Recent major health shocks, such as the 2014–16 Ebola, the Zika outbreak, and, last but not least, the COVID-19 pandemic, have strongly contributed to drawing attention to the issue of resilience in the healthcare domain. Nevertheless, the scientific literature appears fragmented, creating difficulties in developing incremental research in this relevant managerial field.To fill this gap, this systematic literature review aims to provide a clear state of the art of the literature dealing with resilience in healthcare. Specifically, from the analysis of the theoretical articles and reviews, the key dimensions of resilience are identified, and a novel classification framework is proposed. The classification framework is then used to systematize extant empirical contributions. Two main dimensions of resilience are identified: the approach to resilience (reactive vs. proactive) and the type of crisis to deal with (acute shocks vs. chronic stressors). Four main streams of research are thus identified: (i) proactive approaches to acute shocks; (ii) proactive approaches to chronic stressors; (iii) reactive approaches to acute shocks; and (iv) reactive approaches to chronic stressors. These are scrutinised considering three additional dimensions: the level of analysis, the resources to nurture resilience, and the country context. The classification framework and the associated mapping contribute to systematising the fragmented literature on resilience in healthcare, providing a clear picture of the state of the art in this field and drawing a research agenda that opens interesting paths for future research.

The impact of technological developments on consumer habits and behavior is endangering the classical model of postal services. The resulting fall in postal volumes generated by the substitution of traditional letter posts by electronic forms of communication has rendered the collection of postal items highly inefficient. In this context, our work deals with a real problem concerning the reorganization of the collection system of the Italian postal service provider, based on the reduction of the number of postboxes currently located in an urban area. To tackle the problem, we propose a practical solution methodology, based on a mathematical programming model which identifies the postboxes to be closed, and we evaluate the impact of such a reorganization on management costs, in terms of postmen to be dedicated to the daily collection operations. Considering the crucial role of postboxes as main access points of users to the postal network, equity is also taken into account. Several computational experiments are conducted based on real data from the city of Bologna, in northern Italy. The resulting scenarios show the capability of the model to support the decision making process towards the redesigning of the postal collection system.