ABSTRACT
In the general sense of the word, resilience refers to the ability to withstand and recover from various types of stresses. This concept has gained significant popularity in as disparate fields as psychology, engineering, and ecology (Birkland and Waterman, 2009; de Bruijne, Boin and van Eeten, 2010; Woods, Schenk and Allen, 2009). The emphasis in the field of resilience engineering lies at the abilities of individual teams and organisations to adapt and survive in the face of various disturbances. However, the resilience studied at one level depends on the influences from levels above and below (Woods, 2006). These different levels operate at different timescales, and there may be tensions and incompatibilities between them, which impacts the nature of the system’s resilience (McDonald, 2006). For this reason, it is important to investigate the relationships between the various levels of a socio-technical system, in order to understand the ways in which resilient performance is achieved. This chapter therefore aims at paying attention to the way resilience of a sociotechnical system is influenced by the interplay between various stakeholders in a multi-level and multi-actor context.
