Introduction: Can the Sendai Framework, the Paris Agreement, and Agenda 2030 Provide a Path Towards Societal Resilience?

The Global Risk Report 2021 highlights the portfolio of risks that may reshape the world in the coming years (WEF, The Global Risks Report 2021 (16th ed.). ISBN: 978-2-940631-24-7. http://wef.ch/risks2021, 2021). Although the global portfolio of risks is dominated by the existential crisis of climate change, the Covid-19 pandemic presents an immediate experience of how risk can upend and disrupt our societies and economies. It has highlighted existing global inequalities and demonstrated the scope and scale of cascading socio-ecological impacts. The impacts of climate change on global communities will likely dwarf the disruption brought on by the pandemic, with impacts being more diffuse and pervasive over a longer time frame. The chapter sets out the nature of the climate change problem and the potential value in integrating the agendas of Climate Change Adaptation, Disaster Risk Reduction and the Sustainable Development Goals to increase societal resilience. It then describes the scope of the book under its three sections: Best practice approaches Irish case studies International case studies Lessons learned are then presented from the studies set out within the volume, followed by challenges and potential solutions to realising the ambition of resilience. Finally, a set of overarching conclusions are drawn.

Building a multisystemic understanding of societal resilience to the COVID-19 pandemic

The current global systemic crisis reveals how globalised societies are unprepared to face a pandemic. Beyond the dramatic loss of human life, the COVID-19 pandemic has triggered widespread disturbances in health, social, economic, environmental and governance systems in many countries across the world. Resilience describes the capacities of natural and human systems to prevent, react to and recover from shocks. Societal resilience to the current COVID-19 pandemic relates to the ability of societies in maintaining their core functions while minimising the impact of the pandemic and other societal effects. Drawing on the emerging evidence about resilience in health, social, economic, environmental and governance systems, this paper delineates a multisystemic understanding of societal resilience to COVID-19. Such an understanding provides the foundation for an integrated approach to build societal resilience to current and future pandemics.

A call for deep engagement for impact: Addressing the planetary emergency

In a world facing catastrophic shocks, there are tremendous opportunities for management scholars to engage and make fundamental contributions to the grand challenges that lie ahead. To do so, our focus must move away from a theory-fetish toward a more applied action orientation that contributes to theory-building but does not make that its main or singular aim. In this paper, we argue, that our field’s primary research aim must not be to see how we can build theory out of a crisis, but rather how our organizational and management theories can contribute concretely to helping humanity prepare for and respond to these shocks and build long-term societal resilience. Furthermore, we argue that management scholars need to vigorously embrace a research agenda on sustainability focusing on deep engagement with practitioners to address grand challenges. To do so, we draw on experiences from our deep engagement with practitioners—an ethnographic study and a scientific activism effort. We offer several lessons and identify implications of deep engagement for impact within organization studies such as dedicated space in journals for impact cases.

A Swedish Perspective on Foreign Election Interference

This chapter focuses on the Swedish approach for safeguarding electoral processes, using the experience from its 2018 elections as a case study. Sweden serves as a particularly interesting example due to the measures it took ahead of its 2018 election, especially its strategy of bottom-up initiatives that emphasize building societal resilience rather than a top-down government regulatory approach. By exploring the characteristics of Swedish society and the implications of Swedish efforts made prior to the 2018 general election, the chapter presents suggestions for how these insights might help other state and nonstate actors within the international community develop similar countering strategies for foreign election interference, while also addressing the dilemmas facing such an approach. The chapter concludes by discussing lessons learned and the challenges facing government authorities seeking to employ similar strategies in the future to counter foreign election interference in Sweden or abroad.