Recently, the world has been undergoing several global crises, such as the Covid-19 pandemic and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. These crises have raised the question whether MNCs are affected by exogenous shocks the same way as domestic firms or whether the multinationality makes them more resilient to such crises (Puhr & Müllner, 2022). Although organizational resilience has been widely studied by management scholars, the concept of resilience has got relatively little attention in the crisis literature (Williams et al., 2017; Boin et al., 2010), and empirical studies have lagged behind the increasing theory surrounding resilience (Van Der Vegt et al., 2015; Williams, 2017).

Consequently, this paper presents an empirical study on organizational resilience in an MNC facing external crises. The role and sources of organizational resilience at times of crises are analyzed based on a longitudinal single case study of a Finnish multinational corporation’s entry to and exit from Russia. The study illustrates various types of risks, challenges and crises that a cross-border acquisition to an emerging economy may include, highlights the importance of organizational resilience in both entry and exit process as well as identifies factors enhancing organizational resilience of an MNC.