Uncovering the Mechanisms of Organisational Resilience: A Critical Realist Systematic Review

This systematic review examines how organisational resilience is conceptualised, enacted, and enabled in the Digital Age, characterised by Artificial Intelligence (AI), Generative AI, the Internet of Things (IoT), Big Data, and Robotics. Despite their transformative potential, these technologies are often treated as peripheral tools rather than core mechanisms in resilience architectures. Adopting a critical realist paradigm, we conducted a Systematic Literature Review (SLR) following the PRISMA 2020 protocol to review thirty (30) peer-reviewed empirical studies (2017–present). A pre-SLR conceptual framework, linking Business Intelligence and Responsiveness constructs, guided data extraction and synthesis. Building on this, we propose a conceptual framework and explanatory model grounded in the Context–Mechanism–Outcome logic. The model distinguishes generative mechanisms (real domain), organisational responses (actual domain), and observable indicators (empirical domain). The review identifies Collective Capability (CC), Adaptive Capability (AC) and Dynamic Capability (DC) mechanisms as key generative powers, with Digital Age enablers embedded within Adaptive Capability (AC) and Dynamic Capability (DC). Together, these mechanisms contribute to Systemic Preparedness (SP), Rapid Recovery (RR) and Generative Stability (GS), thereby supporting the emergence of Organisational Resilience (OR). This reconceptualises resilience as an emergent, non-linear outcome of mechanism interactions, offering a unified direction. Future research should prioritise longitudinal multi-case studies and quantitative testing of Context–Mechanism–Outcome configurations, supported by mixed-method designs to validate and refine the proposed framework.