Challenges and Strategies of Achieving Resilient and Sustainable Courier Sector within a Multi-Hazard Environment in Romania

The current article examines the less explored challenges and strategies for achieving a resilient and sustainable courier sector within a multi-hazard environment in Romania, primarily focusing on its economic aspects. It incorporates a literature review on resilience and analyses balance data from the ListăFirme website from 2008 to 2023. In the year 2007, Romania entered the European Union, integrating into broader European markets and thus contributing to the expansion of the courier sector. The study uses a mix of methods, incorporating in-depth interviews with courier representatives, an online questionnaire and an analysis of the courier companies to evaluate the sector’s resilience. Special emphasis is placed on the on-demand delivery solutions during the COVID-19 pandemic when the courier sector faced unprecedented surge in demand and demonstrated its capacity to adapt rapidly to changing market conditions. This focus is relevant given the rise of the GIG economy (Iancu, 2022) and the growing importance of last-mile delivery solutions in modern logistics. The assumptions were that the courier sector has always been resilient, mainly because of its synchronicity with e-commerce development, and that hazardous environments such as the COVID-19 pandemic strengthened the industry instead of weakening it. Guided by the central research question: how to define resilient management practices in the courier sector and how these practices can be applied to other sectors of the economy, the study aims to highlight the principles of resilience. In doing so, it seeks to provide theoretical insights and practical strategies that could enhance resilience across various economic sectors facing similar multi-hazardous challenges.