By Dr Richard Harper, University of Gloucestershire School of Business and Technology

Welcome to the Centre for Destination and Organisational Resilience (CenDOR)!

Destinations are associated with travel, sometimes as a place to visit or stop over along the way and ultimately as the end-point of the journey. They are locations where communities live out their lives as a diversity of commercial businesses, institutions to support society functioning and a variety of infrastructures to support access and communication with ‘the outside world’. The concept of destination is tied to geographical place where location is given a boundary and a label. Destinations are defined by what makes them up in terms of natural, socio-economic, cultural and political attributes. They are more than a journey’s end, they are living places whose residents are full of energy and visions of the future.

Giving destinations boundaries implies that they are ‘metaphorical islands’ distinctive and separate from their surroundings. Except they are not. In this age of globalisation, defined by interdependent economies, the movement of technology and especially the movement of people their knowledge, customs, culture and diseases; the island metaphor is only partially true. The place and its political, social, economic and environmental communities and identity are susceptible to disruption and left vulnerable to outside infiltration of political ideas, economic manipulation, technological and cyber based threats from outside sources that act to destabilise political, economic and social systems and sabotage business performance. Because destinations are ‘places’ their communities are also susceptible to disruption caused by natural events.

So, ‘what can be done to enable destinations to ride out interruptions to their economic and social systems?’ The answer so far comes from planning, especially developing processes and systems to put into place in terms of business continuity, security, emergency response and crisis. A crisis response at the scale of a destination is founded upon market intervention requiring a collaborative effort where government coordinates and encourages organisations across the private sector and civil society to respond to the situation within a crisis protocol. Government organisations, businesses and civil society share the motivation to recover from the crisis (taking advantage of respective knowledge and skills banks, seeking efficiencies of delivery through a coordinated response, and supporting the less able in skills and knowledge). Commercial businesses will do the best they can, and there is an increasing expectation that businesses will have systems in place to respond to a crisis. This is one way a destination’s resilience is perceived i.e. where resilience is measured by the ability of its economic and business community to get back on its feet.

A reflection on this situation highlights the limitations of our initial question. We now have a chance to think again and reframe our question to something less reactive to something more proactive and strategic: ‘what are the requirements of a resilient destination?’ We should answer this by considering the foundations of the destination by more specifically addressing what is meant by being a resilient business. This shifts the emphasis onto the firm and its ability to develop a resilient ‘capability’. In such a way, a second understanding of destination resilience is to be found at the micro level of the firm and involves business management, operations, its culture and its workers. At the heart of all of this are management and its leadership, who, along with employees, apply their collective knowledge and skills to utilise technology and know-how to work together to further the goals of the business. Successful businesses are strategic in their outlook but are also adaptable and flexible in response to change in their external and internal environments and through communication encourage and support innovation and intrapreneurship. They are agile! Such as situation reflects a business with a resilience mind set; an ability to seek opportunity in every situation and to look for opportunities to grow. Through adopting and building a resilience mindset businesses go beyond being reactive and relying on process and protocol to becoming proactive and future proofing their business and enabling employee development. A resilient mindset enables businesses to maximise their chance to thwart cyber-attacks, ride out economic downturns, adapt to natural disasters, respond to market trends and also lead markets in the goods and services that they might provide. Such a position means an organisation has the capability to be resilient.

Because people are involved, a resilience mindset can be taught, learned and shared throughout the organisation to ensure it remains competitive. Education is about developing knowledge and skills and the ‘whole individual’. It is one task of universities to do this- sharing knowledge and also generating new knowledge to share. This is done in a variety of ways; through use of explicit knowledge to be found in text books and research journals, and through ‘research’ and also through the sharing of tacit knowledge or the know how of employees through internships, placements, and guest lectures. Business education involves a number of strands of understanding business performance: normative models ranging from how to do tasks such as leadership, strategic planning, recruiting and retaining staff, marketing, accounting, communication, innovation and what to do to define and address problems; and sharing examples of why businesses succeed or fail. It is about developing individuals who can understand a situation, problem solve, know where to get information and how to apply it and where to get help if needed, communicate and work together and moreover to be confident enough to adopt a resilient mindset. While specific knowledge is required for businesses to continue to be successful, the graduate with a resilient mindset is an invaluable employee to help businesses prepare for the future and to grow.

This sense of destination resilience implies developing resilience from the bottom-up, from employees as the foundation of the business through to the networks and relationships that businesses form with their commercial and political partners and the communities in which they are situated. No destination is an island, and by definition neither is a business nor the employees within it.

Image source: https://www.edweek.org/tm/articles/2016/10/05/developing-resilient-equity-conscious-teachers.html