Critical infrastructure provides essential services to the maintenance and progression of societal functions. Due to its importance, critical infrastructure is, to a larger extent, at threat of and subject to antagonistic attacks, such as IT-attacks and cyber-attacks, during times of geopolitical instability. As a result, critical infrastructure providers face externaland internal pressures to build resilience to ensure the continuous provision of essential services. Despite this, and despite the established research field of critical infrastructure resilience, the organizational resilience of critical infrastructure providers has not been properly addressed. Through the lens of the Dynamic Capabilities Framework, the purpose of this study is to provide an insight into how critical infrastructure providers build resilience capabilities prior to adversity in the current geopolitical context. Despite their noted significances, the organizational resilience building of critical infrastructure providers and how organizational resilience is built prior to adversity are under-researched. To develop an understanding of this phenomenon, we conducted a qualitative study on six Swedish critical infrastructure providers using semi-structured interviews using a grounded theory inspired research strategy.With our findings, we discovered that in the face of geopolitical instability, critical infrastructure providers (1) build the sensing capability of observing and identifying adversity by developing situation awareness. This capability is developed by utilizing the internal expertise of selected employees and by building relationships with the external network to gather information. Furthermore, to develop the seizing capability of preparing for adversity in the given context, we found that critical infrastructure providers (2) develop multi-level human resource competencies through communicating clear expectations and responsibilities, providing education to employees, and by cultivating and establishing a safety culture. Additionally, the preparation capability is developed through (3) strategic preparation by developing scenario plans, action plans, and by collaborating with the external network. Lastly, critical infrastructure providers’ capability to prepare is developed by (4) investing capital into organization-wide physical security. With this study, we contribute novel insights of the phenomenon of the organizational resilience building of critical infrastructure providers. In the end, we have found that the organizational resilience building of critical infrastructure providers deviates from existing assessment and suggestive frameworks within the research body on organizational resilience. Accordingly, our findings have generated practical insights to managers of critical infrastructure providers, and an increased understanding to policy makers of how critical infrastructure providers approach resilience in the current geopolitical climate.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:umu-226906 |
| Date | January 2024 |
| Creators | Engman, Hanna, Sprängare, Ingrid |
| Publisher | Umeå universitet, Företagsekonomi |
| Source Sets | DiVA Archive at Upsalla University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Student thesis, info:eu-repo/semantics/bachelorThesis, text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Rights | info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess |
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