Performance optimization of organizations considering economic resilience factors under uncertainty: A case study of a petrochemical plant

Abstract Organizations usually confront with disruptive incidents which have widespread negative effects on their performance. The ability of an organization to reduce the losses caused by these incidents is referred to economic resilience. Economic resilience is a concept that can improve the performance of an organization during crises. Petrochemical industry is a strategic industry. Any interruption in its operation can result in enormous cost and environmental hazards. Therefore, it is important to make it resilient against incidents to ensure sustainability objectives. In this research, the performance of a petrochemical plant is investigated in case of a crisis. At first, based on a comprehensive literature review, a conceptual framework for organizational economic resilience is developed. A structured questionnaire is provided and distributed among the staff of a petrochemical plant as a real case study. Then, due to the uncertain nature of incidents, three uncertain Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) models are employed to identify the efficient units of the petrochemical plant. At the end, a sensitivity analysis is performed to examine the importance of each factor in building economic resilience in the plant. Results show that preparedness and planning, properties and resourcefulness, and collateral pathways and redundancy are the most important economic resilient factors for this specific petrochemical plant. This is the first study that presents an integrated qualitative-quantitative approach including a conceptual framework for economic resilience and a DEA model in uncertain conditions in the whole supply chain of a petrochemical plant. This proposed approach can be used for all types of industrial organizations to improve their performance during the crisis. The proposed approach can help managers to understand the situation of their organization with respect to the economic resilience factors, comprehensively. Furthermore, the results help managers to strengthen their potential economic resilience against the crisis for sustainability.