Diverging paths to organizational resilience: The role of dynamic managerial capabilities, benevolent leadership, organizational unlearning and paradoxical thinking

Abstract

This paper investigates the determinants of organizational resilience, defined as the capacity to effectively counter and respond to external threats through organizational processes and strategic posture, and to recover from unexpected crises. It examines the role of dynamic managerial capabilities, leading to benevolent leadership, organizational ability to unlearn ineffective practices and processes, and handling strategic paradoxes, which collectively enable effective strategies for countering unexpected adversities. It argues that environmental dynamism (changeability) significantly influences the effectiveness of the aforementioned determinants of organizational resilience. Drawing on data collected from 379 Polish organizations between September and November 2023, the study tests these relationships using structural equation modeling (SEM). To further explore these complex relationships, fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis (FsQCA) is employed to validate the SEM results. The findings indicate that dynamic managerial capabilities, coupled with benevolent leadership and organizational unlearning, contribute to increased organizational resilience, particularly in dynamic environments. However, paradoxical thinking has a minor inhibitory effect on organizational resilience. FsQCA analyses corroborate the SEM results but underscore the importance of deeper consideration of complexity in management studies.