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Resilience against crises: COVID-19 and lessons from natural disasters

Resilience against crises: COVID-19 and lessons from natural disasters
Resilience against crises: COVID-19 and lessons from natural disasters
Pandemics and natural disasters – what do they have in common? Both disrupt social and organisational practices. Both call for resilience in society. Information systems can foster and enhance the resilience of people, communities and organisations by strengthening their ability to adapt to uncertainty, enabling a transition towards an appropriate restoration of order in society. COVID-19 has caused significant disturbances at all societal levels. The impacts range from national lockdowns to social distancing and self-isolation. Everyday practices and business processes are severed or have been halted. Resilience is needed. But how can we foster resilience in the face of a pandemic? What lessons can we learn from other crises like natural disasters? The purpose of this brief communication is to identify important insights from a study of the Great East Japan Earthquake of 2011 and illustrate how they are relevant to the current crisis. We identify the role of information systems in fostering resilience against crisis, and suggest some recommendations regarding transformation for resilience more generally.
Covid-19, Kieran Conboy, Michael Myers, Pandemics, Pär Ågerfalk, coronavirus, natural Disasters, resilience
0960-085X
585-594
Sakurai, Mihoko
664f0dd7-2c5e-499f-8dfd-65fe1ca37d8e
Chughtai, Hameed
e8600973-9db8-4649-be67-def5f2a83a72
Sakurai, Mihoko
664f0dd7-2c5e-499f-8dfd-65fe1ca37d8e
Chughtai, Hameed
e8600973-9db8-4649-be67-def5f2a83a72

Sakurai, Mihoko and Chughtai, Hameed (2020) Resilience against crises: COVID-19 and lessons from natural disasters. European Journal of Information Systems, 29 (5), 585-594. (doi:10.1080/0960085X.2020.1814171).

Record type: Article

Abstract

Pandemics and natural disasters – what do they have in common? Both disrupt social and organisational practices. Both call for resilience in society. Information systems can foster and enhance the resilience of people, communities and organisations by strengthening their ability to adapt to uncertainty, enabling a transition towards an appropriate restoration of order in society. COVID-19 has caused significant disturbances at all societal levels. The impacts range from national lockdowns to social distancing and self-isolation. Everyday practices and business processes are severed or have been halted. Resilience is needed. But how can we foster resilience in the face of a pandemic? What lessons can we learn from other crises like natural disasters? The purpose of this brief communication is to identify important insights from a study of the Great East Japan Earthquake of 2011 and illustrate how they are relevant to the current crisis. We identify the role of information systems in fostering resilience against crisis, and suggest some recommendations regarding transformation for resilience more generally.

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TJIS-2020-IO-0118.R3 - Accepted Manuscript
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More information

Accepted/In Press date: 20 August 2020
e-pub ahead of print date: 13 September 2020
Published date: 2020
Additional Information: Funding Information: This work was partially supported by the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science [JP19K20635]. We would like to thank the Senior Editor, Kieran Conboy, and two anonymous reviewers for their support and valuable suggestions, all of which greatly improved this special communication. Publisher Copyright: © Operational Research Society 2020.
Keywords: Covid-19, Kieran Conboy, Michael Myers, Pandemics, Pär Ågerfalk, coronavirus, natural Disasters, resilience

Identifiers

Local EPrints ID: 443288
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/443288
ISSN: 0960-085X
PURE UUID: cfbac0e3-0836-4f6f-af2e-99c49a1faf49
ORCID for Hameed Chughtai: ORCID iD orcid.org/0000-0001-6272-2250

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Date deposited: 20 Aug 2020 16:30
Last modified: 17 Mar 2024 05:50

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Contributors

Author: Mihoko Sakurai
Author: Hameed Chughtai ORCID iD

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