarly, Sutcliffe and Luthans are the leading co-cited authors in the green-shaded cluster.

4.11. List of 100 Most Cited Publications in OR Research

It is ascertained that the number of citations a research publication achieves is a true reflection of its endorsement by the research community. A publication cited frequently has gone through the review of several researchers, and citing it gives it ethnicity, credibility, and repeatability. Herein, the top 100 cited publications are reported along with publication year, ACWR, and source journal in

Table 1. List of 100 most cited publications in OR research.

Serial No.	Authors	Publication Year	Citations	Citations Per Year	Source
1	Lengnick-Hall, C.A.; Beck, T.E.; Lengnick-Hall, M.L.	2011	652	54.33	Hum. Resource. Manage. Rev.
2	Gittell, J.H.; Cameron, K.; Lim, S.; Rivas, V.	2006	339	19.94	J. Appl. Behav. Sci.
3	Ortiz-de-Mandojana, N.; Bansal, P.	2016	327	46.71	Strategic Manage J.
4	Vogus, T.J.; Sutcliffe, K.M.	2007	316	19.75	Conf. Proc. IEEE Int. Conf. Syst. Man Cybern.
5	Burnard, K.; Bhamra, R.	2011	278	23.17	Int. J. Prod. Res.
6	Duchek, S.	2020	231	77.00	Bus. Res.
7	McManus, S.; Seville, E.; Vargo, J.; Brunsdon, D.	2008	226	15.07	Nat. Hazards Rev.
8	Pal, R.; Torstensson, H.; Mattila, H.	2014	225	25.00	Int. J. Prod. Econ.
9	Annarelli, A.; Nonino, F.	2016	214	30.57	Omega
10	Linnenluecke, M.K.; Griffiths, A.; Winn, M.	2012	199	18.09	Bus. Strategy Environ.
11	Sahebjamnia, N.; Torabi, S.A.; Mansouri, S.A.	2015	184	23.00	Eur. J. Oper. Res.
12	Mallak, L.	1998	162	6.48	Ind. Manage (Norcross GA)
13	Boin, A.; van Eeten, M.J.G.	2013	159	15.90	Public Manage. Rev.
14	Barasa, E.; Mbau, R.; Gilson, L.	2018	158	31.60	Int. J. Health Policy Manag
15	Kantur, D.; Arzu, I.-S.	2012	127	11.55	J. Manage. Organ.
16	Crichton, M.T.; Ramsay, C.G.; Kelly, T.	2009	116	8.29	J. Contingencies Crisis Manage.
17	Orchiston, C.; Prayag, G.; Brown, C.	2016	115	16.43	Ann. Tour. Res.
18	Salanova, M.; Llorens, S.; Cifre, E.; Martãnez, I.M.	2012	114	10.36	Group Organ. Manage.
19	Wreathall, J.	2012	112	10.18	Resil. Engineering: Concepts and Precepts
20	Riolli, L.; Savicki, V.	2003	108	5.40	Omega
21	Hillmann, J.; Guenther, E.	2021	106	53.00	Int. J. Manage. Rev.
22	Rangachari, P.; Woods, J.L.	2020	104	34.67	Int. J. Environ. Res. Public Health
23	Herbane, B.	2019	104	26.00	Entrep. Reg. Dev.
24	Akgün, A.E.; Keskin, H.	2014	97	10.78	Int. J. Prod. Res.
25	Gibson, C.A.; Tarrant, M.	2010	83	6.38	Aus. J. Emerg. Manage.
26	Jiang, Y.; Ritchie, B.W.; Verreynne, M.-L.	2019	81	20.25	Int. J. Tour. Res.
27	Sahebjamnia, N.; Torabi, S.A.; Mansouri, S.A.	2018	80	16.00	Int. J. Prod. Econ.
28	Kuntz, J.R.C.; Naswall, K.; Malinen, S.	2016	77	11.00	Ind. Organ. Psychol.
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. There were 9 publications that earned at least 200 citations each. Herein, to normalize the number of citations for each publication against its publication age, the AWCR is calculated. The publication by Duchek achieved the highest AWCR of 77; Lengneck et al. have 54.33; and Hilmann and Guenther have 53. The measure AWCR depicts the pace of spread and endorsement a publication achieves from the research community. In a bibliometric analysis perspective, publications with the highest number of citations may reflect the dominance of certain research themes within a research field, whereas AWCR measures can be good indicators of emerging research streams.

5. Cluster Analysis

The BGC analysis was further used to identify and cluster similar publications in terms of research themes. There were 10 clusters formed based on the statistical similarity index, as shown in Figure 11. Clustering is an effective technique to pool publications addressing a common theme. This is conducted statistically to trace and calculate the similarity index between each pair of articles and then combine them into one group. There were around 28 publications that did not match any of these clusters. The top 10 publications are mentioned within each cluster, with the exception of cluster 10, which has only nine publications.

5.1. Cluster 1: Process Management and OR

Research publications grouped in Cluster 1 are mainly focused on topics that investigate the role of process management in achieving OR. Within this stream of OR research, authors explored how managing organizational processes in efficient ways could facilitate an organization’s ability to perform under highly depressive and shocking situations. Process orientation and standardization could eventually reduce the risks of unexpected shocks and pitfalls.

5.2. Cluster 2: Organizational Capabilities and OR

Cluster 2 is comprised of 66 publications that mainly address issues regarding organizational capabilities essential to achieving OR. The notion of capabilities covers but is not limited to human, technological, technical, and financial resources. Collectively, several investigations revealed that OR is heavily based on organizational resources and its ability to channelize effectively and efficiently when and where it is deemed essential. Organizations with core capabilities are better inoculated against vulnerabilities than organizations lacking such capabilities.

5.3. Cluster 3: Workplace Challenges and OR

Cluster 3 is comprised of 64 publications covering various issues with OR; however, it mainly covers issues related to workplace attributes and OR. This stream of research within the OR domain mainly covers workplace practices that may facilitate securing resilience. Employees are the real assets of many organizations, and their well-being is vital to ensuring their work engagement. A psychologically engaged workforce is more adaptive to uncertain and shocking change.

5.4. Organizational Innovation and OR

Cluster 4 is comprised of 51 publications and mainly covers the relationship between organizational innovation and OR. Several studies concluded that the success of any innovative business plan, process innovation, or program within an innovation framework could not be successful without a highly adaptable organizational culture. Herein, adaptation is a key characteristic of OR, and more innovative organizations have stronger possibilities of becoming resilient. Successful innovation could be sustainable only if it becomes a permanent feature of organizational culture and is repeatedly exercised and deployed at the next level of learning. Organizational resilience requires a similar level of adaptation to uncertain and changing circumstances.

5.5. Organizational Learning and OR

Cluster 5 consisted of 41 publications and covered mainly, but not limited to, organizational learning essentials to achieve OR. Organizational learning is an ongoing and ever-continuing process that defines the fate of organizations in challenging situations. Routine task performance and disruption have a strong association, and learning through such situations ultimately increases knowledge capital and becomes an organization’s cultural trait.

5.6. Human Resource Development and OR

Cluster 6 is comprised of 32 publications, mainly covering the relationship between human resource development (HRD) and OR. Several research studies explored organizational dynamics that could promote a culture of awareness and responsiveness among employees towards sudden vulnerabilities to organizational processes.

5.7. Digitalization and OR

The seventh cluster is comprised of 27 publications and a variety of topics addressed within the OR domain; however,, it covers the notion of digitalization and its impact on nurturing OR. It is argued that digitalization could be beneficial to dealing with social turbulence through enhanced organizational capacity and capability to respond.

5.8. Business Continuity Management and OR

Cluster 8 is comprised of 18 publications and mainly covers foundational topics in business continuity management (BCM) and OR. MC, risk management, and disaster planning are frequently discussed in the literature and have been foundational to OR.

5.9. Organizational Performance Management and OR

Cluster 9 has 14 publications and mainly covers the relationship between OR and organizational performance. Several authors concluded that resilient organizations have better chances of remaining productive and becoming sustainable under changing market dynamics. The high-level preparedness and acquired resources essential to promoting resilience also support better organizational performance in normal circumstances.

5.10. Organizational Strategies and OR

Cluster 10 is comprised of nine publications and mainly covers the promotion of OR through different organizational strategies. It is ascertained that leadership should appraise the role of resilience and devise realistic strategies to promote a culture that synergizes organizational people and processes towards resiliency.

6. Discussion

This study explored the dynamics of OR research and this very vital research domain through a bibliometric approach. In the recent past, the world has been exposed to many social turbulences characterized by several unprecedented, uncertain, unexpected, devastating, and severely disruptive events—especially ones caused by either political unrest, economic vulnerabilities, social dilemmas, environmental disorder, or natural disasters. The era of social turbulence produced several significant challenges for many entities around the world, for instance, individuals, organizations, communities, countries, and regions. Many of the entities were badly affected and could hardly bounce back to a pro-vulnerability situation, and a few others had success stories related to overcoming such challenges. One organizational attribute that stems from the social turbulence phenomenon is resiliency, the ability to anticipate, absorb, adopt, bounce back, sustain, and excel from significant unexpected challenges confronted by an organization. OR promotes a culture of hope and optimism and leads an organization to a mindset where big challenges are perceived as big opportunities rather than big threats.

To explore the intellectual structure of OR as a research domain, the Elsevier’ SCOPUS database was the source of publication details, and data was retrieved by deploying search filters to ensure maximum representation of OR research. An extensive effort was made to avoid misrepresenting a publication by using its title to select it for inclusion. We only considered those publications primarily focused on OR with titles containing the words “organizational resilience” or “resilient organizations”. This selection process yielded 484 publications. To explore the dynamics of OR as a research field, two types of bibliometric analyses were conducted: descriptive and inferential methods.

Firstly, the descriptive analysis of publication trends was explored over a temporal horizon. Interestingly, the publication trend is highly negatively skewed and reveals an increasing trend since 2008. In the initial introductory phase of OR research, there were a limited number of publications, with only 13 in the first ten years of the period (1997–2006). In comparison to the initial phase, the ten-year period from 2013 to 2022 witnessed 425 publications. This represents a significant change and progression in the field of OR research. This trend could not be limited to a few unprecedented vulnerabilities, such as 9/11 in the USA and the spread of COVID-19 globally. After COVID-19 spread, OR research gained much more attention across the world, and 262 publications were reported from 2020 through 2022. The devastating social, political, and economic impacts of COVID-19 across world economies created a dire need to investigate the dynamic of sudden and disastrous disruptions, understand the nature of the response, and develop strategies to face severe shocks in the future. The recent publication trend in the OR domain is expected to continue, with a greater variety of topics associated with and falling within the OR domain to be explored in the coming times. The highest number of OR publications was reported in 2022.

Secondly, the descriptive analyses were performed to investigate (I) productive researchers in OR and the magnitude of their research contributions; (II) which are the leading OR journals in terms of both publication and frequency of OR research; (III) whether OR research is limited to specific regions and countries or is prevalent globally; (IV) which are the top funding intuitions of OR research publications and frequency of their funded projects; and (V) which are the top OR research producing intuitions. These investigations are necessary to explore the dissemination of any research concept, theme, stream, or field. Bibliometric analyses revealed that the OR field has a progressive trend and has been disseminated globally across multidisciplinary fields.

These analyses revealed that (I) there are twelve authors from different regions of the world who have published at least four OR-focused manuscripts each. Outlets for OR research publication are widespread across academic disciplines: management, administration, environmental sciences, engineering, medicine, safety, etc. There were fourteen journals, each of which published at least four publications focused on OR. The journal Sustainability was the top outlet for OR research, with 19 publications.

It is evident from country-wise analysis that OR has attracted researchers from all parts of the world and has become a global issue. Research publications from each part of the world indicate the awareness and attention of researchers to individual, organizational, and community resilience. There were fourteen countries where researchers produced at least 12 research publications focused on OR, with the highest number of publications (83) contributed by researchers from the United States.

Another very essential indicator of the vitality of any research concept or field is the availability of financial funding and other non-financial support. Bibliometric analyses exploring OR research identified twelve intuitions, each of which has published at least five OR research publications. The University of Canterbury led the way with 21 publications. Fourteen funding agencies funded at least two OR publications, with China’s National Natural Science Foundation funding 18 such publications.

Thirdly, keyword bibliometric analysis was performed to trace the streams of intellectual structure over temporal horizons. The keywords used in any publication are strong indicators of the core theme emphasized in the publication. A research stream is formed when some common keywords are repeatedly used in several publications. In 484 publications, there were 1115 keywords that were reported in at least one publication. Further, there were five keywords appearing in at least 30 publications, with COVID-19 appearing in 32 publications. The keyword analysis revealed the core focus areas of OR research: business continuity management, environmental turbulence, keystone vulnerabilities, crisis management, emergency planning, disaster operation management, uncertainty, coping, agility, and absorbative capacity.

Fourthly, the BGC and co-citation methods were used to trace similarities and dissimilarities among OR publications. A BGC counts the number of times two or more publications cite the same publications. The bibliometric analysis approach assumes that manuscripts citing the same publication are more likely to address similar issues. The co-citation notion refers to two publications cited together in other publications. Interestingly, co-citation analysis provides an evolving progression of a publication from its infancy stage, whereas BGC analysis depicts the latest projection of a research stream.

Finally, cluster analysis was conducted using the BGC dataset. The cluster analysis revealed ten sub-topics stemming from the OR domain. The publications with a high similarity index are placed in the same cluster, and more frequently discussed issues are used to tag nomenclature to a cluster. Although the cluster analysis identified ten major pillars of the intellectual structure of OR research, several other issues have also been addressed, but with lower frequency. Within the OR research domain, ten associated subthemes are conceived, and these clusters cover mainly: (I) process management; (II) organizational capabilities; (III) workplace challenges; (IV) organizational innovation; (V) organizational learning; (VI) human resource development; (VII) digitalization; (VIII) business continuity management; (IX) organizational performance management; and (X) organizational strategies.

The results of this study support the finding of [114], which also deployed bibliometric analyses, in the following points: both studies concluded that (I) the OR field is progressive and has high potential to expand in the coming future; (II) OR research has gained a global projection; (III) keyword analysis is a guiding line to identify OR research core focus areas; and (IV) the OR research domain can be clustered into several sub-themes.

7. Conclusions

Modern organizations are exposed to adversity and social turbulence, and a well-thought-out strategic approach is necessary to combat these. This approach in academic literature is referred to as organizational resilience, and an organization that possesses resiliency is known as a resilient organization. This study explored organizational resilience as a research concept and traced its origin, evolution, and dimensions. Bibliometric analyses of 484 published articles were conducted, specifically including organizational resilience in the title statement, extracted from the SCOPUS database. Firstly, it is revealed that the notion of organizational resilience is spreading across disciplines, and steady growth has been witnessed in publication trends over very recent times, especially in the COVID-19 adversity. Secondly, bibliometric analyses identified several authors who are effectively contributing and who shape the intellectual structure of organizational resilience as a research domain. Thirdly, major source journal outlets were traced, and the appreciation of organizational resilience as an independent research theme is reflected by the variety and spread of the nature and type of source journals. Fourthly, source country analysis of research on organization resilience revealed and proved its global existence; however, the United States, the United Kingdom, and China are the three major source countries for producing research on this vital theme. It was suspected that this trend might be associated with the vulnerabilities these countries experienced, for instance, the 9/11 disaster in the USA, the COVID-19 spread from China, and the Brexit treaty in the UK. Fifthly, the National Natural Science Foundation of China funded the highest number of publications. Sixthly, the highest number of publications on organizational resilience was achieved by the University of Canterbury. Further, the bibliometric analyses of keywords, bibliographic coupling, authorship across source countries, and co-cited authors provided in-depth insight into this evolving research theme. Finally, based on the BGC pattern of research articles, cluster analysis identified 10 main research clusters, and each cluster has publications addressing a similar sub-theme, namely: process management, organizational capabilities, workplace challenges, organizational innovation, organizational learning, human resource development, digitalization, business continuity management, organizational performance management, and organizational strategies. Herein, this paper concludes that organizational resilience as an emerging research theme is evolving with an appreciable growth rate across the globe, and publication progression suggests an upward trend may prevail in the future too.

Overall, this study provides valuable insights into the intellectual structure of research in OR. The findings of this study can help researchers and practitioners identify key contributors, resources, and research themes in this domain, as well as the intellectual structure of OR research. Further, this study may facilitate the development of a more comprehensive and effective framework for OR realization, implementation, and assessment.

8. Limitations

This research study deployed bibliometric techniques to explore the dynamics of organizational resilience, although there are certain limitations associated with the approach, discussed in detail [115,116,117]. Secondly, we used only those publications that had a core focus on OR, and several publications that might address OR as a secondary or least focused issue were intentionally avoided.