Participatory approach for assessing institutional resilience: a case study of crises in Austria

This paper outlines the procedure of employing novel software tools within a series of participatory workshops designed for measuring and monitoring the resilience of Austria's socioeconomic system based on network analysis and systems research. This study employs the principles of the four-stage adaptive cycle to quantify the perspectives of major stakeholders regarding resilience readiness in Austrian society and to explore the implications. At the FASresearch company in Vienna, 278 representatives from 15 key sectors of Austrian society were asked to estimate the resilience of their respective sectors and identify the key resilience factors for each sector. Results pinpoint the most critical stakeholders and resilience factors, highlight the importance of quality relationships among stakeholders, and indicate that while stakeholders accurately perceive the stages of growth (r), equilibrium (K), and regeneration (α), they tend to underestimate the significance of the final (Ω) stage of the adaptive cycle, characterized by disturbance and collapse of outdated systems. Improved recognition and preparation for each stage may result in the increased resilience of each sector to potential crises in the future. Notably, perspectives regarding resilience in the face of a crisis were gathered prior to the occurrence of the COVID-19 pandemic. Thus, in addition to fulfilling an analytic-diagnostic function, resilience monitoring techniques are also intended as an adaptive tool for novel resilience management. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s10668-022-02430-3.