System Shift and Stress Testing a Systems Reading Tool for Detecting Pre Shift Vulnerability in Complex Organizations
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.46799/ijssr.v6i6.1438Keywords:
stress testing, System Shift, organizational resilience, process ontology, transition proximity indexAbstract
Organizations invest significant resources in measuring how well they are performing. However, almost no investment is made in measuring how close they are to the conditions under which that performance collapses. This research argues that this gap is not accidental but rather a structural feature of measuring normal conditions, which is epistemologically blind to the dynamics that precede systemic transitions. Drawing on process ontology and the Systems Shift Framework, we develop a cross-domain stress testing methodology the Systems Shift Stress Testing Framework (SS-STF) oriented not so much on scenario simulation as on the interrogation of assumptions: identifying the structural conditions that hold a system in its current configuration, the thresholds at which those conditions fail, and the organization's current proximity to those thresholds. The framework was developed across three organizational domains manufacturing, finance, and human capital and integrated through a composite instrument, the Transition Proximity Index (TPI). Governance implications are outlined, including reframing stress testing as an epistemological obligation at the board level rather than a mere compliance exercise. This paper contributes to systems theory, the organizational resilience literature, and governance studies.
References
Abbondanza, A., Albertazzi, U., Caccavaio, M., Djekic, D., Gattinoni, V., Georgescu, O.M., & Ponte Marques, A. (2025). Integrating climate risk into the 2025 EU-wide stress test: the effects of climate risks for firms. Macroprudential Bulletin, 32.
Conz, E., & Magnani, G. (2020). A dynamic perspective on the resilience of firms: A systematic literature review and a framework for future research. European Management Journal, 38(3), 400–412.
Diem, C., Schueller, W., Gerschberger, M., Stangl, J., Conrady, B., Gerschberger, M., & Thurner, S. (2025). Supply network stress-testing of food security on the establishment-level. International Journal of Production Research, 63(9), 3259–3283.
Dolgui, A., Ivanov, D., & Simchi-Levi, D. (2025). Stress tests for supply chains: towards resilience and viability. In International Journal of Production Research (Vol. 63, Issue 9, pp. 3254–3258). Taylor & Francis.
Duchek, S. (2020). Organizational resilience: a capability-based conceptualization. Business Research, 13(1), 215–246.
Dunne, G. (2025). Teaching Students to Understand Knowledge: Stress-Testing the ‘Justified True Belief Account’for Critical Thinking. Future in Educational Research, 3(4), 569–579.
Dunne, G. (2026). Critical thinking: stress-testing competing reasons in the practical domain. Journal of Philosophy of Education, 60(1–2), 72–97.
Ebner, A. (2018). The financial stability aspects of the EU-wide stress test. Journal of Financial Regulation, 4(2), 326–336.
Grassi, A., Kosiahn, M., Lelli, C., Martin, M. L., Moers, M., Sydow, M., Vincent, M., & Wiersema, G. (2025). Integrating contagion risk into the 2025 EU-wide stress test: a system-wide analysis with amplification effects between banks and non-banks. Macroprudential Bulletin, 32.
Hill, J. G., & Conaglen, M. (2018). Directors’ duties and legal safe harbours: a comparative analysis. In Research Handbook on Fiduciary Law (pp. 305–330). Edward Elgar Publishing.
Hollands, L., Haensse, L., & Lin-Hi, N. (2024). The how and why of organizational resilience: a mixed-methods study on facilitators and consequences of organizational resilience throughout a crisis. The Journal of Applied Behavioral Science, 60(3), 449–493.
Ivanov, D. (2025). Literature review on the stress tests developed and applied in non-food supply chains. Publications Office of the European Union, Luxembourg.
Ivanov, D. (2026). Integrating Supply chain viability and regeneration toward survival of ecosystems. IEEE Transactions on Engineering Management, 73, 2531–2540.
Ivanov, D., & Dolgui, A. (2022). Stress testing supply chains and creating viable ecosystems. Operations Management Research, 15(1), 475–486.
Karakostas, D., Tsakalos, I., & Fassas, A. (2023). Assessing the financial and informational role of supervisory stress tests: EU-wide 2018 stress test vis-a-vis EU-wide 2021 stress test. Journal of Financial Regulation and Compliance, 31(4), 397–419.
Klein, P. G., Mahoney, J. T., McGahan, A. M., & Pitelis, C. N. (2019). Organizational governance adaptation: Who is in, who is out, and who gets what. Academy of Management Review, 44(1), 6–27.
Koj, L. (2025). The Definition of Obligation. Investigations in the Theory of Knowledge at the Maria Curie-Sklodowska University, 122, 273.
Lund, D. S., & Pollman, E. (2021). The corporate governance machine. Columbia Law Review, 121(8), 2563–2634.
Munoz, M. A. (2018). Colloquium: Criticality and dynamical scaling in living systems. Reviews of Modern Physics, 90(3), 31001.
Nasrazadani, H., Nogal, M., Adey, B. T., & Mitoulis, S. A. (2025). Prioritizing simulation-based stress tests to assess the resilience of transport systems: a computation-free methodology. Journal of Infrastructure Preservation and Resilience, 6(1), 16.
Schwenkenbecher, A. (2022). How we fail to know: Group-based ignorance and collective epistemic obligations. Political Studies, 70(4), 901–918.
Sikiru, A. O., Chima, O. K., Otunba, M., Gaffar, O., & Adenuga, A. A. (2021). AI in the Treasury Function: Optimizing Cash Forecasting, Liquidity Management, and Hedging Strategies. Treasury Management Quarterly, 15(3), 167–189.
Downloads
Published
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2026 Raymond R. Tjandrawinata
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Authors who publish with this journal agree to the following terms:
- Authors retain copyright and grant the journal right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International. that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgement of the work's authorship and initial publication in this journal.
- Authors are able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), with an acknowledgement of its initial publication in this journal.
- Authors are permitted and encouraged to post their work online (e.g., in institutional repositories or on their website) prior to and during the submission process, as it can lead to productive exchanges, as well as earlier and greater citation of published work.
