The Darmstadt Approach to Developing Resilience and Curiosity (DA_RuN)
The Darmstadt Approach to Developing Resilience and Curiosity (DA_RuN)
The DA_RuN project is developing a systemic and synergistic management approach to promote organisational resilience and curiosity in response to the limitations of traditional Business Administration in the VUCA world and in the context of socio-ecological transformation.
| Project leaders: | Prof. Dr Pia Sue Helferich, Prof. Dr Werner Stork (Department W) |
| Project team: | Johanna Möbius, Armin Schuster, Jochen Robes, Vanessa Kokoschka |
| Duration: | July 2023 to July 2025 |
| Funding body: | Federal Ministry of Labour and Social Work (BMAS); Funding reference: EXP.02.00023.23 |
Traditional Business Administration is reaching its limits both in providing convincing management concepts for the VUCA world and in shaping and supporting the necessary socio-ecological transformation. A paradigm shift is required, and in this context, organisational resilience is being discussed as a new guiding principle for management and leadership in the 21st century. A distinction is made between the following three complementary approaches:
- ‘Add-on’ approach: back-up resources and a self-sufficient, redundant infrastructure to ensure business continuity even during crises and unexpected events.
- ‘Trade-off’ approach: Flexibility in terms of finances, processes, locations, assets and human resources, enabling a rapid response to change.
- ‘Bake-in’ approach: Resilience as an organisational competence and as an approach to the qualitative development of the organisation as a whole (‘next-level organisation’).
The “bake-in” approach, in particular, represents a new perspective on the organisation and its development as a whole. It involves fostering and developing resilience and curiosity as dynamic systemic capabilities – as “multi-level, dynamic capabilities”.
The DA_RuN project is dedicated to fostering resilience and curiosity at an organisational level, and, in line with a systemic-synergistic management approach, examines the five areas of impact: the individual, the team, leadership, structure and culture. For the first time, insights and concepts from ten years of resilience research at Darmstadt University of Applied Sciences are being combined within a holistic learning and development process and implemented by committed partner organisations as part of a cross-organisational learning and development community. The inclusion of curiosity (as a driving factor for ‘transformative resilience’) emphasises the skills required to navigate the upheavals of current transformation processes.
Through the DA_RuN project, successful procedural models, key success factors and helpful measures for promoting resilience and curiosity at an organisational level are being (further) developed and subsequently made available to other organisations in the form of a LernOS guide on resilience and curiosity. The project thus makes an important contribution to promoting the quality of work and organisational culture in the 21st century.
