An antifragility management model for organizations

Abstract

In today's landscape, economic changes, technological innovations, and competitive rivalries constantly redefine the environment of organizations, which are evolving in increasingly complex and uncertain contexts. In this setting, resilience has shifted from being a desirable trait to an indispensable one for organizations. However, antifragility emerges as a superior paradigm in terms of long-term benefits, as it prepares organizations to capitalize on change.

This study addresses the challenge of identifying key management variables crucial for developing antifragile responses in organizations facing environmental variability. The proposed hypothesis suggests that to foster antifragility, organizations should focus on three key areas: structures and processes, organizational culture, and managerial behavior. Additionally, they should apply variability regulation strategies based on negative and positive feedback, which are central concepts in the cybernetic approach of systems theory.

The main finding is that the proposed management model offers useful guidelines for the application of multiple methodologies by systematizing their elements into two phases: first, mitigating variability through negative pathway strategies that strengthen the system and reduce its exposure to risk, and then expanding variability through positive pathway strategies that enable the exploration of opportunities with potentially greater benefits than losses, which characterizes an antifragile response.