Digital resilience in delivering public services. A conceptual model

Digital resilience has gained increasing attention as public organizations face accelerating digital transformation and growing social threats. However, research remains fragmented, providing limited understanding of how digital resilience develops in public service delivery and how its determinants relate to its manifestations. This study addresses this gap by conceptualizing digital resilience from an organizational perspective and examining the relationships between its determinants and manifestations in public service delivery. The analysis draws on 59 semi-structured interviews conducted in Poland, a relevant setting due to its advanced public-sector digital transformation and exposure to multiple contemporary crises. Using thematic analysis and the Gioia methodology, the study identifies three manifestations of digital resilience: continuity and availability of public services, organizational development, and technologization of internal and external processes. It further reveals four determinant groups: social, technological, organizational, and legal. The findings show how these determinants jointly enable and shape the identified manifestations, resulting in different resilience outcomes in public service delivery. Building on these relationships, the study develops a stakeholder-driven conceptual model and proposes a definition of digital resilience. The study contributes to digital governance research by offering conceptual clarity and an integrated framework that explains how digital resilience develops in public service delivery.