Resilience as a means to analyze business processes on the structure of vulnerability

The impact of global societal trends regarding product reliability provides society with great benefits and yet comes with the consequence of increased organizational vulnerability. The goal of this research was to examine these issues and develop the means for organizations to mitigate the potential negative effects of disturbances from within and external to the organization for the purpose of sustaining organizational resilience. As a result of this research the Highly Reliable Resilient Organization (HRRO) methodology was developed to provide a consistent and customizable methodology to assess organizational vulnerability. The purpose of this methodology is to determine current and potential levels of vulnerability and to select and prioritize vulnerability elimination and mitigation initiatives and projects using pre-established monetary and non-monetary factors. Moreover, the HRRO methodology provides the means to identify, define, and assess the prerequisite criteria of an organization that enable it to be resilient. These prerequisite criteria are the foundation for the organization’s core function; its culture, its ability to manage risk, and its governing processes, i.e. its ability to be resilient, or at the very least available to fulfill monetary and non-monetary goals and enjoy a better chance for sustained viability. The HRRO methodology is a generalizable analytic-deliberative process that was validated by stakeholders, nine well known organizational models, a prioritization methodology that has been in use for several years, independent case studies, and an independent and widely used location risk quality benchmarking algorithm. To foster sustained use, the HRRO methodology strikes a balance between complexity and simplicity, i.e. the model is sufficiently comprehensive to reflect reality and sufficiently simple to be manageable. The methodology used in this dissertation is based upon transformative-reflective design processes. The first step in this process was, in this case, the creation of a construct that was analyzed, validated and adapted during subsequent steps.