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Resources

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Australian Disaster Resilience Knowledge Hub

The Knowledge Hub is collections-based and includes Australian disaster information, Emergency Management Library, Australian Journal of Emergency Management, disaster resilience and emergency management handbooks and manuals.

Additional resources and information will be added regularly, including guest collections from emergency services agencies and relevant national and international organisations.

The Knowledge Hub welcomes contributions from anyone with further information or resources on Australian disasters and topics of relevance to the Knowledge Hub collections with contribution links available through the website.

The Hub is an invaluable resource for students, teachers, researchers, historians and emergency servi​ces staff and volunteers.

Have a look at the Australian Disaster Resilience Knowledge Hub


 

Publications

Decision Making During A Crisis - A Practical Guide

Cover image for Decision making during a crisis - a practical guide  

Effective decision making is a positive element of organisational resilience. In a crisis, decisions have the potential to impact the organisation involved and the broader community.

Decision making during a crisis: a practical guide (2018) complements the Good Business Guide (2016) and assists stakeholders to better understand and apply the principles of decision making during a crisis.

Decision Making During A Crisis - A Practical Guide [PDF 2.5MB]
Decision Making During A Crisis - A Practical Guide [DOCX 1MB]


Organisational Resilience Good Business Guide

Cover image for Good Business Guide. 

An organisation cannot foresee or plan for every possible disruption. Leading organisations invest in the capabilities required to respond flexibly to disruptive events. Resilient organisations maximise their opportunities and adapt and learn from adversity, gaining a competitive edge and becoming more profitable. Research and evidence continues to demonstrate that organisational resilience translates to increased profitability during normal business operations as well as following a crisis or disruptive event.

This guide will assist your organisation to understand the attributes of organisational resilience, and integrate them into your organisation’s everyday life, philosophy and culture, to help your organsiation survive, adapt and prosper in times of uncertainty and adversity.

Organisational Resilience Good Business Guide [PDF 2.95MB]
Organisational Resilience Good Business Guide [DOCX 708KB]


Adversity Leadership

Cover image for Adversity Leadership. 

Developing and implementing effective adversity leadership is one component of strengthening an organisation’s resilience capacity. Good adversity leadership practices will increase the possibility that adverse events are planned for and managed effectively. This booklet brings together a range of research findings and suggests practical activities that can be used to help improve adversity leadership.

Adversity leadership booklet [PDF 1.61MB]
Adversity leadership booklet [DOC 104KB]


Organisational Resilience: A position paper for critical infrastructure

Cover image for Organisational Resilience: A position paper for critical infrastructure. 

Rather than proposing a single pathway or specific tactical response to promoting resilience, Organisational Resilience: A position paper for critical infrastructure proposes a generic set of resilience principles and attributes for critical infrastructure organisations to implement as appropriate, and a policy foundation upon which subsequent organisational resilience initiatives can be built.

Organisational Resilience: a position paper for critical infrastructure [PDF 1.3MB]
Organisational Resilience: a position paper for critical infrastructure [DOC 242KB]


CEO perspectives on organisational resilience

Cover image for CEO perspectives on organisational resilience. 

An organisation's culture plays a critical role in its resilience. The culture underpins an organisation's ability to change and adapt, and shape the environment. Senior leaders, including chief executive officers (CEOs) and the board of directors, play an important role in creating and shaping the culture of an organisation, however further research was needed to gain a better understanding of how they viewed resilience and what mattered to them.

The Attorney-General's Department engaged Incept Labs to interview more than 50 CEOs to determine their understanding of organisational resilience, and how this relatively new concept is applied in their organisations.

What resulted was a fascinating insight into the way CEOs perceive different concepts of resilience, including the importance of key behavioural attributes, such as leadership and trust, in building a resilience culture.

CEO perspectives on organisational resilience [PDF 512KB]
CEO perspectives on organisational resilience [DOC 1.9MB]


Organisational resilience: the relationship with risk related corporate strategies

Cover image for Organisational Resilience: the relationship with risk related corporate strategies. 

This paper articulates the value of organisational resilience by distinguishing it from more traditional corporate strategies which are commonly adopted by business (eg Business Continuity Management and Risk Management).

The paper is co-authored by Ernst & Young and the Attorney-General's Department.

Organisational Resilience: the relationship with risk related corporate strategies [PDF 282KB]
Organisational Resilience: the relationship with risk related corporate strategies [DOC 574KB]


Good Security, Good Business

Cover image for Good Security, Good Business.  

Good Security, Good business aims to raise awareness about risk management and business continuity among small and medium-sized enterprises.

Good Security, Good Business [PDF 854KB]
Good Security, Good Business [DOC 77KB]


Critical Infrastructure Resilience Strategy

Cover image for Critical Infrastructure Resilience Strategy.  

The Critical Infrastructure Resilience Strategy, which consists of the Policy Statement and a Plan for practical implementation, builds on past successes, provides greater value to stakeholders, and continues to deliver significant outcomes for business and the economy, governments and the community.

The aim of the Critical Infrastructure Resilience Strategy is the continued operation of critical infrastructure in the face of all hazards. It is available on the Trusted Information Sharing Network website.


The Insider Threat to Business: A personal security handbook

Cover image for The Insider Threat to Business: A personal security handbook. 

This booklet outlines how you can make your business more resilient by understanding the threat posed by trusted insiders; assists you in evaluating the risks; and helps to develop a personnel security framework.

The Insider Threat to Business: A personal security handbook [PDF 1MB]
The Insider Threat to Business: A personal security handbook [DOC 127KB]

​Resilience research priorities

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The Resilience Expert Advisory Group has identified a number of research priorities for government and the private sector to consider when growing the current body of knowledge surrounding organisational resilience.

These priorities are:

  • Dimensions of leadership
    The importance of leadership in shaping a resilience culture is clearly shown in the research to date. What is not explored, is how leadership manifests not only in single entities (from the board of directors and the chief executive officer (CEO), through to middle management and junior staff) but as a 'social property' that emerges from cooperation between individuals.
  • CEO tenure
    The CEO has a pivotal impact on a range of factors associated with resilience, in particular culture. There has, in recent years, been a trend towards shortening CEO tenure as boards and shareholders pursue short term profit in favour of long term sustainability, potentially impacting on an organisation's resilience.
  • Organisational structures
    Structural rigidity and 'stasis' within organisations, no matter how historically successful they may have been, has the tendency to stop organisations from being able to adapt to changing environments. Organisational boundaries, hierarchical leadership and silo-based planning often impede growth, and organisations that embrace change are more likely to prosper.
  • The role of human resources
    Research has shown that a high level of emphasis is placed on culture when considering an organisation's resilience capability.  It is therefore not surprising that human resource management (HR) is identified as fundamental to the establishment and maintenance of an organisation's leadership structure and cultural values.
  • Understanding your level of organisational resilience
    Developing ways to evaluate resilience is key to articulating the business case for organisational resilience. If business can recognise the competitive advantage to be gained by employing resilience practices, the value proposition for organisational resilience will resonate more soundly with boards and CEOs.

Download the organisational resilience research priorities below:

For more information on how to engage with the Australian Government on the research priorities, email resilience@cicentre.gov.au


The HealthCheck will ask you to rate your organisation according to a set of low and high level descriptors for 13 resilience indicators. These indicators are grouped under three overarching resilience attributes that build business-as-usual effectiveness as well as robust and agile response and recovery capability.