Bouncing back: A commentary on resilience in sustainability narratives

• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/pa.1689
• Published date: 01 August 2018
• Date: 01 August 2018

COMMENTARY

Bouncing back: A commentary on resilience in sustainability

narratives

Peter Jones |Daphne Comfort

The Business School, University of

Gloucestershire, Cheltenham, UK

Correspondence

Peter Jones, The Business School, University

of Gloucestershire, The Park, Cheltenham

GL50 2RH, UK.

Email: pjones@glos.ac.uk

Resilience is an increasingly common element in the sustainability and sustainable growth narra-

tives of a growing number of companies and organisations. At the same time, a number of mean-

ings are claimed for resilience and the relationship between resilience and sustainability has been

depicted in a number of ways. With these thoughts in mind, this short commentary paper outlines

the characteristic features of the concept of resilience, provides some illustrations of how a num-

ber of companies and organisations are harnessing the concept as an integral part of their sustain-

ability strategies and policies, offers some general reflections on the application of the concept,

and concludes with some thoughts on how public relations and communications professionals

can contribute to resilience planning.

1|INTRODUCTION

Resilience is an increasingly common element in the sustainability and

sustainable growth narratives of a growing number of companies and

organisations at a variety of levels. In promoting its Global Sustainable

Development Goals (SDGs), the United Nations (2015) used the

banner headline “Integrating Resilience and Sustainable Development

in 2015 and Beyond.”The 2016 sustainability reports published by

the multinational corporations BHP Billiton (2016) and Anglo American

(2017) were titled Integrity Resilience and Growth and Delivering Change

Building Resilience, respectively. At the national level within the UK, for

example, the National Flood Resilience Review (HM Government,

2016) reported that

the magnitude of events in recent years means that it is

important to reassure ourselves that we understand the

scale of the risk that the country is currently facing from

river and coastal flooding and to take more immediate

steps to improve the resilience of the country to such

flooding.

At the city level, the 100 Resilient Cities Network initiative, spon-

sored by the Rockefeller Foundation, looks to help cities around the

world become more resilient to the physical, social, and economic chal-

lenges that are a growing part of the 21st century. Being sustainable,

namely, seeing “the city and region prosper within environmental limits

through adopting new behaviours and technologies”is a central ele-

ment in the Bristol Resilience Strategy (Bristol City Council, 2017).

With these thoughts in mind, this short commentary paper outlines

the characteristic features of the concept of resilience, provides some

illustrations of how a number of companies and organisation are

harnessing the concept as an integral part of their sustainability strat-

egies and policies, and offers some general reflections on the applica-

tion of the concept.

2|THE CONCEPT OF RESILIENCE

In everyday language, resilience is seen as the ability to withstand or to

bounce back from adversity and disruption. However, in the profes-

sional and academic world, a number of meanings can be identified

and Sharifi and Yamagata (2014) argued that “despite the abundance

of research on resilience there is still no single, universally accepted

definition for it.”Indeed, a number of origins and meanings are claimed

for resilience. Hassler and Kohler (2014), for example, claimed that

“resilience as a design principle, was an implicit part of construction

knowledge before the nineteenth century,”and Sharifi and Yamagata

(2014) suggested that “the concept of resilience has traditionally been

used in physics and psychology.”Davoudi et al. (2012) acknowledged

that “resilience was first used by physical scientists”and argued that

in the 1960s, “resilience entered the field of ecology.”MacKinnon

and Derickson (2013) suggested that

the concept of resilience has migrated from the natural

and physical sciences to the social sciences and public

policy, as the identification of global threats such as

economic crisis, climate change and international

terrorism has focused attention on the responsive

capacities of places and social systems.

Holling (1995) drew a distinction between “engineering resilience”

and “ecological resilience.”Mehmood (2016), for example, argued that

DOI: 10.1002/pa.1689

J Public Affairs. 2018;18:e1689.

https://doi.org/10.1002/pa.1689

© 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/pa 1of6