Resilience Within Constraints: An Event Oriented Approach to Crisis Response

Author Information
Maria Minniti, Syracuse University
Zachary Rodriguez, Union College
Trenton A. Williams, Brigham Young University


Journal 
Journal of Management (Forthcoming)

Summary of the Paper
When faced with a crisis, the ability of individuals and organizations to decide locally how to respond matters greatly for the effectiveness of those responses. Thus, decision-making autonomy is a desirable feature of response systems.

Research Questions
Does decision making autonomy matter for the effectiveness of collective responses to crises?

What We Know
Scholars have started unpacking how individuals, organizations, and communities interact to build a shared capacity for respond to crises. This research, however, has not yet examined how the institutional environment influences local responses to crises. This is an important omission since crises do not occur in a vacuum—decisions of actors at one level, constrain or catalyze the resilience responses of communities and the individuals and organizations within them.

Novel Findings
In the context of the US health-care system, we use a sophisticated empirical method and an original highly detailed data set, to show  that a positive and significant relationship exists between decision-making autonomy at the county level and higher capacities for resilience. We further show that this relationship is strengthened, the larger and more diverse is the mix of healthcare organizations in a county, and the more unpredictable is the crisis. Contrary to standard beliefs, we show that decision-making autonomy enhances the shared capacities for resilience.

Novel Methodology 
Using an original set of high frequency data on COVID-19 rates in the United States, we investigate the relationship between healthcare decision agency at the county level, and the incidence of the pandemic as reflected in the number of COVID cases and death by county. Our results provide robust evidence that higher degrees of decision-making autonomy are associated with lower rates of COVID-19 cases and deaths. That is, a positive relationship exists between decision-making autonomy and higher capacities for resilience.

Implications for Practice
Our work provide evidence-based insights on how decision-making power should be structured across administrative jurisdictions and in the relationship between public, private, and non-profit actors.

Implications for Policy
Our results have substantial policy implications. We show that decision-making autonomy and the governance structure of decision making matter greatly for the effectiveness of responses to crisis at various jurisdictional levels (municipality, county, state, etc.).

Implications for Society
Communities and higher-level public organizations will be able to use our analysis to evaluate the effectiveness of alternative ways to respond to disruptive events, thereby improving their ability to respond to crises and the effectiveness of these responses.

Implications for Research
1. While we use data on the COVID crisis, our study explores resilient capacities of system structures that pre-dated COVID. and our results are highly generalizable Thus, our work provides a starting point for further research in other settings (e.g., homelessness, wildfire management, pollution reduction) and on the connection between resilience and what institutional contexts may better enable emerging from a crisis.
2. The stream of research we are championing has the ability to foster important research synergies beyond the boundaries of management research, by engaging between research in economics, political science, sustainability, and crisis management.

Full Citation
Minniti, M., Rodriguez, Z., Williams, T.A.  "Resilience within Constraints: An Event Oriented Approach to Crisis Response." Journal of Management, Forthcoming.

Abstract 
Scholars have started unpacking how individuals, organizations, and communities interact to build a shared capacity for resilience. This research, however, has not yet examined how the institutional environment influences local responses to crises. This is an important omission since crises do not occur in a vacuum—decisions of actors at one level, constrain or catalyze the resilience responses of communities and the individuals and organizations within them. Furthermore, research on resilience often assumes a relatively static nature of crises, without accounting for the need to revise responses over time. Using an original set of high frequency data on COVID-19 rates in the United States, we investigate the relationship between healthcare decision agency at the county level, and the incidence of the pandemic as reflected in the number of COVID cases and death by county. Our results provide robust evidence that higher degrees of decision-making autonomy are associated with lower rates of COVID-19 cases and deaths. That is, a positive relationship exists between decision-making autonomy and higher capacities for resilience. We further show that this relationship is strengthened, the larger and more heterogeneous is the mix of healthcare organizations in a county, and the higher is the need for revising responses given the changing nature of the crisis. Our results emphasize the need for a system approach to the study of resilience, and suggest that, by enabling customization of responses to local needs and resources, decision-making autonomy enhances the shared capacities for resilience.