Applying organizational resilience management tools in the Lithuanian public sector

ENThe paper analyses the trends of organizational resilience management in Lithuanian central government institutions based on the “bounce-back” concept, exam-ining the impact on the organization from both internal and external environments and incorporating the resulting uncertainty conditions conceptualized through the prism of the organization’s available information for decision-making. The results of an empirical qualitative study in the Lithuanian public sector suggest that performance deterioration in Lithuanian central government organizations arises from both the internal and the external environment. The study reveals that the strength and the frequency of these impacts are comparably similar in each environment, affecting organizational performance with regular and unexpected factors. Regular environmental influences tend to create conditions of moderate uncertainty, where information is either known and available or there is a constant demand for new information acquisition. Unexpected environmental influences tend to create high uncertainty conditions, where there is a persistent need for information in order to make decisions, escalating to not knowing what information is needed and where it can be obtained. Experts suggest that managing resilience and decision-making under uncertainty requires organizations to invest in information processing and communication, emphasizing free information flow and live, substantive communication between managers, adjusting provided information on the situation that is limiting or expanding it. Effective knowledge management and learning processes that help organizations adapt to changing conditions are best supported by personnel who possess institutional memory, suitable digitization of management information, and active engagement in national networking (or international networking if no national equivalent exists).Inadequate preparation for periods of negative impact disrupts the organization’s information exchange, and the learning element becomes unmanageable, especially if the negative impact situations are frequent and unforeseen, depriving the organization of the necessary time to “take a breath, look back and learn, and consolidate learning. Keywords: public management, organizational resilience management, bounce-back, conditions of uncertainty, qualitative research.