Research on Business Resilience During Full-Scale War Presented at SASE 2026
Dr. Alina Boiko, Executive Director of the Economic Resilience Institute (ERI) presented her latest research at the 2026 Annual Conference of the Society for the Advancement of Socio-Economics (SASE), hosted by Sciences Po Bordeaux, France.
SASE is one of the world's leading interdisciplinary academic associations, bringing together researchers in economics, political science, sociology, management, and related fields to discuss contemporary socio-economic transformations and institutional change.
At the conference, Dr. Boiko presented her paper, "Business Resilience Under Full-Scale War: Sustaining Economic and Societal Functioning in Ukraine," which examines how Ukrainian businesses have contributed to maintaining essential economic and societal functions throughout more than three years of full-scale war.
Research Focus
The study addresses a central puzzle of Ukraine's wartime economy. At the beginning of Russia's full-scale invasion in 2022, many analysts anticipated a systemic collapse of banking, logistics, energy supply, food security, exports, and the labour market. While these sectors experienced severe disruptions, many continued operating and gradually adapted to prolonged wartime conditions.
The research asks a fundamental question:
How were critical economic and societal functions sustained despite prolonged and repeated wartime disruptions?
Methodology
The research is based on original qualitative evidence collected between 2022 and 2025, including:
27 Ukrainian companies across multiple sectors;
45 executive interviews and strategic discussions with CEOs, founders, and senior managers;
approximately 18 hours of executive-level discussions;
longitudinal thematic analysis using iterative coding and cross-case comparison.
Key Findings
The findings demonstrate that Ukrainian businesses evolved through three distinct stages during the war:
2022: survival and business continuity under extreme disruption;
2023–2024: operational adaptation through organizational restructuring, supply-chain reconfiguration, and increasing energy autonomy;
2025: strategic repositioning, including investment planning, international partnerships, and long-term market development.
Across sectors, five common resilience mechanisms emerged:
resource reallocation;
supply-chain reconfiguration;
energy autonomization;
decentralized decision-making;
expansion of business functions beyond traditional commercial activities.
The research argues that Ukrainian firms became critical resilience actors by helping sustain logistics, energy supply, food distribution, employment, and community support while simultaneously strengthening state capacity through tax contributions and other forms of assistance.
Academic Contribution
One of the study's central conclusions is that conventional ESG and corporate responsibility frameworks do not fully capture how firms operate under conditions of prolonged armed conflict. Instead, wartime resilience has largely depended on informal coordination, rapid decision-making, organizational flexibility, and the ability to continuously adapt under extreme uncertainty.
The research contributes to the growing literature on organizational resilience, economic resilience, and governance under prolonged crises, while offering new empirical evidence on the role of business in sustaining both economic systems and broader societal functioning during full-scale war.
About SASE
The Society for the Advancement of Socio-Economics (SASE) is one of the leading international scholarly associations dedicated to interdisciplinary research on economic life, institutions, organizations, and society. Its annual conference brings together researchers from leading universities worldwide to present cutting-edge work on contemporary economic and social challenges.
