Resilient and Agile Organizations (RAO)

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Description

The problems posed by current financial and economic crisis in EU require enhanced focus on emerging opportunities in order to ensure the realization of Europe 2020 priorities:

A) Smart growth – developing an economy based on knowledge and innovation. Smart growth approaches can help communities balance development with environmental protection, economics, and quality of life, therefore becoming more resilient to economic and financial shocks.

Topics:

  • Social innovation integrates several emerging initiatives that extend and strengthen government services, opening them up to the participation of citizens and civil society organizations, therefore promoting citizen empowerment and social cohesion.
  • A greater concern with the expense, judicious, and optimized use of available resources implies a greater concern with the improvement of the natural environment in urban areas. Effective and optimized urban planning, coupled with adequate approaches to risk assessment, prevention and mitigation, can play an important role in a better resilience of cities to future shocks and stresses to the urban infrastructure system associated with climate change and economic challenges.
  • Businesses and civil society are being pressured to develop and implement innovative business models that promote intra- and inter-organizational collaboration and the engagement of citizens in various processes, from innovation to production to marketing.

B) Inclusive growth – fostering a high-employment economy delivering economic, social and territorial cohesion.

Topics:

  • Social protection measures must be implemented to build the long term resilience of vulnerable groups to economic crises. The drive for a more dynamic economy that adequately addresses the problems of poverty, income distribution and social exclusion, is widely felt. Entrepreneurship and enhanced ability of businesses to respond to new policies should be fostered.
  • The use of Internet and the web is becoming widespread. It is used to communicate, search information, make business, pursue self-education, sharing ideas, create value from individual talent, and engage with civic and political issues. Therefore, a trusted environment for individuals and business to interact online promotes economic and social cohesion.
  • Information and communication technologies provide innovative opportunities to promote the participation of citizens in government-sponsored activities, and empower citizens to influence political and government decisions. Opening government data to the public empower citizens define solutions to local problems, contribute to improve the efficacy and responsiveness of governments, and help building territorial cohesion.

Overall, RAO projects will need to effectively manage resources, costs, quality, scope, while keeping the risk controlled, under uncertain scenarios and conflicting objectives.

The Centre ALGORITMI integrates research groups in areas relevant to the development of structures, processes and technological tools for organizational resilience. Of particular relevance are the competencies in information systems and technology in organizations and society, computer science and technology and industrial engineering and management.