Organizational Reliability Model Verification in the Crisis Escalation Phase Caused by the COVID-19 Pandemic

Agnieszka Bieńkowska, Katarzyna Tworek and Anna Zabłocka-Kluczka ()
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Agnieszka Bieńkowska: Department of Management Systems and Organizational Development, Wrocław University of Science and Technology, wyb. Wyspianskiego 27, 50-370 Wroclaw, Poland
Katarzyna Tworek: Department of Management Systems and Organizational Development, Wrocław University of Science and Technology, wyb. Wyspianskiego 27, 50-370 Wroclaw, Poland

Sustainability, 2020, vol. 12, issue 10, 1-22

Abstract: This article concerns the Organizational Reliability Model (ORM) verification in the crisis escalation phase caused by critical conditions of organization functioning induced by the COVID-19 pandemic. ORM is constituted by three reliabilities, human resources, information technology, and management, which are mediators through which Type-1 and Type-2 reliability capabilities influence organizational reliability. Organizational reliability is a prerequisite for sustainability of contemporary organizations. The model was developed and verified for a variety of operating conditions. However, crisis induced by a Black Swan type of event creates conditions so critical that it calls for verification of known paradigms and models, as an element of crisis-state theory building. This is why this paper’s aim was to verify the ORM and explain the mechanisms of shaping organizational reliability in such conditions in order to contribute to both theory (verifying the organizational reliability paradigm among organizations in crisis) and practice (proposing mechanisms, potentially helping them survive). The ORM is empirically verified based on the sample of 115 employees from Italy operating under critical conditions of the COVID-19 pandemic (research carried out in the week of 18–22 March 2020). In order to verify the hypothesis, the path analysis was executed using SPSS AMOS. The results confirmed that in the extreme critical conditions causing crisis escalation for the organizations, there is a need to redefine the existing paradigms, including ORM. The results show that the HR reliability role in the ORM has drastically changed and the mechanism of its influence on organizational reliability is significantly different in crisis influenced by critical conditions of organization functioning. They also confirmed that IT together with HR is dependent on management to change the way of working and until that, its reliability may be counterproductive for the reliability of organizational as a whole. Therefore, obtaining sustainability in the crisis escalation phase requires redefining the mechanisms for securing organizational reliability.

Keywords: management; paradigm verification; organizational reliability; organizational sustainability; COVID-19 pandemic; crisis (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

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