The tourism industry, a significant contributor to global and regional economies, is highly vulnerable to crises, particularly pandemics. The COVID-19 pandemic severely impacted the tourism sector, underscoring the need to understand and enhance organizational resilience. While existing literature explores resilience from resource, capacity, and relationship perspectives, it often lacks an integrated framework and fails to capture the complex interplay of multiple factors. This study aims to address these gaps by developing a comprehensive framework that integrates these perspectives within the PSR model, using the COVID-19 pandemic as a lens to examine organizational resilience in Chinese tourism firms. The research questions focus on identifying condition sets that drive organizational resilience, determining the relative importance of different conditions, and exploring the complementary and substitutive relationships between them. The study utilizes fsQCA to analyze the joint effects of multiple factors and offers both theoretical and practical guidance for enhancing resilience in tourism businesses.

The concept of organizational resilience has been widely studied, with three dominant perspectives emerging: the resource perspective (focuses on material and intangible resources like human capital and organizational culture), the capability perspective (emphasizes core competencies such as innovation and corporate governance), and the relationship perspective (highlights the role of stakeholder relationships and CSR). While existing research provides valuable insights, it often lacks an integrated approach, focusing on individual factors rather than their complex interplay. Moreover, methodological limitations, such as reliance on regression analysis, hinder the understanding of complex causal relationships. This study addresses these limitations by adopting an integrated theoretical framework and the fsQCA method to explore the joint effects of resources, capabilities, and relationships on organizational resilience in a crisis context.

This study employs a mixed-methods approach, combining fsQCA with a time-fixed effects regression model. The sample comprises 35 listed Chinese tourism companies from 2010 to 2020, with a specific focus on 2020 as the main observation window for the fsQCA analysis (90 days post-December 31, 2019). Organizational resilience is measured using the 90-day historical volatility of stock prices after the outbreak, with lower volatility indicating higher resilience. The PSR model frames the analysis, with the number of confirmed COVID-19 cases as pressure (P), corporate governance and redundant resources as the state (S), and CSR performance as the response (R). Seven antecedent conditions are defined: epidemic pressure, executive compensation, proportion of independent directors, unabsorbed redundancy, absorbed redundancy, potential redundancy, and CSR. Data are calibrated using fuzzy sets, and fsQCA is used to identify configurations of conditions leading to high and low organizational resilience. A time-fixed effects regression model complements the fsQCA analysis, validating its findings and providing estimates of the net effects of individual variables. Lagged variables are used to mitigate endogeneity concerns. The fsQCA analysis considers data from 2018, 2019 and 2020 to offer a longitudinal perspective and compare resilience configurations across crisis and non-crisis periods. Robustness checks are conducted by adjusting the consistency threshold in the fsQCA and by employing alternative time windows in the regression analysis.

The univariate necessity analysis revealed that no single antecedent condition was necessary for high organizational resilience. The fsQCA sufficient condition analysis identified four key configurations associated with high organizational resilience: 1. **Redundant resource deficit under epidemic pressure with high pay incentive compensation:** High executive compensation can compensate for low absorbed and potential redundancy under high epidemic pressure. 2. **Low financial risk under low epidemic pressure with CSR:** In low-pressure environments, firms with low potential redundancy and strong CSR performance exhibit high resilience. 3. **Resource deployment and CSR driven under low financial risk:** High absorbed redundancy, low potential redundancy, and strong CSR contribute to resilience. 4. **CSR under low financial risk:** Strong CSR, even with low potential redundancy, fosters resilience. Across all configurations and years, CSR consistently emerged as a core condition for high organizational resilience. In contrast, high potential redundancy (high financial risk) was consistently associated with low organizational resilience. The analysis also indicated potential substitution effects among resources, capabilities, and relationships. Unabsorbed and absorbed redundant resources could partially substitute for deficiencies in capabilities (e.g., executive compensation) and relationships (CSR). The time-fixed effects regression model generally supported the fsQCA findings, with CSR showing a significant positive effect on resilience and potential redundancy exhibiting a significant negative effect. The proportion of independent directors showed a negative but not statistically significant relationship with resilience, possibly because the effect is stronger in a crisis context.

The findings demonstrate that organizational resilience in the tourism industry is not determined by single factors but rather by complex configurations of conditions. The prominence of CSR across all configurations highlights its importance in building and maintaining strong stakeholder relationships, which acts as a buffer against external shocks. The compensatory role of executive compensation and the negative influence of high financial risk provide valuable insights into resource management and risk mitigation strategies. The substitutive relationships identified suggest that firms can adapt their strategies to compensate for specific resource or capability limitations. The study's emphasis on an integrated framework provides a more nuanced understanding of organizational resilience compared to approaches that focus on individual factors.

This study makes several key contributions. First, it integrates the resource, capacity, and relationship perspectives into a comprehensive framework for analyzing organizational resilience, utilizing the PSR model and fsQCA method. Second, it reveals the complex configurational nature of organizational resilience, emphasizing the interplay between multiple conditions. Third, it highlights the critical role of CSR and the potential for substitution among different resources and capabilities. Future research could explore the generalizability of these findings across different cultural contexts and industries, investigate the long-term effects of resilience-building strategies, and examine the impact of dynamic changes in antecedent conditions over time.

Several limitations should be acknowledged. While lagged variables were used to address endogeneity, fsQCA does not fully mitigate this issue. The study's focus on Chinese tourism companies limits its generalizability. The chosen measure of resilience, stock price volatility, might reflect a specific bias. The relatively short observation window (90 days) might not capture the full extent of long-term resilience. Future studies could address these limitations by employing more sophisticated econometric techniques, expanding the sample to include firms from diverse contexts, using alternative measures of resilience, and extending the observation window.