Organizational Resilience: An Investigation of Key Factors that Promote the Rapid Recovery of Organizations

The purpose of this study is to identify psychological factors that facilitate quick restoration at organizational scale from temporary trauma or distress due to unexpected catastrophic events. The research is based on the food manufacturing company located in Onagawa, Miyagi prefecture, greatly suffered from The Great East Japan Earthquake in 2011. Questionnaire survey on all workers was conducted followed by interview with Managing Directors of the company. The interview results suggest that a critical factor of resilience is high levels of organizational commitment among the workers at contingency event. A result from the questionnaire survey supports the improvement of organizational commitment due to higher resilience at individual level as teamwork of workers is developed in the events. These results suggest that education or training that aim at promoting team work under difficult situation are important to facilitate organizational resilience. DOI: 10.5901/ajis.2013.v2n9p18