Organizational resilience: unveiling the role of strategic internal crisis management on employee sensemaking and sensegiving

PurposeCommunication with employees during times of crisis has become a crucial aspect of crisis management for building organizational resilience knowledge. Thus, explaining how internal crisis management promotes positive employee behaviour has become imperative. This study aims to investigate the relationship between internal crisis communication, job engagement, Organizational Citizenship Behaviour towards the Environment, Communicative behaviour for sensemaking and sensegiving and organizational resilience.Design/methodology/approachAn online survey was conducted with 483 full-time employees in Pakistan. The structural equation modelling technique was employed to assess the study's hypotheses.FindingsThe findings of this study demonstrate that internal crisis communication can boost employee job engagement, organizational citizenship behaviour towards environment, sensemaking and sensegiving, which will also have a downstream effect on organizational resilience.Practical implicationsThe findings of this study indicated that effective internal communication can aid managers in making well-informed decisions, coordinating response efforts and disseminating vital information to relevant stakeholders. As a result, this study contributes to the literature on internal crisis management by incorporating employee behavioural intention towards the environment. It provides managers and practitioners with knowledge on managing employees during a crisis.Originality/valueSurprisingly, the conservation of resource theory (COR) does not explain communicative conduct (sensegiving) and environmental (e.g. organizational citizenship behaviour towards environment) components. This research combines the tenets of COR theory that have yet to be researched with the employees' environmental responses element. The mechanisms of cognition and communication were also ignored in earlier studies. This study sheds light on the process through which higher levels of job engagement, organizational citizenship behaviour towards environment and the capacity for comprehension (e.g. sensemaking) and meaning-transmission (e.g. sensegiving) ultimately help organizations navigate the crisis successfully.