Aiming for resilience and adaptation in managing environment: An emerging environmental and emergency leadership in the twenty‐first century

Abstract

Purpose

Environmental and emergency leaders are important individuals who play a vital role in managing ecological resources. Based on the resilience thinking of Walker and Salt, this study highlights aims to how resilience for adaptive management can be built by incorporating vision formation of environmental and emergency management leaders.

Design/methodology/approach

The study addresses two research questions: What constitutes environmental and emergency leadership systems? How are the concepts of vulnerability, resilience, and adaptation relevant to the environmental and emergency management processes? The study employs two case studies and discusses how resilience leadership can be incorporated into environmental management and emergency management systems in organizations.

Findings

This study includes a review that consists of activities in resilience‐building, and the process of vision formation. It explains how resilience thinking influences vision. Investigations of the application of the resilience approach by examining two environmental and emergency leadership organizations in Arizona demonstrate how situations can improve with resilience thinking and leadership in emergency and environmental management systems.

Originality/value

This study contributes to the knowledge body of resilience and leadership by calling importance and incorporation of resilience thinking into the management systems of environment and emergency management.

Citation

Lin Moe, T. (2012), "Aiming for resilience and adaptation in managing environment: An emerging environmental and emergency leadership in the twenty‐first century", International Journal of Disaster Resilience in the Built Environment, Vol. 3 No. 1, pp. 42-51. https://doi.org/10.1108/17595901211201123