Beyond healthcare system resilience: A cross-level analysis of antifragility in institutions, organizations, and teams
Progetto The aim of this proposal is to explore how the Italian National Healthcare
Service (INHS) has reacted and improved after two years since the Covid19 pandemic disruption. Starting from the concept of organizational
resilience (Giustiano et al., 2018), the aim of this project is to go beyond the
ability of a system to prepare, manage and react to a shock thus
demonstrating how it can learn and strengthen from difficulties, to became
“antifragile” (Taleb, 2012).
In order, to provide a global vision of how the INHS is changing after Covid19 outbreak, in this project we explore the interconnected effects of the
pandemic shock on the three layers that usually are taken into consideration
to describe the structure of a healthcare system: institutional, organizational,
and professional layers. Following this approach, we will specifically
investigate how each of these layers behaved during the two years of
pandemic and how they have interacted in their antifragile reaction.
Therefore, a multilayer approach of analysis will be adopted in order to
explore how initiatives and strategies implemented at one level affected the
decisions and the strategies adopted within the others (Molina-Azorin et al,
2020). Consequently, the research questions are: i) What organizational
characteristics contribute to make healthcare systems, organizations and
multidisciplinary teams more prepared to tackle crises and disasters? ii) How
multi-layered systems can better coordinate across levels to respond to crises
and disasters? Which strategical and operational decisions increase the
adoption of organizational solutions that contribute to recover but also to
improve performance after the crises? In other words, what characteristics
contribute to antifragility? How resilience and antifragility characteristics
can be measured in terms of quality and appropriateness of care? How does
resilience and antifragility at one level (e.g., organizational level) contribute
to explain the ability to cope, recover and thrive at other levels (e.g.,
organizational or team level)?
The results of the empirical research will advance the knowledge about the
antifragile systems and will be useful to adequately equip national/regional
healthcare institutions, healthcare organizations and individuals for future
crisis. It is a fact that systems better react when they are prepared for shocks.
Disseminating the research results we will contribute to the cultural
development of the INHS suggesting policy making and managerial
instruments to face crises. Such objective is not only in accordance with
interventions planned by the Italian recovery and resilience plan (PNRR) but
also with the national research plan 2021-2027 (PNR).