Challenges in the Era of Globalization - iaabd

Proceedings of the 12th Annual Conference © 2011 IAABD
additional loading of OV1 which we reexamined and found conceptually fit for organizational
competitiveness because satisfactory cost control is a matter of organizational excellence which best
defines organizational competitiveness. As per our conceptualization, we termed the remaining factor
organizational value which had only two items (OV4 and OV6) originating from it with the exception of
item OA7 from organizational adaptation. The item OA7 (coping with political interests) loaded on
organizational value perhaps because of the perceived trust that indicates value which could have been
created as a result of balancing political interests. The factor loading matrix indicated that organizational
adaptation accounted for the greatest variance explained (48.464%), followed by organizational
competitiveness (12.357%), and with a minority of 8.877% accounted for by organizational value.
Discussion, Conclusion and implications
The study found a moderate level of organizational resilience in Uganda parastatals. This finding appears
to be in line with Basu (2008) who avers that most parastatals do not adequately meet the needs of
society, hence having limited organization value. This study explored the factors that may be considered
important in describing resilience in Uganda’s parastatals. This was deemed necessary for us to identify
organization resilience descriptors that can be investigated further and probably confirmed to be
components of organizational resilience so as to be used by researchers and policy makers. From the
findings, we are tempted to believe that it appears organizational value may be embedded in adaptation or
once parastatals adapt they perhaps simultaneously create value – organizational value is not quite
distinct. This seems to suggest that parastatals in Uganda are more adaptive than competitive (being
excellent at service delivery), and are of limited value. This of course is in line with existing literature that
defines organizational resilience mainly in terms of adaptation (Weeks, 2008), with some emphasis on
organizational competitiveness and value (Hamel and Valikangas, 2003; Scott, 2007; Tarrant, 2010).
Nevertheless, the study has generated some empirical evidence about resilience indicators in Uganda
parastatals. The findings provide lessons that contribute to the debate on organizational resilience
especially by McManus (2008) who focused mainly on factors that create organizational resilience, and
Hamel and Valikangas (2003) who highlighted the need for organizations to adapt, excel, and become
valuable. One key lesson is that whereas there is evidence to support organizational value, and
organizational competitiveness as components of organizational resilience, organizational adaptation
appeared to be dominant.
The practical implications of this study are that; one, managers of parastatals can measure resilience based
on the level of; organizational adaptation, organizational competitiveness, and organizational value, two,
parastatals should strive towards becoming competitive besides adaptation, and creating more public
value for instance through innovations or else stakeholders demand for alternative service providers that
may lead to parastatal death. For the academics, research about resilience building process attributes like;
creative climate, innovation, knowledge management, networking, etc may be studied in relation to
organizational resilience .The study was limited by design. First, the study was exploratory focusing on
organizational resilience only. This may necessitate follow up studies in a correlational design to capture
the explanatory power of resilience building process attributes. Second, the study remained exploratory
mainly by design - we did not conduct confirmatory factor analysis that could have confirmed to us
whether or not the exploratory factor analysis results of this study are indeed real. Further studies may be
conducted using confirmatory factor analysis.
References
Alford, J. and O’Flynn, J. (2008), “Public Value: A Stocktake of a Concept”: Paper presented at
the Twelfth Annual Conference of the International Research Society for Public Management
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