Beyond Political Risk: Toward a Holistic Understanding of Multinational Enterprise Resilience in the Era of Cascading Crises

Research Summary: This article develops a conceptual framework for understanding multinational enterprise (MNE) resilience in the era of cascading crises. We define resilience as the MNE's capacity to absorb disruption, maintain or restore functioning, and reconfigure operations as conditions shift. We argue that cascading crises complicate simple return to a pre-crisis equilibrium because shocks are increasingly interdependent and propagate across nested individual, organizational, institutional, and ecosystem levels. Anchored in organizational resilience and systems thinking, we develop a multilevel framework linking cascading crises, organizational responses, and resilience outcomes. By clarifying the core constructs and emphasizing cross-level feedback, this study advances a more holistic global strategy perspective on resilience building amid cascading crises. Managerial Summary: MNEs increasingly face cascading crises: disruptions that begin in one domain but spread across geographies, institutions, supply chains, and stakeholder relationships. Traditional risk management remains useful, but prediction, avoidance, and control are insufficient when crises interact and evolve over time. This article offers a framework for understanding how MNEs build resilience by assessing crisis relevance, managing organizational constraints, developing buffering practices, coordinating across institutional contexts, and reinforcing trust, legitimacy, incentives, and learning. The framework helps managers move beyond short-term coping toward resilience building that preserves critical functioning, supports adaptation, and enables strategic reconfiguration under turbulent global conditions.