Exploring the Impact of Soft Preventive Judicial Measures on Business Resilience and Performance under Organised Crime Infiltration: Evidence from a Multi Case Analysis

Organised crime infiltration in legitimate businesses threatens market functioning, firm governance, and local economic development. In Italy, alongside seizure and confiscation, the Anti‑Mafia Code introduced continuity‑preserving “soft” preventive measures—judicial administration (Art. 34) and judicial control (Art. 34‑bis)—aimed at interrupting criminal influence while keeping firms operat-ing. Yet, firm‑level evidence on their economic and organisational consequences remains limited. This study adopts an organisational resilience perspective and in-vestigates how firms’ operating and financial conditions evolve around these inter-ventions. We conduct a comparative multi‑case analysis of 11 firms subjected to Arts. 34/34‑bis, identified through judicial records and matched with peer groups by sector, size, and geography using AIDA data. We reconstruct trajectories across pre‑intervention, intervention, and post‑intervention phases using four indicators: value of production, current ratio, net income, and debt‑to‑equity. Findings suggest that soft preventive measures mainly operate as contingent stabilisers: they support operational continuity, but liquidity, profitability, and capital structure remain frag-ile, especially after the judicial phase. The study contributes by opening the firm-level process between preventive judicial intervention and economic outcomes, of-fering mechanism-oriented evidence that complements existing research on anti-mafia policies.