How Did Organizational Resilience Work Before and after the Financial Crisis? An Empirical Study

The purpose of this paper is to assess the role of organizational resilience as an attitude, depending on the adoption of corporate governance, environmental and social practices (CESPs), in order to react to unexpected shocks, while preserving business sustainability. Organizational resilience is defined as the capacity for an enterprise to survive, to adapt and to grow in a turbulent change or unpredicted situation. Since organizational resilience is a latent path-dependent construct, it can be evaluated through long-term outcomes in an integrated perspective. The hypotheses are tested analyzing the economic performance of U.S. companies listed in Standard & Poor’s 500 index (S&P 500) and their environmental, social and governance (ESG) data has been extracted from Asset4. The period in the study covers 14 years, from 2002 to 2015, collecting the seven years before and after the 2008 financial crisis. The results of the empirical analysis highlight that economic performances of listed companies are influenced, over the 14 year period considered in the study, not only by the traditional sustainable pillars (SEPs), but also by the corporate governance ones (CESPs).