Origins of the term
The term resilience was introduced into the English language in the early 17th Century from the Latin verb resilire, meaning to rebound or recoil. There is no evidence of resilience being used in any scholarly work until Thomas Tredgold introduced the term in 1818 to describe a property of timber, and to explain why some types of wood were able to accommodate sudden and severe loads without breaking.
Four decades later, Robert Mallet further developed this concept of resilience as a means of measuring and comparing the strength of materials used in the construction of the Royal Navy’s fighting ships. Prior to Mallet’s work, most of the Navy’s fighting ships had been built of wood, but with the advent of the steam engine much interest was being shown in the suitability of iron for a warship’s hull.
Mallet developed a measure - the modulus of resilience - as a means of assessing the ability of materials to withstand severe conditions. He defined it as the energy required to rupture a material as a result of a force being applied. In a report to the Admiralty in 1856, Mallett used the concept to explain why “in bronze guns the expansion is so great and the resilience, or power of elastic recovery, so small that in extreme cases …. the gun becomes permanently lengthened.”
In 1973, Crawford (Buzz) Holling first introduced the concept of resilience to ecology and the environment. He promoted the use of systems theory and modelling, and is credited with the introduction of ecological economics, the adaptive cycle, panarchy (understanding transformations in human and natural systems) and resilience to ecology and evolution.
Over the past two decades, the term resilience has evolved from the disciplines of materials science, the ecology and environmental studies to become a concept used liberally and enthusiastically by policy makers, practitioners and academics. The UK Government has rewritten its civil contingencies law, doctrine and plans around the concept of resilience. Universities have established resilience centres, institutes, research programs and offer resilience degrees. And business schools have embraced the concept to explain why and how organisations must adapt their strategies to meet the requirements of an ever-changing business environment.
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