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PhD in Management

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Ekin Ilseven

PhD Student in Strategy

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Biography

As the frequency of Black Swan events increase, building resilience is attracting great attention from decision-makers in various organizations, some of which consider it imperative to ensure a thriving future. However, there are many moving parts to achieving organizational resilience, and we have a limited understanding of how the parts fit together and what (unexpected) consequences may occur.

Approaching organizations as Complex Adaptive Systems and quantifying resilience as a performance outcome, I am interested in pinpointing the interacting multi-level mechanisms driving the performance response and, more importantly, delineating their limitations. Among many open questions to answer in the future, the two spotlighted in my dissertation are
  • "Can an organization mitigate the performance drop and improve its recovery rate simultaneously?"

  • "When, how, and which organizational structures improve resilience, yet at the cost of efficiency?"
I investigate the former through quantitative analysis using archival data and the latter through agent-based simulations, and I intend to find a middle ground through the use of lab and field experiments as I advance.

Creating knowledge has to be complemented by sharing. For this, the podcast "Building Resilience", hosted by Iulia Istrate (Skills for Mars), advised by Phanish Puranam (INSEAD), Jay Narayanan (NUS), and me, brings together prominent academics and practitioners who share their thoughts and insights from research and experience.

See my CV for more information on my background which continues to be influential in my research.