Abstract
There are various factors that can affect an organization’s ability to overcome a crisis and the uncertainties that arise thereafter. Little is known about the process of organizational resilience and the factors that can help or prevent it. In this paper, we analyzed how public sector organizations build resilience/traits of risks awareness, and in doing that, we derived some elements that could affect the process of resilience. In particular, drawing on the conceptual framework proposed by Mallak we analyzed an in-depth case study in a public sector organization (PSO) identifying some contextual dimensions implicated in the process of building resilience. In our analysis, we identified two main elements that affect resilience: Risk perception and the use of accounting. Results shown how risk perception is perceived as a trigger, while accounting is considered as an enforcer in the process of building resilience capacity. The results also show the way accounting is implicated in the management of austerity programs and supporting the creation of a resilient public sector organization. In our case, the risk has become an opportunity for change. In the face of these budget cuts, management began refocusing the company’s mission from infrastructure maintenance to providing services with a market-based logic.
Highlights
The concept of resilience is holistic and complex as it is developed from several perspectives, i.e., organizational, information technology, industrial relation, engineering, business strategy, culture, organizational learning (Andersson et al 2019)
Results shown how risk perception is perceived as a trigger, while accounting is considered as an enforcer in the process of building resilience capacity
We focused on the framework of Mallak (1998) to analyze, in particular, the role of accounting in supporting public sector organizations to develop risk awareness and become resilient
Summary
The concept of resilience is holistic and complex as it is developed from several perspectives, i.e., organizational, information technology, industrial relation, engineering, business strategy, culture, organizational learning (Andersson et al 2019). Organizational resilience is the ability to effectively absorb, develop specific responses to, and engage in transformative activities to capitalize on disruptive surprises that potentially threaten organization survival (Lengnick-Hall et al 2011). Mainstream literature views resilience in terms of the ability to return to the previous state of perceived ‘normality’ (engineering perspective) or as the capacity for recovery from crisis by following the sequence of rescue, restoration of damaged infrastructure and the rebuilding of markets (ecological perspective) (Barbera et al 2017; Davoudi et al 2012). The ecological perspective recognizes the existence of multiple equilibria, and the possibility of systems to flip into alternative stability domains (Davoudi et al 2012)
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