Building before the storm: A multi-level framework for resilience in professional public institutions under permacrisis

Organizations now operate in permacrisis, where disruptions compound and recur before recovery is complete, and playbooks built for discrete shocks no longer fit. This is acute for professional public institutions, whose authority rests on public legitimacy. Drawing on six years inside the Israeli judiciary (2018–2024), which absorbed a pandemic, a military mobilization and a constitutional confrontation, together with cross-sector benchmarking and court performance data, we propose a multi-level resilience framework. Our framework locates resilience across individual, team, and organizational levels, with perceived publicness as their normative foundation and Organization Development (OD) consulting as one means of developing and connecting resilience capacities prospectively. We state the framework's boundary conditions and offer a before, during and after playbook. For leaders, the lesson is direct: build the capacity before the storm.

OD Consulting as a Catalyst for Change

This longitudinal case study addresses a critical gap in understanding how Organization Development (OD) consulting facilitates sustainable transformation in complex organizations, particularly concerning the precise mechanisms that enable enduring change while rigorously maintaining operational stability. Employing a six-year constructivist grounded theory methodology, we investigated this challenge within a large Israeli public sector organization, drawing on 67 interviews, extensive field observations, and organizational documentation collected in two distinct phases (2018 and 2024). Our analysis empirically refines three interconnected mechanisms through which effective OD consulting operates: (1) creating adaptive spaces, (2) systematically developing emergent capabilities, and (3) enabling systemic integration. The findings reveal that these mechanisms collectively foster a unique state of “bounded transformation”—a phenomenon where organizations achieve meaningful change without compromising essential operational effectiveness. This research contributes theoretically by offering a grounded framework that extends complexity theory and dialogic OD, introducing “bounded transformation” as a novel concept, and detailing how these mechanisms facilitate multi-level learning and dynamic integration. Practically, it provides actionable insights for OD practitioners on cultivating trust-based relationships, fostering iterative learning cycles, and embedding sustainable change processes within complex organizational systems.

The Logic of Appropriateness in OD: Perceived Publicness as an Institutional Change Mechanism

Organization development (OD) seeks sustainable change, yet its theoretical toolkit remains underspecified regarding the normative mechanisms through which organizational context shapes change-supportive behavior. This article introduces Publicness-Activated Change Theory (PACT), positioning perceived organizational publicness—the extent to which employees experience their organization as attentive to the public interest—as a potential cross-sector institutional change mechanism. Drawing on institutional theory, the logic of appropriateness, and internalization theory, PACT conceptualizes perceived publicness as normative change infrastructure through which public values may shape judgments about appropriate behavior. The framework makes three contributions: it theorizes perceived publicness as an informal institutional context for change; introduces publicness-values misfit as a diagnostic explanation for resistance; and presents a three-stage Diagnose–Align–Leverage model grounded in the Publicness Perceptions Scale. Together, these contributions provide a testable framework for examining when publicness can be leveraged, when alignment is required, and how its effects compare with established OD mechanisms.

Beyond Individual Grit: A Multi-Level Framework For Systemic Judicial Resilience

Modern judicial systems face escalating challenges from mounting caseloads, rising public expectations, and crises such as the COVID-19 pandemic. While resilience programs often focus on individual judges, this study develops an empirically grounded, multi-level framework for systemic judicial resilience based on longitudinal research in the Israeli judiciary (2018–2024). Using grounded theory methodology and a mixed-methods design, we integrated qualitative data from 412 judges (via stratified focus groups) with performance metrics (e.g., clearance rates) and benchmarking across six public and private sector organisations. Findings reveal that resilience emerges not in isolation but through dynamic interactions between individual, team, and organizational domains. Key drivers include psychological safety, algorithmic workload balancing, and intergenerational mentorship. The framework was associated with measurable improvements in judicial efficiency (e.g., 107.5% clearance rate in 2020) and provides insight into how courts can navigate institutional strain while safeguarding legitimacy. The study challenges individual-centric
approaches and offers a scalable model for resilience-building in courts, with implications for administrative design, leadership development, and public trust in legal institutions.

Unveiling the spirit of publicness: Conceptualization and validation of a publicness perceptions scale

This study theoretically and empirically tests a Publicness Perceptions Scale (PPS). Our goal is to understand the dimensions of publicness as interpreted by individuals working within different types of organizations, and the extent to which these perceptions vary across sectors. A two-study design with independent samples is used. Based on a literature review supported by an expert’s survey and original empirical data, the PPS is constructed and validated. In Study 1, exploratory factor analysis (EFA) indicated the PPS is composed of five reliable factors: (1) perceived ownership, funding, and political control; (2) perceived market control; (3) perceived legality and equity; (4) perceived accountability, and (5) perceived transparency. In Study 2, confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) suggests a second-order single PPS factor. Study 2 also demonstrates the scale’s convergent, discriminant, and incremental validities. The paper concludes with theoretical, empirical, and practical advantages of the new PPS scale.

The publicness enigma: Can perceived publicness predict employees’ formal and prosocial behavior across sectors?

The meaning of Publicness for organizations and for individuals has received growing attention in the public administration literature in recent years. We adopt a perceived publicness perspective to expand our understanding of the publicness concept and operationalize this perception as a means to predict employees’ formal and prosocial behaviors across sectors. Using a recently developed Publicness Perceptions Scale (PPS), we present and empirically examine a model regarding the direct and indirect relationships among perceived publicness, employees’ engagement, and their performance in public and hybrid organizations. Findings based on a field study of 340 employees from governmental (i.e. public) and non-governmental (i.e. hybrid) organizations reveal that perceived publicness has a positive relationship with Organizational Citizenship Behaviors (OCB) and that this relationship is largely mediated by employees’ engagement. In addition, in non-government organizations perceived publicness is negatively related to employees’ in-role performance. We thus contribute to the theoretical knowledge on publicness at the perceptual level and point to its role in formal and informal performance across sectors. Other theoretical, methodological, and practical implications are discussed, and directions for future studies are suggested.