Convenors:

 

André Carlos Busanelli de Aquino

University of Sao Paulo, Brazil

aaquino@usp.br 

 

Markus A. Höllerer

WU Vienna, Austria & UNSW Sydney, Australia

 markus.hoellerer@wu.ac.at

 

Ricardo Lopes Cardoso

Getulio Vargas Foundation, Brazil

ricardo.cardoso@fgv.br

 

Iris Saliterer

Albert Ludwigs University Freiburg, Germany

iris.saliterer@vwl.uni-freiburg.de

 

Ileana Steccolini

Newcastle University London, UK

ileana.steccolini@newcastle.ac.uk

 

 

Call for papers

 

Recent crises have fostered a resurgence of scholarly interest in the public sector more broadly, and in public sector resilience in particular. Interestingly, parallel streams of research have emerged on resilience in the public realm, with some of them being more focused on specific emergency and crisis management, others more on the resilience of whole communities (such as cities; Rockefeller Foundation, 2017) in the face of natural and social challenges, yet others on how governments reacted to the issues caused by crisis and/or austerity (Barbera et al., 2017, Steccolini et. al. 2017). The concept of resilience refers to both organizational capacity to reduce risks and recover from crises and the ability to “keep operating even in adverse ‘worst case’ conditions and to adapt rapidly in a crisis” (Hood 1991, 14). The former view focuses on recovery, staying robust under enormous stress, resistance and the efficiency of bouncing back to equilibrium; the latter – i.e. the evolutionary approach to resilience – emphasizes the capacity to reorganize as a response to, or in anticipation of, disturbances from the institutional environment.

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Resilience in the public sector remains a contested subject and domain of scholarly inquiry, multifaceted, still scantly theorized and operationalized, thus in need for further empirical and conceptual exploration. At the same time, the public sector represent a highly interesting context where to study resilience more broadly and from different points of view, including organizational, network, community, policy and country/system perspectives.

 

This sub-theme invites contributions that explore the different facets of resilience in the public sector, welcoming a diversity of theoretical and methodological approaches. Inter- and multi-disciplinary approaches are particularly encouraged.

Among others, possible topics to be addressed include but are not restricted to:

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• Financial and non - financial aspects of resilience

• Resilience at the organizational, network, and community levels (and how these are potentially interlinked)

• Resilience and local development

• Dynamic capabilities and resilience

• Role of sensemaking in public sector resilience

• Resilience and austerity at central and local governments

• Performance measurement, Public Policies and resilience

• Role of political leadership to design and support resilient solutions