Human Factors and their Impacts on Crisis Resilience

Abstract

Abstract
The COVID-19 pandemic resulted in one of the most devastating reductions in global GDP in history, declining 3.0% in 2020 compared to a growth of 2.8% in 2019 (International Monetary Fund, 2022). The increased prevalence and severity of crises, including the COVID–19 pandemic, has prompted research on increasing resilience to minimise damage to organisations. Industry 5.0 has been used to describe the fifth industrial revolution, a period of economic and societal transition which considers the contribution of organisations and industry to society. This approach utilises new technologies to encourage prosperity while considering the impacts of industry on both workers and the environment. The importance of individuals, alongside technology and processes in the human-centric Industry 5.0, may necessitate considering individuals' influence on improving an organisation's crisis resilience. It is suggested that identifying individuals with characteristics associated with personal resilience and performance during periods of high stress and crisis may improve an organisation’s ability to identify, respond and recover from crises. This exploratory research subsequently reviews existing documents considering crisis resilience, alongside ascertaining the views of 20 Subject Matter Experts, in order to examine the impacts of human factors upon crisis resilience. Thematic analysis was adopted to interpret both the document research and interview findings and twelve critical human factors were identified as contributing to crisis resilience. Alongside identifying additional human factors to those already proposed by research (Leigh, 2015), this empirical study provides evidence to help define the concept of crisis resilience and proposes the Test, Train, Measure and Sustain (TTMS) framework as a process to assist in developing crisis resilience within organisations. Future research is recommended to assess the effectiveness and efficacy of the proposed TTMS framework and to determine whether some personality traits are more critical to the crisis resilience of organisations than others.

Date of Award	4 Nov 2024
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	University of Portsmouth
Supervisor	Dennis Gough (Supervisor) & Moufida Sadok (Supervisor)