2023 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

COVID-19 affected everyone’s life; this truthful statement also applies to teaching and learning contexts and how difficult it was for universities to face the pandemic. Some universities did well during the pandemic by being resilient, but some were unprepared, and a few failed on the task. This full paper presents a systematic literature review on Organizational Resilience (OR) in the context of Higher Education Institutions (HEIs).
The study follows a systematic literature review method to analyze and categorize current research on Organizational Resilience applied to Higher Education Institutions. This methodology incorporates a series of steps. First, using queries composed by concepts of interest, a search on a broad database is performed to develop an initial scoping set. Second, peer-reviewed databases are chosen to compare the differences from the same query search. Third, the data obtained from the peer-reviewed databases are tabulated. Finally, results derived from this process are analyzed for the development of patterns, findings, and insights. Following the previous method, this study counts a total of 16 papers that compose the final dataset.
Findings from the study will be helpful for researchers, educators, and administrators by giving a clear idea of current literature related to Organizational Resilience in the context of Higher Education Institutions. Analysis and results derived from the study present a starting point for novel research on Organizational Resilience and Higher Education Institutions. Results present potential patterns from the literature to consider for future research. First, the purpose of most of the articles in the data set is to analyze how Organizational Resilience directly or indirectly relates to other organizational theories (e.g., Organizational Learning, Organizational Sustainability, Institutional Effectiveness, and Institutional Resilience) in the context of Higher Education Institutions to enable better management of said organizations. Second, considering all papers, only 12.5% present framework proposals. Third, although methodologies utilized include both Quantitative and Qualitative approaches, the Qualitative approaches are more utilized in the literature. Finally, 56.25% of the papers do not state any clear directions for future research on their content.
This study contributes to the literature by thoroughly examining current research on Organizational Resilience and its applications (empirical or conceptual) in Higher Education Institutions.