There was a wealth of resilience knowledge in the room when we met with a number of academics, organizational developers and representatives of civil society in a digital workshop on September the 28th. We were interested in how the resilience experts understand the concept of resilience and its application to organizations from their respective perspectives and how they take into account the particularities of civil society actors.
Three questions for the expert roundtable
The panel of experts consisted of Timo Luthmann, activist, author and trainer for sustainable activism, Medje Prahm, consultant for foundations and committed individuals, Nils-Eyk Zimmermann, expert in democratic resilience, philosopher Marvin Ester from the Centre for Social Critique at Humboldt University in Berlin, psychologists Dr. Lara Puhlmann and Dr. Donya Gilan from the Leibniz Institute for Resilience Research, political scientist Dr. Florian Roth from the ZHAW Zurich University of Applied Sciences, organizational consultant Julia Hoffmann from SociuSocius. Donya Gilan from the Leibniz Institute for Resilience Research, political scientist Dr Florian Roth from the ZHAW Zurich University of Applied Sciences, organizational consultant Julia Hoffmann from Socius eG, Dr. Marina Beermann and Anna Keremen from cociety and Dr. Vivian Schachler from the Deutsche Stiftung für Engagement und Ehrenamt.
In order to gain an overview of the respective approaches, concepts and findings in the hours we spent together and to be able to incorporate these well into our study, we pursued three questions:
What do we mean by organizational resilience?
In his input, Stephan Peters first presented a working version of our definition of organizational resilience, which was then discussed in two groups.
It was important to always relate the concept to civil society organizations. We have now revised our definition based on the results of this exchange. It can be read in detail in this blog post.
Organizational resilience is the ability of an organization to learn how to deal with crises in order to remain capable of acting in the long term.
The question of terminology was central to the discussion. On the one hand, because terms are sometimes used differently in different scientific fields or different terms are used for one and the same thing, e.g. organizational research often speaks of processes, whereas psychology tends to use mechanisms.
It was also discussed that the definition uses a language in which the organization appears like an individual that has the ability to "learn" and "heal", for example. Here, it depends on the perspective whether you see the organization as the "sum of its parts", i.e. the people in it, or as an organism with different movements and processes.
The different reactions and perspectives on terms such as crisis or stability were interesting. The question arose as to what tenor the definition should have. In the working version, we had repeatedly used the rather negatively connoted term crisis, which raised the question of whether it would be better to embed organizational resilience in a more positive narrative.
The term organization itself was also scrutinized: Where does something begin to be an organization? After all, even the formation of an organization from individual commitment could be considered a state of resilience.
What makes civil society organizations resilient?
After a break, the discussion continued with the factors that contribute to a civil society organization becoming resilient. Dr. Josefa Kny spared the experts from having to look at all 200 terms that had accumulated in the research. The team had already clustered and selected a manageable set of factors in the run-up to the workshop.
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Overview of resilience characteristics (in German), revised on the basis of the findings from the workshop
The discussion in two groups revealed further aspects that are relevant:
Trust in the organization
Communication and a culture of dialog, including the ability to talk about resilience
Psychological safety
Interculturality, i.e. accepting and dealing with diversity
Ability to finance themselves strategically in the long term
Ability to learn and openness to change as very relevant characteristics
Collaboration with the state, the economy and public administration
It also became clear in the discussion that a consistent set of characteristics is important and helpful, but that no list of characteristics can encompass and clearly describe all resilience factors - as the specific context in particular is decisive for their relevance and interaction. In this context, several voices raised the question of whether the collected factors also apply to vulnerable groups and whether all of this can be expected of their organizations. If necessary, organizations that are under pressure should be approached differently.
What kind of framework is needed for a resilient civil society?
In the third part of the workshop, the participants asked themselves what frameworks and infrastructures are needed on the part of politicians and funding institutions to strengthen the resilience of civil society organizations. The panel of experts put a lot of sticky notes on the whiteboard.
The point that resilience should by no means be understood as a neoliberal concept that removes responsibility from politics was most strongly echoed. This accusation, which is not unjustified, has led to the concept of resilience being strongly rejected by some communities. It is therefore important to convey to organizations that their resilience is important, but that they should also be supported in this and overall.
Another important framework condition mentioned was the long-term nature of funding, as "resilience does not come for free" - as was written on a sticky note. A radical change needs to take place here, the focus of the funding providers needs to move away from project logic and towards organizational resilience strengthening or even system strengthening.
In general, there needs to be clear regulations for non-profit status, greater appreciation of civil society work in general and also civil society self-empowerment in order to be perceived as a strong player alongside business and politics. This would also make it easier to demand better basic conditions and thus strengthen a resilient civil society.
What's next?
At the end, we considered together with the participants how the exchange could continue. Everyone found the discussion inspiring. It can therefore be assumed that the exchange will continue.
We can already reveal this much: We are working on a podcast series in which one or the other expert will be a guest. Stay tuned!
“The resilient civil society” is a research project of the betterplace lab, funded for the period January 2023 to June 2024 by the Deutsche Stiftung für Engagement und Ehrenamt.
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