STRUCTURAL AND FUNCTIONAL CONCEPTUALISATION OF REGIONAL RESILIENCE UNDER SYSTEMIC TRANSFORMATIONS

Abstract

The purpose of the study is to develop a structural and functional model of regional resilience that combines its component structure, functional properties, phases of response to a shock and the outcome of that response. The research is based on a systems approach, structural and functional analysis, decomposition, morphological analysis, modelling and the matrix method. The methodological premises arising from the treatment of a region as a complex adaptive system are substantiated: resilience is an emergent property, decomposition must be functional rather than sectoral, the component, functional and phase levels of description must be distinguished, and the model must be closed by a feedback loop. It is shown that conflating these levels is a common shortcoming of existing studies, which produces inconsistent lists where a resource carrier, a property and a phase appear side by side. Four criteria for identifying the components of regional resilience are proposed: a distinct resource carrier, the ability to degrade or strengthen independently, a separate channel of influence on the region’s response, and amenability to measurement. On this basis ten components are determined – economic, innovation and technological, financial and budgetary, institutional, managerial, social, infrastructural, environmental, resource-circular and spatial – and grouped into three functional blocks. Ten functional properties of a resilient region are systematised and linked with their component carriers. An eight-phase model of response to a shock is developed. Three qualifications are formulated: the depth of the response depends on the strength of the shock, the components pass through the phases asynchronously, and under polycrisis conditions the phase position of a region is a vector rather than a single state. Three channels through which the circular economy strengthens regional resilience are revealed, and the conditions under which the circular transition temporarily weakens it are shown. The matrix of correspondence between components and phases and the integrated model can be used to diagnose the component and the phase at which a region’s response failed, to assign regional policy measures to specific components and phases, and to design a system of indicators for assessing regional resilience.