Management control mechanisms, environmental unpredictability and organizational resilience

Abstract This article analyzes the (formal and informal) role of control mechanisms in fostering (proactive and reactive) organizational resilience of financial technology startups (fintechs), considering the moderating effect of environmental unpredictability. First, there is little evidence on formal and informal control mechanisms in the context of organizational resilience. Second, studies on management controls focus on some resilience approaches, however, they do not address resilience from a proactive and reactive perspective. Third, the literature on the effects of environmental unpredictability on contemporary organizations, like the fintechs, is still scarce. On the one hand, new evidence is added to the literature on management control and organizational resilience, the understanding of antecedents of resilience in startups is expanded, and insights are provided on the effects of environmental unpredictability on the alignment of management controls and objects of control. On the other hand, insights are provided on control mechanisms that fintechs can benefit from to building organizational resilience, both to anticipate and prepare and to act and formulate responses in the face of business disruptions and uncertain times. The findings benefit the building and strengthening of resilience in fintechs, which becomes key for these startups to survive and consolidate themselves in the financial market. Data have been collected by survey and analyzed through structural equation modeling. Additional investigation has been conducted via fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis. The main results reveal that: (i) formal and informal control mechanisms foster proactive and reactive organizational resilience; (ii) in scenarios of high environmental unpredictability, greater attention given to informal controls results in higher proactive resilience levels; and (iii) there are four (five) organizational configurations that lead fintechs to high proactive (reactive) resilience.