Pressure, state and response: configurational analysis of organizational resilience in tourism businesses following the COVID-19 pandemic crisis

Abstract

Organizational resilience is key for tourism companies in coping with crises; however, little is known about how tourism companies can become more resilient. Furthermore, much of the empirical evidence in the extant literature comes from developed countries. The study identifies key factors affecting organizational resilience based on a “resource–capacity-relationship” theoretical framework, incorporating the number of COVID-19 cases as an external factor in the stress-state-response (PSR) model, with the epidemic as pressure, corporate governance, and redundant resources as the enterprise state, and CSR performance as the response. The fsQCA method was used to analyse the interaction and joint effects among multisource influencing factors such as pressure, state and response. Based on an empirical analysis of 35 listed tourism companies in China from 2010 to 2020, the research found the following: (1) Four groupings of high organizational resilience: redundant resource deficit under epidemic pressure with high pay incentive compensation, low financial risk, and CSR driven under low epidemic pressure, resource deployment and CSR driven under low financial risk and CSR driven under low financial risk. Of these, CSR at the response level as a core condition is key to developing high organizational resilience. (2) Corporate governance capabilities play a high role in fostering organizational resilience under epidemic pressure and can compensate for organizational deficiencies in resources and relationships. (3) Under specific objective endowment conditions, unabsorbed redundant resources and absorbed redundant resources can substitute to some extent for deficiencies in capabilities and relationships. (4) The low organizational resilience configurations suggest that potentially redundant resources may be the key to low organizational resilience. CSR is not the ‘golden key’ to organizational resilience but is influenced by redundant resources. Furthermore, the key variables affecting organizational resilience were significant during the studied period. The research provides a theoretical reference and practical guidance for the sustainable development of tourism enterprises in the context of major public health crises.