RESEARCH HANDBOOK ON ORGANIZATIONAL

RESILIENCE
Research Handbook on Organizational
Resilience

Edited by
Edward H. Powley
Graduate School of Defense Management, Naval Postgraduate School,
Monterey, California, USA
Brianna Barker Caza
Department of Management, Bryan School of Business and Economics,
University of North Carolina at Greensboro, USA
Arran Caza
Department of Management, Bryan School of Business and Economics,
University of North Carolina at Greensboro, USA

Cheltenham, UK • Northampton, MA, USA

© Edward H. Powley, Brianna Barker Caza and Arran Caza 2020

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system
or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical or photocopying, recording,
or otherwise without the prior permission of the publisher.

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Contents

List of contributors vii

PART I INTRODUCTION
1 Introduction: framing resilience research 2
Edward H. Powley

PART II NATURE OF RESILIENCE

2 Resilience capacity, processes and demonstration at the employee, team
and organizational levels: a multilevel perspective 10
Thomas W. Britt and Gargi Sawhney
3 Resilient personality: is grit a source of resilience? 25
Arran Caza, Brianna Barker Caza and Mehri E. Baloochi

4 Team resilience in organizations: a conceptual and theoretical discussion

of a team-level concept 39
Silja Hartmann, Matthias Weiss and Martin Hoegl

5 Reframing resilience on novelty and change 53

Maria Laura Frigotto

6 Negotiation resilience: a framework for understanding how negotiators

respond to adversity 70
Lukas Neville, Brianna Barker Caza and Mara Olekalns

PART III RESILIENCE PROCESSES AND DYNAMICS

7 Emotion regulation as a process to foster resilience 86
Sophie A. Kay and Kelsey L. Merlo

8 From parts to whole: a place for individual tacit knowledge in

organizational adaptability and resilience 102
John Paul Stephens
9 The resilience of entrepreneurs in developing economies 116
Thomas E. Becker and Jean D. Kabongo
10 Organizational resilience: a social exchange perspective 131
Morela Hernandez, Scott Baker, Megan Hess and Jared Harris

11 Unpacking the critical role of firms in community resilience 153

Martina Linnenluecke and Brent McKnight
v
vi Research handbook on organizational resilience

12 Enriching our conceptual and practical understanding of resilience

through the lens of black women at work 167
Erica M. Johnson, Samantha E. Erskine and Laura Morgan Roberts
13 The unfolding process of organizational resilience in a diversity crisis:
a case study of racial incidents at the University of Missouri 180
Courtney L. McCluney, Lynn Perry Wooten and Erika Hayes James

PART IV RESILIENCE ANTECEDENTS AND OUTCOMES

14 Learning routines that build organizational resilience 203

D. Christopher Kayes and Jeewhan Yoon

15 Lost person behavior as an antecedent to resilience 214

Lisa Jones Christensen, Scott C. Hammond and Merilee Larsen
16 What makes work teams resilient? An overview of resilience processes
and cross-level antecedents 232
Sebastian Raetze

17 The effects of individual resilience on organizational citizenship behavior

in contemporary public administration: a dual pathway model 247
Dimitrios Karolidis, Fotis Vouzas and Elena Antonacopoulou

18 Resilience and organizational culture: a competing values perspective 261

Edward H. Powley and Kim S. Cameron
19 Interpreting the nightmare of Fukushima’s superintendent: sensemaking
in extreme situations 275
Sébastien Travadel and Franck Guarnieri
20 Resilience of inter-organizational systems 299
Julie Chesley and Victoria D’Avella

21 Organizational resilience in action: a study of a large-scale

extended-disaster setting 320
Bernard Walker, Sanna Malinen, Katharina Näswall,
Venkataraman Nilakant and Joana Kuntz

PART V CONCLUSION

22 Conceptualizing the who, what, when, where, why and how of resilience
in organizations 338
Brianna Barker Caza, Michelle A. Barton, Marlys K. Christianson
and Kathleen M. Sutcliffe

Index 354
Contributors

Elena Antonacopoulou, University of Liverpool, United Kingdom

Scott Baker, BetterUp, United States
Mehri E. Baloochi, University of Manitoba, Canada
Michelle A. Barton, Bentley University, United States
Thomas E. Becker, University of South Florida Sarasota-Manatee, United States
Thomas W. Britt, Clemson University, United States
Kim S. Cameron, University of Michigan, United States
Arran Caza, University of North Carolina at Greensboro
Brianna Barker Caza, University of North Carolina at Greensboro
Julie Chesley, Pepperdine University, United States
Lisa Jones Christensen, Brigham Young University, United States
Marlys K. Christianson, University of Toronto, Canada
Victoria D’Avella, Pepperdine University, United States
Samantha E. Erskine, Case Western Reserve University, United States
Maria Laura Frigotto, University of Trento, Italy
Franck Guarnieri, MINES Paris-Tech, France
Scott C. Hammond, Utah State University, United States
Jared Harris, University of Virginia, United States
Silja Hartmann, Technische Universität München, Germany
Morela Hernandez, University of Virginia, United States
Megan Hess, Washington and Lee University, United States
Martin Hoegl, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, Germany
Erika Hayes James, Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania, United States
Erica M. Johnson, Case Western Reserve University, United States
Jean D. Kabongo, University of South Florida Sarasota-Manatee, United States
Dimitrios Karolidis, University of Macedonia, Greece
Sophie A. Kay, Georgia Institute of Technology, United States

vii
viii Research handbook on organizational resilience

D. Christopher Kayes, The George Washington University, United States

Joana Kuntz, University of Canterbury, New Zealand
Merilee Larsen, Utah Valley University, United States
Martina Linnenluecke, Macquarie University, Australia
Sanna Malinen, University of Canterbury, New Zealand
Courtney L. McCluney, Cornell University, United States
Brent McKnight, McMaster University, Canada
Kelsey L. Merlo, University of South Florida, United States
Katharina Näswall, University of Canterbury, New Zealand
Lukas Neville, University of Manitoba, Canada
Venkataraman Nilakant, University of Canterbury, New Zealand
Mara Olekalns, University of Melbourne, Australia
Edward H. Powley, Naval Postgraduate School, United States
Sebastian Raetze, Technische Universität Dresden, Germany
Laura Morgan Roberts, University of Virginia, United States
Gargi Sawhney, Auburn University, United States
John Paul Stephens, Case Western Reserve University, United States
Kathleen M. Sutcliffe, Johns Hopkins University, United States
Sébastien Travadel, MINES Paris-Tech, France
Fotis Vouzas, University of Macedonia, Greece
Bernard Walker, University of Canterbury, New Zealand
Matthias Weiss, Ruhr-Universität Bochum, Germany
Lynn Perry Wooten, Simmons University, United States
Jeewhan Yoon, Korea University, South Korea
 PART I

INTRODUCTION
1. Introduction: framing resilience research
Edward H. Powley

Resilience has grown in popularity, interest and application in a wide variety of scholarly and
practitioner domains. This Research Handbook samples resilience scholars who are concep-
tualizing and exploring various ways to enliven and embed resilience in theory and practice.
Contributors to this volume represent an international group of scholars who offer new and
updated perspectives. Some propose new contexts for resilience, while others combine the-
oretical frames to bring new insights to the field, and still others offer perspectives on the
practice of resilience.
Definitions of resilience vary depending on the phenomenon or context under study. Britt
and Sawhney note (Chapter 2) that the ‘increase in interest has been accompanied by multiple
definitions of resilience, as well as confusion regarding whether resilience is best viewed as
an attribute of employees, a process that occurs when employees are exposed to high levels
of adversity at work, or an outcome that is demonstrated following such adversity.’ For some
in this volume, resilience is about individual characteristics, traits or states, such as grit, emo-
tional regulation, responding to stress, adapting under pressure or adversity, or learning from
setbacks and challenges. For others, resilience is relationally derived and comes about through
social interaction and the ebb and flow of group, team or organizational dynamics. Resilience
theory at the team or group level is nascent and thus offers conceptual ways to address theory
development. And still yet for other contributors, resilience is an attribute or defining char-
acteristic of an organization or system capacity to adapt and adjust to the environment and
take and integrate feedback necessary to maintain a positive trajectory. Moreover, resilience
describes a response to adverse situations, such as major disruption and crisis (earthquakes,
disasters, technological). And yet, resilience equally evokes a proactive capacity or cultural
dynamic that promotes and fosters learning, adaptation, or flexibility to build teams and
organizations that are likely to face future challenges. Most importantly, resilience cannot be
defined without the presence of some kind of stressor, whatever that might be.
What we notice is that while resilience is varied and nuanced given context and framing,
despite differences in definitions there are several shared features of resilience: resilience
is about positive adjustment under crisis or stress, and bouncing back to a new stable state.
Regardless of the domain or level of analysis, resilience serves as a maintenance function to
ensure a stable state (Maitlis, 2012; Westphal and Bonanno, 2007; Guarnieri and Travedel,
2018). Resilience involves learning, growth, efficacy and competence (Sutcliffe and Vogus,
2003; Janoff-Bulman, 1985, 1992; Tugade and Fredrickson, 2004) and the ability to bounce
back (Gittell et al., 2006; Zolli and Healy, 2012; Powley, 2009). Resilience scholars, regard-
less of discipline, return to these conceptual roots, while the operationalization and mecha-
nisms by which resilience unfolds, manifests itself or operates, differ depending on where and
how one studies resilience. The core questions for scholars remain: when we study resilience,
what are we studying? Is it the person, the group, the system, a dynamic, a relationship, a fixed
trait, a process, a state? Is resilience as a concept capable of describing such a wide variety
of contexts and issues, or might there be other concepts better suited to describe the phenom-

2
 Introduction: framing resilience research 3

enon? These persistent questions drive our theorizing and eventual practice in this field, and
the contributors to this Research Handbook wrestle with these fundamental issues, offering
valuable perspectives on resilience while addressing implications for practice and research.
We have purposively selected contributors who examine resilience in historically traditional
ways: at the individual, group and team, and organizational levels of analysis; but we have
also included chapters that explore resilience in inter-organizational systems, major crisis
situations, and cultural dynamics where collaboration and strategic relationships are impor-
tant. Our primary framing situates resilience in the organizational sciences, that is, our work
concerns resilience in and of organizations such that the chapters offer conceptual insights
and research findings about resilience in an organizational context. Each chapter frames
resilience in ways that are consistent with these overarching themes, yet each offers new
understandings and contexts for resilience. Included are conceptual frameworks, case studies,
and qualitative and quantitative studies that span from the individual level of analysis to macro
and inter-organizational systems. The chapters are organized into three broad categories and
each of the chapters is summarized in the next three sections of the introduction. The second
part of the book addresses the nature of resilience broadly where authors offer important
considerations on the definition and framing of resilience. The third part includes chapters
framing resilience as process and explores dynamics of resilience. The fourth part focuses
on antecedents and outcomes of resilience. A concluding chapter offers a roadmap for future
research and poses several questions scholars might consider to advance resilience research.

PART II: NATURE OF RESILIENCE

The second part of the Research Handbook is concerned with the nature of resilience. Chapters
highlight definitions of resilience in various contexts to help clarify the meaning and mani-
festations of resilience. Authors address such questions as: Does the meaning and content of
resilience differ or is it stable given the context or level of analysis? Is resilience a construct
that is uniquely individual? Or is resilience relationally generated through interpersonal
interactions and social dynamics? Some chapters consider resilience as more than persisting
through adverse situations but rather see positive potential for change and adjustment.
Britt and Sawhney provide a roadmap to integrate resilience across levels of analysis. A key
for resilience is the presence of adversity, setback or disruption, regardless of where or at what
level one examines resilience. The chapter looks across levels of analysis from individual, to
team, to the organization to map the study of resilience in and of organizations. Moreover, the
authors distinguish between the demonstration, capacity and processes responsible for resil-
ience: how it is shown, how it is stored, and how it unfolds. The chapter outlines a multi-level
model of resilience and calls for more research to further clarify resilience scholarship.
Caza, Caza and Baloochi focus on grit as one aspect of the nature of a resilient person-
ality, and report on an empirical study to show the relationship between grit and resilience.
Grit, defined as passion and perseverance toward the achievement of long-range goals, is
closely associated with resilience, and the research study differentiates grit from hardiness,
a well-established measure of trait resilience, and also, by understanding its relationship to
individual outcomes indicative of resilient responses. Results show that grit is not an indicator
of resilient outcomes, and that grit and resilience may be two different but related constructs.
4 Research handbook on organizational resilience

Hartmann, Weiss and Hoegl present a conceptual model of team resilience that highlights
the collective dynamics inherent in team interactions. Rather than an individual trait charac-
teristic, the authors suggest that resilience is relationally derived, developing through team
members’ interactions. Taking a team process perspective, the authors develop an integrative
conceptual framework and highlight how team resilience develops and changes through
affective, social and cognitive team processes, and how team resilience may change over time.
Frigotto advances a framework of resilience from the perspective of novelty and change,
where ‘novelty is used to elaborate on the type and nature of adversities that trigger resilience,
and change is used to elaborate on the type and nature of the resilience outcomes.’ Resilience
is often associated with bouncing back and maintaining equilibrium, which implies returning
to a former state of normal operations, but resilience may result in three different change
outcomes: absorptive, adaptive and transformative. The chapter also depicts resilience as
emergent and evolving and characterizes it as a renewable and ever-changing resource.
Neville, Caza and Olekalns discuss resilience in the context of negotiation adversity and its
negative consequences. The chapter posits that negotiation resilience is a cognitive process of
the individual negotiator. Key to their conceptualization of resilience of an individual actor is
the notion of persistence and then shifting or adjusting in the face of adversity. Adversity is
viewed as a positive interruption that prompts flexibility and adjustment. What is generated
is positive growth allowing negotiators to move forward, perhaps with greater ease and
confidence. The chapter identifies key predictors of negotiation resilience: growth narrative,
cost–benefit analysis, and flexible thinking, and offers suggestions about the development of
resilience-building interventions for negotiators.

PART III: RESILIENCE PROCESSES AND DYNAMICS

More than an individual trait, state, attribute or characteristic, resilience processes and dynam-
ics are another way to view resilience conceptually. Resilience dynamics are not unique to the
individual or interpersonal relationships, but are also played out across organizational bound-
aries. Chapters in the third part of the Research Handbook describe how resilience is reflected
in processes with mediating and moderating factors in various contexts. Authors offer insights
on resilience dynamics in unique and new contexts – places where resilience matters for the
well-being and livelihoods of individuals, their workplaces, and for organizations broadly.
As the chapters show, resilience dynamics are an important aspect of emotion regulation and
using tacit knowledge from sensory information to manage adversity. Moreover, resilience
dynamics are as important in new businesses in emerging economies, community organiza-
tions facing natural disasters, or long-term stakeholder relationships, as they are in vulnerable
populations who face structural obstacles or contexts of diversity crisis.
Kay and Merlo examine emotion regulation as a process to enable resilience. Challenges,
setbacks, or other significant disruptions have positive or negative emotional implications.
Managing negative emotions, or emotion regulation, is critical to manifesting resilience. The
chapter draws on the process of emotion regulation, including emotion episodes and regulation
strategies to explain the role of emotional experience in resilience. The authors propose ways
in which individuals and organizations might foster emotion regulation strategies to foster
resilience.
 Introduction: framing resilience research 5

Stephens offers a process theory for how individuals use sensory information and embodied
expressions to make sense of situations at work. The chapter argues that tacit knowledge
and sensory information advances knowledge of cross-level dynamics that potentially affect
organizational resilience. The chapter draws on the concept of relational pauses wherein group
members reflect on and attend to others’ sensory templates. As they do so, they enact adaptive
moves based on the tacit knowledge embedded in their sensory templates. Resilience takes the
form of process wherein adaptive moves may be shared with other individuals or groups that
in turn directly impact the organization.
Becker and Kabongo provide an interesting view of resilience of entrepreneurs in emerg-
ing and developing economies – a rich context where the ability to manage insurmountable
obstacles results in either decline and failure or survival and growth. New business leaders
face competition, economic disruption, or logistics and supply challenges, not unlike larger
corporations but at the local level. ‘Entrepreneurial resilience’ is a capacity of those who start
businesses ‘to demonstrate concrete, positive adaptation to adversity,’ and is a highly sought
characteristic in developing economies where additional contextual challenges, unstable polit-
ical conditions, and local and specific challenges complicate business processes and the ability
to bring a product to market. Using examples from developing economies, the chapter presents
a model for resilience which identifies key factors necessary to foster resilience.
Hernandez, Baker, Hess and Harris describe a five-year longitudinal qualitative study of
organizational resilience to explain how multi-stakeholder collaboration contributes to an
organization’s ability to bounce back from adversity. Managers draw on individual, organ-
izational and stakeholder strategies to foster and develop resources. Embedded in the social
and organizational context are stakeholder relationships based on shared affective connection
which managers cultivate and then access and leverage in times of trial. Whereas resilience has
often been viewed as a characteristic or an attribute of an organization, this chapter highlights
a more nuanced view of resilience as an emergent dynamic in and between stakeholders whose
social exchanges facilitate and support an organization’s ability to work through challenges.
Linnenluecke and McKnight focus on resilience at the community level. Bridging resilience
from different domains: business continuity, non-profit, and the public and private sectors,
the chapter focuses on the role of firms in times of natural disaster. The authors draw from
the literature on community resilience to conceptualize resilience as a process to anticipate,
prepare for, react to, and recover from adversity. Several case studies highlight how organi-
zational resilience is not solely situated within corporations or for-profit firms, but rather firm
resilience has an important effect on other community organizations. The authors propose
a framework to examine the interconnectedness between firms and community resilience and
show that firms play a role in improving resilience at the community level in the context of
disasters.
Johnson, Erskine and Roberts explore resilience in the context of vulnerable workers, in
particular, Black women who often face structural obstacles arising from racism or sexism.
The chapter looks at resilience through the lens of these vulnerable workers as they face
different forms of adversity and trauma at work, in society, and in interpersonal relationships.
Resilience is a core mechanism for women of color working though trauma and adversity.
The authors also reflect on challenges that Black women face as they work to ‘bounce back’
from performance shortcomings and what accounts for their ability to overcome setbacks and
failure, and they suggest potential interventions to improve the well-being of Black women in
the workplace.
6 Research handbook on organizational resilience

McCluney, Wooten and James offer an important perspective of resilience unfolding in the
context of racial tensions in a university setting. The chapter brings into relief the resilience
dynamics that came about during the recent diversity crisis at the University of Missouri
(between 2014 and 2016). Using qualitative analysis, the authors show how resilience is
a process which includes an ability to anticipate threats, cope effectively with unexpected
events, and learn from these events. Analysis of public documents unveiled the lack of knowl-
edge in higher education to address a diversity crisis, and how social media escalates crisis to
a tipping point. The authors show how resilience creates dynamic capabilities and structures to
facilitate organizational learning in preparation for future diversity-related crises.

PART IV: RESILIENCE ANTECEDENTS AND OUTCOMES

Resilience scholars conceptualize resilience as a key factor for producing positive results in
challenging situations, or as the result or outcome when times are tough. Several chapters in
this part view resilience as an outcome including factors such as learning, team processes,
or individual differences. Other chapters focus on resilience as either an antecedent or inde-
pendent variable, that is, factors that produce other positive behaviors or outcomes such as
decreased stress, improved well-being, or citizenship behaviors. Whether an antecedent or
outcome, scholars situate resilience research in the context of disruptive events or major crisis.
Several of the chapters present case material from significant disaster or crisis contexts.
Kayes and Yoon outline learning routines that lead toward organizational resilience: open-
ness to experience, learning identity, social support, flexibility, continuous improvement, and
intentional focus. Moreover, resilience is embedded and woven through these learning rou-
tines such that as organizations engage in and develop learning routines, they are developing
resilience. They argue that whereas organization resilience is often associated with bouncing
back from breakdown, crisis or disruption, learning routines represent a positive pathway
toward organizational resilience.
Jones Christensen, Hammond and Larsen draw comparisons between lost behavior in the
context of wilderness and backcountry search and rescue, with lost behavior in the context of
work organizations, and propose the concept of ‘need for resilience.’ When lost, individuals
experience a range of emotions and engage in a variety of cognitive appraisals, with the
express purpose of making sense of their ‘lostness.’ The chapter outlines how the need for
resilience increases as individuals move deeper into psychological lostness, and that, as levels
of lostness decrease, the need for resilience also decreases. Resilience acts as an antecedent
whereby reunification and thriving after periods of lostness result from resilience increasing
during periods of lostness.
Raetze suggests a model of team resilience wherein he articulates resilience processes and
antecedents where adverse events may significantly disturb critical task- and team-related
processes. The chapter gives an overview of research findings on work team resilience and
proposes a conceptual multi-level framework. In particular, the chapter examines actions and
capabilities that underlie the team resilience process: resilience is the outcome of team dynam-
ics, processes, composition and design.
Karolidis, Vouzas and Antonacopoulou discuss resilience as an antecedent in the context of
organizational citizenship behavior in public service employment. Public sector employment
faces the unique challenge of having limited monetary and workforce resources, thus facing
 Introduction: framing resilience research 7

demands unlike other work organizations. The chapter describes individual resilience as the
personal process of bouncing back, and argues that if resilience is coupled with organizational
citizenship behaviors, public sector employees are more likely to be efficient and effective.
Powley and Cameron explore resilience in the context of organizational culture using the
Competing Values Framework which provides one way to map competing conceptualizations
of resilience. The competing values represent important factors to produce resilience culture
types; each has value to organizations that face challenges and setbacks. Four key components
of organizational resilience may be operative in each culture type to help activate resilience:
leadership vision, organizational learning, mutual support, and ability to recover from set-
backs. The chapter also highlights mechanisms that support a resilient organizational culture.
Three chapters present cases where resilience is an important factor in solving significant
system challenges. Travadel and Guarnieri present an in-depth analysis of the actions and
cognitions of Masao Yoshida, the plant superintendent of the Fukushima nuclear power plant,
immediately following the earthquake and tsunami in March 2011. Their analysis outlines
touchstone moments where Yoshida managed the delicate balance between what he did and
did not know and critical decisions not only for plant safety but for much of eastern Japan.
Using a phenomenological lens, Travadel and Guarnieri explore how Yoshida negotiated
a disruptive threat, faced death, made sense of the impending danger and, ultimately, pre-
vented a catastrophic situation from unfolding. The pressure and intensity of ‘la situation
extrême’ placed Yoshida in a position where he was forced to give meaning to the flow of
brute experience; such sense-in-the-making is the main driver of resilience.
Chesley and D’Avella describe a framework for large system resilience, what they refer to
as resilience of inter-organizational systems. This chapter contributes to a broader conversa-
tion about resilience at levels of analysis beyond individuals, groups and organizations, and
focuses on resilience of inter-organizational networks. To solve or address intractable prob-
lems such as climate, industrial accidents, or other natural or man-made crises, resilience at
the macro level requires an integrative systems approach. The chapter – a mixed-method study
of three inter-organizational systems working on sustainability and environmental projects –
draws out important considerations for managing critical relationships across organizational
boundaries.
Walker, Malinen, Näswall, Nilakant and Kuntz examine ‘resilience-in-action’ from
a multi-year, extended disaster recovery from a series of earthquakes near Canterbury, New
Zealand. The chapter presents an in-depth qualitative survey that surfaces dynamics of resil-
ience as they unfold, what they refer to as ‘resilience-in-action,’ resilience being the outcome
of months of interventions and recovery efforts. Their grounded account of resilience-in-action
outlines resilience trajectories of organizations and four areas that significantly influence
organizational-level resilience: leadership and situational awareness; an employee-centric
orientation; internal and external collaboration; and informal and organizational learning. The
chapter also details a process model for the development of organizational resilience.

CONCLUSION

The final chapter poses key questions about conceptualizations of resilience. Resilience schol-
arship faces confusion: what do we mean by it, or how do we study it? The chapter discusses
critical issues that aim to identify ways to study organizational resilience and resilience in
8 Research handbook on organizational resilience

organizations. Due to challenges associated with defining or operationalizing resilience, the

authors argue that researchers ought to pay more attention to challenges and key conceptual
and empirical decisions when studying resilience. They suggest that scholars might concretely
address key assumptions and operationalizations of resilience in terms of who, what, when,
where, why and how. As scholars address these key questions, we believe that organizational
resilience scholarship may advance and continue to mature.
We recognize that this volume does not cover the universe of resilience scholarship and
practice, yet our hope is that this Research Handbook will advance our collective conversation
about the meaning, foundations, dimensions, characteristics, attributes and definitions of resil-
ience. We believe the work represented herein will foster greater understanding about how to
conceptualize and study resilience, thus providing needed clarification and rigor to resilience
scholarship.

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Guarnieri, F. and Travadel, S. (2018). Un récit de Fukushima. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France.
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 PART II

NATURE OF RESILIENCE
2. Resilience capacity, processes and
demonstration at the employee, team and
organizational levels: a multilevel perspective
Thomas W. Britt and Gargi Sawhney

The study of resilience in organizations has dramatically increased in recent years. However,
this increase in interest has been accompanied by multiple definitions of resilience, as well as
confusion regarding whether resilience is best viewed as an attribute of employees, a process
that occurs when employees are exposed to high levels of adversity at work, or an outcome
that is demonstrated following such adversity (Britt et al., 2016b). Furthermore, researchers
have recognized that resilience can be studied not only at the level of the individual employee,
but also at the team and organization levels (Bowers et al., 2017; Lengnick-Hall et al., 2011).
This recognition has resulted in a need to adopt a multilevel perspective when studying resil-
ience, understanding both the contextual influences on how factors at one level (e.g. the team)
influence resilience at a lower level (e.g. the employee), as well as the compilation processes
whereby factors at a lower level (e.g. the individual) influence resilience at a higher level (e.g.
the organization).
In an attempt to bring some clarity to the study of resilience among employees, Britt et
al. (2016b) argued for a distinction between an employee’s capacity for resilience versus the
employee’s demonstration of resilience. The capacity for resilience refers to the numerous
factors possessed by employees that increase the probability they will demonstrate resilience
when faced with significant adversity. In contrast, the demonstration of resilience refers to the
documentation that employees have shown positive adaptation in one or more domains (e.g.
performance, well-being, mental health) following adversity. For example, researchers have
studied hardiness as a predictor of employees who report low levels of physical symptoms
when under high levels of stress (Kobasa et al., 1982). In this example, hardiness would repre-
sent a personality variable contributing to the employee’s capacity for resilience, whereas the
finding of decreased physical symptoms in the presence of high levels of work stressors would
constitute the demonstration of resilience on the outcome of physical health. Furthermore,
researchers have been interested in the processes linking variables associated with the capacity
for resilience to the actual demonstration of resilience. In the previous example, Maddi et al.
(1998) have argued that specific coping strategies are part of the process by which hardiness is
related to fewer physical symptoms under high levels of stress.
This chapter first applies the concepts of the capacity for resilience, demonstration of resil-
ience, and processes linking capacity to demonstration of resilience to the employee, team and
organization levels. Most definitions and approaches to resilience at the different levels can
be organized by how they address resilience capacity, resilience demonstration, and resilience
processes. The importance of characterizing the level of adversity required to study resilience
at the employee, team and organization levels is also discussed, as the presence of high levels
of adversity/disruption help distinguish approaches to resilience from approaches to overall

10
 Multilevel perspective 11

functioning following routine adversity/disruption. The chapter will then consider multilevel
issues in the study of resilience, including both the bottom-up processes by which resilience
capacity, demonstration, and processes at lower levels influence higher-level resilience, as
well as the top-down contextual processes regarding how higher-level components influence
resilience processes at lower levels. The overall goal of the present chapter is to highlight the
theoretical distinctions and multilevel implications of resilience capacity, demonstration and
processes at the employee, team and organization levels, rather than to exhaustively review
research conducted at the different levels of analysis.

KEY DISTINCTIONS AT EMPLOYEE, TEAM AND

ORGANIZATION LEVELS
Prior researchers have noted the large number of definitions characterizing individual
(Meredith et al., 2011), team (Chapman et al., 2020), and organization (Bruneau et al., 2003)
resilience. Importantly, Masten and Narayan (2012) argued that the same core elements of
resilience can be applied to systems at multiple levels of analysis. These authors argued that
“resilience can be defined as the capacity of a dynamic system to withstand or recover from
significant challenges that threaten its stability, viability, or development” (p. 231). We believe
that the diversity in definitions at the employee, team and organization levels of analysis can
be explained in part as a function of whether they address a system’s capacity for resilience,
demonstration of resilience on outcomes, or processes occurring during an episode of a system
responding to significant adversity.
Before addressing the distinctions in these definitions, it is first worth emphasizing that
one of the distinguishing factors in the study of resilience as a construct is that the system
under examination is exposed to a level of adversity that has the potential to severely disrupt
its functioning or development (Masten and Narayan, 2012). Alliger et al. (2015) emphasized
the importance of characterizing the nature of the adversity encountered when studying team
resilience, including an analysis of whether the adversity is acute and time-limited or chronic
and persistent throughout the team’s response to the adversity.
The presence of high levels of adversity has implications not only for distinguishing defini-
tions of resilience from related constructs (e.g. resilience versus coping at the individual level,
team resilience vs team adaptation), but also for the identification of factors hypothesized to
promote resilience in the face of such adversity (Gucciardi et al., 2018). For example, avoid-
ance coping is typically a maladaptive coping strategy for employees (Britt et al., 2016a),
but can be effective in the initial aftermath of exposure to a traumatic event (Bonanno et al.,
2011). At the organizational level, psychological safety may be especially important when an
organization is going through a significant challenge (Edmondson, 1999; Lengnick-Hall et
al., 2011). Although researchers agree with the importance of studying resilience within the
context of significant adversity, such adversity is often not documented or operationalized in
most research (Britt et al., 2016b).

Distinctions at the Employee Level

Definitions and approaches to resilience can be categorized according to whether they address
a capacity for resilience, the demonstration of resilience in different domains, or the pro-
12 Research handbook on organizational resilience

cesses by which individuals respond positively following adversity. Reflecting the capacity
approach, Frederickson et al. (2003) defined resilience as “a relatively stable personality
trait characterized by the ability to bounce back from negative experience and by flexible
adaptation to the ever-changing demands of life.” Applied to the individual employee, Britt et
al. (2016b) first noted that the individual’s capacity for resilience was determined not only by
factors within the individual (e.g. genetic factors, personality variables), but also by resources
available to the employee from his or her social connections, organization and community
(see also Bowers et al., 2017). Williams et al. (2017) further suggest that financial, cognitive,
behavioral, emotion-regulation, and relational endowments can shape an individual’s capacity
for resilience. Consistent with Britt et al. (2016b), a recent review incorporated access to
resources as a fundamental component of resilience (Kossek and Perrigino, 2016).
In investigating how different factors within an individual’s capacity for resilience are
related to showing positive adaptation under significant adversity, researchers have typically
found that rather than one individual resource accounting for a large amount of variance in
the ability of individuals to demonstrate resilience following some traumatic event, multiple
resources tend to account for smaller amounts of variance (Bowers et al., 2017). The study
of employee resilience within organizational settings has typically examined the influence of
one or two resources possessed by the employee at a time in predicting functioning following
adversity. To our knowledge, research has not been conducted on how different resources pos-
sessed by the employee combine to determine that employee’s overall capacity for resilience.
One possibility for future research could be to use Relative Weights Analysis (LeBreton et
al., 2013) to identify the most important components of resilience capacity, especially when
considering different levels of adversity that may be present.
Approaches at the individual level highlighting the demonstration of resilience emphasize
positive outcomes following a major stressor. For example, Tedeschi and Kilmer (2005)
defined resilience as “effective coping and adaptation in the face of major life stress.” Within
the field of organizational psychology, most researchers have not been clear when addressing
what constitutes the demonstration of resilience under significant levels of adversity. Most
studies examining resilience in employees either correlate self-report measures of resil-
ience or other personality traits with indices of performance or well-being, or test whether
resilience-promoting factors buffer employees from the negative effects of traumatic stressors
(Britt et al., 2016b). However, some researchers have calculated trajectories of functioning
among employees following exposure to high levels of adversity in order to assess the demon-
stration of resilience.
Using a sample of police officers who had been exposed to at least one life-threatening
event while on the force, Galatzer-Levy et al. (2011) examined the general psychological
distress of police officers at their academy training and then again at 6, 12, 24 and 36 months
later. These researchers found evidence for three trajectories: a resilient trajectory (88.1
percent), a trajectory of initially high distress followed by reduced levels of distress (10.1
percent), and a trajectory of moderate initial distress that increased over time (1.7 percent).
The authors emphasized that resilience in the face of significant adversity was the dominant
response, rather than an elevation in distress as a result of potentially traumatic events (see also
Bonanno et al., 2012).
One factor distinguishing the study of resilience at different levels of analysis concerns the
domains or outcomes examined when documenting the demonstration of resilience. Within
the context of the individual, research on resilience outside of organizational settings has
 Multilevel perspective 13

emphasized the importance of demonstrating resilience in multiple domains. For example, the
study of resilience in children exposed to severe deprivation and environmental stressors (e.g.
having a mentally ill parent) addressed positive adaptation in terms of whether the children
met salient physical, cognitive, social and emotional developmental milestones, as well as
how well children performed in academic settings (Masten and Narayan, 2012). This approach
to the demonstration of resilience is relatively comprehensive in examining functioning. In
contrast, researchers in the traumatic stress field have typically highlighted positive adaptation
as the absence of significant mental health symptoms, although researchers have occasionally
assessed adaptation in terms of the presence of psychological well-being (e.g. a sense of
meaning or purpose).
Britt et al. (2016b) noted that employees may demonstrate resilience on one indicator of
adaptation, while showing adverse reactions on another indicator of adaptation. For example,
Sonnentag and Frese (2013) have noted that when exposed to high levels of occupational
stressors, employees may develop higher levels of mental health symptoms before showing
signs of poor performance, given the importance of maintaining performance to the organi-
zation. In this context, resilience would be demonstrated for the outcome of performance, but
would not be demonstrated for the outcome of mental health symptoms. No research we are
aware of has examined differential outcomes as a result of domain of adaptation for employees
exposed to high levels of adversity.
Finally, some approaches to resilience at the individual employee level emphasize the
processes likely to be responsible for factors comprising an employee’s capacity for resilience
to be translated into the demonstration of resilience when employees encounter high levels of
adversity. For example, Luthans et al. (2006) defined resilience as a “dynamic process encom-
passing positive adaptation within the context of significant adversity.” Researchers have
emphasized the importance of how employees appraise and cope with stressors as contributors
to the demonstration of resilience (Dewe et al., 2010; Lazarus and Folkman, 1984), as well as
employees maintaining social support in dealing with adversity (Jex et al., 2013). Different
resources within an employee’s capacity for resilience are likely to influence the demonstra-
tion of resilience through different processes. As discussed earlier, hardiness may influence
the demonstration of resilience through transformational coping (Maddi et al., 1998), whereas
social support may influence the demonstration of resilience through decreased physiological
reactivity during exposure to the adversity (Eisenberger et al., 2011). No research we are
aware of has examined which individual processes are uniquely responsible for an increased
probability of demonstrating resilience following adversity.

Distinctions at the Level of the Team

The distinctions made in the study of individual resilience can also be applied to resilience
assessed at the team and organization levels. Similar to definitions of individual resilience,
Chapman et al. (2020) noted a wide range of definitions of team resilience. An examination
of these definitions revealed that authors have tended to emphasize a team’s capacity for
resilience, the team’s demonstration of resilience, or the processes responsible for team resil-
ience. Alliger et al. (2015) emphasized the capacity of a team to show resilience in the face of
stressors. In contrast, Gucciardi et al. (2018) defined resilience as an emergent state indicative
of a team demonstrating resilience following adversity (see also Bowers et al., 2017; Kennedy
14 Research handbook on organizational resilience

et al., 2016). Finally, Morgan et al. (2013) emphasized the dynamic team processes that occur
during an episode where a team is examined under stressors.
Considering the capacity of resilience applied to teams, different authors have highlighted
different factors that contribute to a team’s ability to positively adapt during adversity. For
example, Bowers et al. (2017) emphasized factors such as communication among team
members, the presence of explicit norms for behavior, transactive memory (knowledge
possessed by team members and the team’s awareness of each member’s knowledge), and
psychological safety in terms of voicing concerns without concerns of reprisal. Gucciardi et al.
(2018) emphasized shared mental models among team members, identification with the team,
team leadership, and group norms. Kennedy et al. (2016) emphasized the importance of team
adaptability as an antecedent to a team’s likelihood of demonstrating resilience. Importantly,
both Bowers et al. (2017) and Gucciardi et al. (2018) noted that resources possessed by indi-
vidual team members also contribute to a team’s capacity for resilience, a topic we address
in detail in the next major section of the chapter. No research we are aware of has examined
how to combine different team attributes in a way that assesses the overall resilience capacity
of a given team.
In terms of approaches to the demonstration of resilience in the study of teams, Gucciardi
et al. (2018) are the only authors we are aware of that explicitly defined resilience as trajec-
tories of team performance prior to, during and following exposure to adversity. However,
no research we are aware of has empirically addressed the demonstration of resilience in
terms of team functioning trajectories. Other approaches to team resilience also highlight the
importance of examining team functioning during and following exposure to stressful events
(Alliger et al., 2015; Bowers et al., 2017; Chapman et al., 2020).
Approaches to team resilience do differ in the outcomes considered to be important for
demonstrating that positive adaptation has occurred. Gucciardi et al. (2018) highlighted team
performance as the primary outcome that should be considered when studying team resilience,
given the primary purpose of teams is to execute tasks in pursuit of organizational goals. In
contrast, Bowers et al. (2017) highlight team performance, avoidance of errors, and desire to
remain as part of the team as important outcomes, and Alliger et al. (2015) emphasize both
team effectiveness and health as important outcomes. West et al. (2009) also emphasize team
well-being as an important outcome when studying team resilience. Although researchers
highlight multiple outcomes when discussing team resilience, no hypotheses are typically
made regarding the possibility that teams may show different adaptation on different out-
comes. Especially when considered longitudinally over longer periods of time, teams may
sustain performance while showing signs of reduced team well-being, which may ultimately
contribute to reduced team performance in the future (Sonnentag and Frese, 2013).
Although research on resilience at the level of the individual employee tends to focus on the
capacity for or demonstration of resilience, research at the team level is much more focused on
the processes that characterize teams who show resilience in the face of significant adversity.
Alliger et al. (2015) specifically focused on three behavioral strategies that they argue link
a team’s capacity for resilience to the demonstration of resilience: minimizing, managing and
mending. Minimizing processes include activities related to anticipating upcoming stressors
and preparing to dilute their impact. Managing processes involves responding to adversity as
quickly as possible, dealing with chronic stressors facing the team, helping team members
through backup behaviors, maintaining team processes, and seeking guidance when needed.
Mending refers to teams re-establishing situational awareness when the adversity has con-
 Multilevel perspective 15

cluded, conducting a debriefing to determine lessons learned from the adversity, identify any
risks or weaknesses that occurred during the adversity, and expressing appreciation for making
it through the stressor.
Bowers et al. (2017) also identified a number of team processes occurring during the
response to the adversity, many of which overlap with those identified by Alliger et al.
(2015). These processes include planning for potential disruptions, being adaptable in the
face of adversity, providing backup behavior, monitoring performance during the adversity,
and sharing decision making between leaders and team members. Similarly, Glowinski et al.
(2016) focused on processes within teams that contribute to resilience that overlap with other
models of team resilience, including monitoring for team problems, responding to changes
in the environment, learning from the team’s responses to adversity, and anticipating future
responses based on responses during the adversity. No research we are aware of has examined
which of these hypothesized team processes are uniquely associated with the demonstration of
resilience under high levels of adversity.

Distinctions at the Level of the Organization

Over the years, researchers have provided differing views on what constitutes organization
resilience, which can also be classified according to whether they address the organization’s
capacity for resilience, demonstration of resilience, or processes involved in resilience.
Stoverink et al. (2020) argued that the major distinction between team and organizational
resilience is the degree of task interdependence. While teams are highly task interdependent,
organizations exhibit lower task interdependence. Bruneau et al. (2003) highlighted the capac-
ity of an organization to respond effectively to disaster situations. Lengnick-Hall et al. (2011)
emphasized the demonstration of resilience in terms not only of addressing the adversity by the
organization, but also capitalizing on the adversity for additional growth. In terms of the pro-
cesses involved in organizational resilience, Mallak (1998) emphasized the implementation of
processes necessary for an organization to respond successfully to major challenges.
In the extant literature on organizational resilience, research has highlighted the role of both
individual characteristics and organizational factors in building a capacity for organizations to
demonstrate resilience. Specifically, Lengnick-Hall and Beck (2016) argued that individuals
in a resilient organization possess complementary skills and competencies. Employees who
possess skills of resourcefulness, behavioral preparedness, and over-learned routines are more
likely to demonstrate resilience during adversity themselves and thereby contribute to the
organization’s demonstration of resilience (Lengnick-Hall and Beck, 2016). Similarly, Mallak
(1998) highlighted other individual attributes, such as one’s tendency to form a positive per-
ception, ability to adapt to adverse situations, creativity to troubleshoot problems under pres-
sure, and tolerance for uncertainty as integral dispositions for developing an organization’s
capacity for resilience. By recruiting and selecting employees with the necessary knowledge,
skills, abilities and other characteristics, organizations can build a capacity for resilience
(McManus et al., 2008).
While the role of individuals in developing a capacity for organizational resilience is
undeniable, resilient individuals do not necessarily result in resilient organizations (Horne
and Orr, 1997). Williams et al. (2017) presented a model of organizational resilience where
they suggested that organizations develop cognitive, behavioral, emotional and relational
capabilities that allow them to build a capacity for resilience. Some researchers have iden-
16 Research handbook on organizational resilience

tified organizational traits that can aid in cultivating a capacity for organizational resilience.
For instance, Lengnick-Hall et al. (2011) shed light on the contextual conditions which can
promote a capacity for resilience, including psychological safety climate, deep social capital,
diffusion of power and accountability, and broad resource networks. Psychological safety
climate pertains to employees’ perceptions regarding their organization’s acceptance of its
members taking risks. Employees who construe their organization’s openness to risk-taking
are more likely to take risks. To augment a capacity for resilience, organizations can strive to
build a psychologically safe climate.
In order to build a capacity for resilience, organizations can also develop practical habits
and routines that are aligned with the values of the organization (Lengnick-Hall et al., 2011).
Repeated and over-learning of these habits and routines can allow organizations to respond to
threats in times of crises. As an example, if an organization develops a culture that encourages
collaboration as opposed to antagonism, employees in that organization are more likely to
engage in constructive collaboration in the event of a crisis. Similarly, Williams et al. (2017)
recommended building the capacity for organizational resilience by preparing for and antici-
pating crises before they occur.
In line with individual employee resilience, the demonstration of organizational resilience
pertains to the documentation of its ability to bounce back from an adversity (Wildavsky,
1988). However, the demonstration of organizational resilience has also been addressed
by whether the organization thrives and grows as a result of encountering adversity. This
approach conceptualizes organizational resilience as a thriving force where the organization
is focused on the development of new skills and abilities that allow “a firm to leverage its
resources and capabilities not only to resolve current dilemmas but to exploit opportunities
and build a successful future” (Lengnick-Hall et al., 2011, p. 244). This notion of organiza-
tions growing from adversity can also be found in some definitions of individual resilience
that emphasize the possibility of psychological growth following the experience of adversity
(Masten and Narayan, 2012).
However, Boin and van Eeten (2013) argued that the demonstration of organizational
resilience is difficult to recognize. Rather, one can assume that an organization has demon-
strated resilience if it has survived an adversity. In terms of the examination of the domains
or outcomes on which organizations demonstrate resilience, researchers have emphasized the
overall functioning of the organization as indexed by both objective indicators of the firm’s
performance and employee well-being and commitment to the organization (Lengnick-Hall,
et al., 2011). However, no research we are aware of has examined differential responses to the
demonstration of resilience for different organizational outcomes.
Across the literature, several processes have been identified to link an organization’s capac-
ity for resilience to the demonstration of resilience. Mallak (1998) suggested that by expanding
decision-making boundaries, organizations can facilitate their response to adversity. Stated
differently, organizations that strive to diffuse power and accountability rather than retain
a hierarchical structure achieve greater success when addressing challenges to the organization
(Lengnick-Hall et al., 2011). Employees in such organizations have the necessary latitude
to make decisions, which not only ensures participation by all members of the organization,
but also allows organizations to meet their production goals in a timely manner. Resilience
processes in organizations also encompass not only the ability to maintain within-unit team
coherence, but also the ability to manage coherence between teams such that coordination and
 Multilevel perspective 17

cooperation is enabled across team boundaries during periods of adversity (de Vries et al.,
2015).
Additionally, building social capital can promote organizational resilience through informa-
tion sharing, resource exchange, cross-functional collaboration, developing mutually benefi-
cial partnerships, and forging a network of support and resources. Gittell et al. (2006) argued
that close relationships within an organization allow employees to provide and receive social
and emotional support, which is a defining characteristic of a resilient organization. In adverse
situations, employees within an organization who form close relationships with one another
are better able to cope with stressors in the work environment. Organizations can promote
social capital by providing opportunities to their employees to engage with other members of
the organization in meaningful ways.

MULTILEVEL CONSIDERATIONS IN EMPLOYEE, TEAM AND

ORGANIZATION RESILIENCE

One of the principal issues facing organizational researchers studying resilience is addressing
the multilevel dynamics that occur as a result of employees being embedded within teams and
teams being embedded within organizations. Most often researchers study resilience at one
level of analysis without necessarily considering the impact of factors at another level of anal-
ysis. For example, much of the research on employee resilience fails to consider that employ-
ees are embedded within teams and organizations that may either facilitate or disrupt the
employee from demonstrating resilience following adversity (Bliese and Jex, 2002). Similarly,
for the most part research on team resilience has not sufficiently modeled the influence of
employee or organizational factors when studying the performance and well-being of teams
prior to, during and following adversity. Although the construct of resilience across different
levels shares certain similarities, such as adversity detection, sensemaking and execution,
among others, resilience at each level also has distinct components (Stoverink et al., 2020).
Therefore, research is needed that incorporates the multilevel influences across the three
levels of analysis. In this section of the chapter we first discuss how previous authors have
characterized multilevel influences on resilience. We then use the distinctions highlighted in
the prior section to identify when resilience capacity, demonstration and processes at one level
of analysis will influence these factors at another level.
Alliger et al. (2015) discussed individual resilience within their treatment of team resilience,
highlighting those factors contributing to an individual employee’s capacity to demonstrate
resilience in the face of adversity. When addressing the connection between individual and
team resilience, these authors pointed out that “A group of resilient individuals does not make
a resilient team” (p. 177). Therefore, the authors detailed the team properties and processes
associated with resilience and did not attempt to model how factors at the individual employee
level influence team resilience.
In contrast, Gucciardi et al. (2018) explicitly modeled individual employee influences in
their model of team resilience. These authors utilized the multilevel theory of Kozlowski and
Klein (2000) to argue that team resilience emerges in part from bottom-up processes where
the resources possessed by individual team members become utilized as the team members
interact and respond to the adversity that is present. The authors emphasized the human capital
of individual employees as important to the emergence of team resilience, with human capital
18 Research handbook on organizational resilience

being indexed by knowledge, skills, abilities and other characteristics possessed by individual
team members relevant to responding to adversity. A similar point was made by Ployhart and
Moliterno (2011) when addressing how the human capital of individual employees contributes
to the human capital of an organization.
Importantly, Gucciardi et al. (2018) argued that the human capital resources possessed
by individual team members will result in the emergence of team resilience only when the
combination of resources possessed by the individual team members provides the necessary
requirements for responding to the adversity facing the team. This approach highlights the
resilience capacity of individual employees affecting the emergence of resilience at the team
level through a specific compatibility with the demands of the crisis or adversity that is taking
place. However, these authors do not address the manner in which team characteristics and
processes may serve as contextual influences on the demonstration of resilience by individual
employees. The authors also do not specify how aspects of the organization contextually influ-
ence either team or individual employee resilience.
Similar to Gucciardi et al. (2018), Bowers et al. (2017) also proposed that team resilience is
an emergent state that results in part from properties and processes of individual team members.
The properties of the individual team members highlighted by these authors include resources
such as coping flexibility and mental toughness (which contribute to the employee’s capacity
for resilience), as well as processes individual employees execute when exposed to adversity
(e.g. stress management and procurement of social support). Additionally, these authors also
argued that organizational factors can have an impact on team resilience (see also Maynard et
al., 2015). These factors included attributes contributing to an organization’s capacity for resil-
ience (e.g. adaptive capacity, agility) and processes performed during crisis (e.g. information
sharing, utilization of financial reserves). However, unlike the detailed explanation offered by
Gucciardi et al. (2018) for how individual employee factors come together to influence team
resilience, Bowers et al. (2017) do not specify the mechanisms by which individual factors or
organizational factors influence team resilience. Instead, their model simply shows individual
and organizational characteristics influencing the team inputs and processes that result in
team resilience. The authors also do not specify how individual and team-level attributes and
processes contribute to the study of resilience at the organizational level, or how team and
organizational attributes and processes contribute to individual employee resilience.
In terms of the multilevel relationships examined in the context of resilience at the
organizational level, studies have discussed both top-down and bottom-up approaches. For
instance, Gittell et al. (2006) suggested that the process of resilience at the organizational
level facilitates positive relationships at work, which can assist with resilience and recovery at
the individual level. With respect to bottom-up processes, researchers have highlighted how
capabilities of individual employees are related to the ability of the organization to demon-
strate resilience under conditions of adversity. The importance of human capital and resources
at the individual level influencing resilience at the organization level was highlighted by
Lengnick-Hall et al. (2011). These authors pointed out that the ability of an organization to be
resilient depends on the characteristics and competencies of individual employees as well as
the interactions between employees within the overall context of the organization. The nature
of these interactions contributes to contextual effects that emerge when responses of individual
employees are aggregated to the higher levels (Morgeson and Hofmann, 1999; Ployhart and
Moliterno, 2011). However, studies of organizational resilience are less likely to highlight the
 Multilevel perspective 19

composition processes of team-level influences or the contextual influences of organizational

resilience on team and individual resilience.

MULTILEVEL INFLUENCES IN THE STUDY OF RESILIENCE:

A COMPREHENSIVE APPROACH

In this final section of the chapter we attempt to highlight the multilevel influences in the study
of employee, team and organization resilience, as well as address the challenges involved
in conducting empirical examinations of these multilevel influences. Figure 2.1 is offered
as a model depicting the multilevel processes that can occur between the employee, team
and organizational levels. Highlighted in the model are examples of factors contributing to
the resilience capacity of the individual employee, team and organization, sample processes
linking the capacity for resilience to the demonstration of resilience at the different levels of
analysis, and the domains under which the entities may demonstrate resilience. The model also
illustrates how at each level of analysis, the capacity for resilience is predictive of resilience
processes, which subsequently affects the demonstration of resilience. The demonstration of
resilience then feeds back to the capacity of the entity to execute the processes necessary for
the demonstration of future resilience.
In terms of understanding the multilevel effects that can occur across the employee, team
and organizational levels, Kozlowski and Klein (2000) first argued that contextual variables
result from combining different factors from the individual employee level to higher levels
and can occur through both compilation and composition processes. Compilation processes
involve the team-level variable being different from the individual employee. For example,
team-level diversity in coping mechanisms would be assessed by examining the variation in
coping strategies used by individual employees. Composition processes reflect team-level
attributes that are typically similar to their individual attributes. For example, team or organi-
zation optimism may be assessed as the average optimism possessed by individual employees
within the level being examined (see Bliese and Jex, 2002).
In addition to these bottom-up processes, contextual influences can also be understood
as top-down processes (Kozlowski and Klein, 2000) where attributes at a higher level (e.g.
the organization) influence processes at a lower level (e.g. the team) (Bliese, 2000). For
example, an organizational-level culture of psychological safety may influence a team’s level
of resourcefulness when addressing challenges during a crisis. As another example, a team’s
level of cohesion could influence an individual employee’s perception of social support.
Bliese and Jex (2002) also describe cross-level moderating effects where a variable at a higher
level influences a lower-level relationship. Within the context of the study of resilience,
organization-level trust (Schaubroeck et al., 2011) may enhance the team-level relationship
between team leadership and performance during the crisis or adversity.
Articulating all of the potential multilevel influences in Figure 2.1 is beyond the scope of
the present chapter. Highlighted in the figure are key connections between the different levels
of analysis. Reflecting bottom-up influences, the demonstration of resilience at a lower level
is hypothesized to be linked to the capacity of resilience at the next level. Individuals who
exhibit resilience become a resource that contributes to the capacity of a team and organization
to demonstrate resilience, and teams that are resilient contribute to an organization’s capacity
for resilience. In addition, the capacity for resilience at a lower level can influence the capacity
20 Research handbook on organizational resilience

Figure 2.1 A multilevel depiction of resilience at the employee, team and organization
levels

for resilience at higher levels. However, although most of the bottom-up processes within
the study of resilience have highlighted components of an individual’s capacity for resilience
positively influencing team and organization resilience, negative influences are also possible.
For example, self-enhancement has been found to promote an individual’ demonstration of
resilience (Bonanno, 2004), but could disrupt a team’s demonstration of resilience. As another
example, high levels of team cohesion could result in a strong team-level focus that could
detract from the promotion of between-team communication necessary for the organization to
demonstrate resilience.
The contextual influences in Figure 2.1 address the resilience capacity at a higher level
impacting the resilience capacity at lower levels. Teams embedded in an organization with
a higher capacity for resilience should possess greater resources that contribute to their own
capacity, and individuals embedded within teams possessing a high capacity for resilience
should have more resources contributing to their own capacity for resilience. As an example,
a climate of psychological safety within an organization could provide employees with an
important resource that would result in employees being more likely to ask for help in coping
with the adversity that is present.
Theoretically, bottom-up and top-down multilevel influences should operate through the
entity’s capacity for resilience, which should then result in the execution of processes neces-
sary for resilience. For this reason, no arrows in the figure connect the capacity or demonstra-
tion of resilience at one level of analysis influencing the processes occurring at another level of
analysis. Resilience-promoting processes at a given level of analysis are hypothesized to stem
directly from resources associated with that entity’s capacity for resilience. Multilevel research
in the study of resilience in organizational settings is scant, so future research will be necessary
to examine whether multilevel influences on the processes responsible for the demonstration
of resilience are completely mediated through effects on the capacity for resilience.
Figure 2.1 also specifies how the significant adversity impacting the organizational system
can occur at the level of the individual employee (e.g. death of a loved one, extremely poor
 Multilevel perspective 21

period of performance), teams within the organization (e.g. firefighters facing a difficult emer-
gency situation), or the organization itself (a financial firm faces charges of misconduct in the
handling or creation of a large number of accounts). Although not modeled in the figure, the
nature of adversity faced at different levels can vary according to different dimensions, includ-
ing intensity, duration, predictability, and so on (Lazarus and Folkman, 1984). Researchers
for the most part have not thoroughly addressed degree of adversity in the study of resilience,
although higher levels of adversity should be expected to magnify the relationships examined
at different levels of analysis.
Where in the organizational system the significant adversity is experienced has implications
for the bottom-up and top-down processes that affect the likelihood of resilience being demon-
strated. For adversity occurring primarily at the employee level, team and organizational
attributes and processes have the potential to influence the processes linking characteristics
of the employee to the processes underlying the demonstration of resilience. For example,
the presence of a strong employee assistance program at the organizational level (Cooper
et al., 2011), along with a climate of psychological safety at the team level could result in
an employee reaching out for social support during a period of crisis, which would result in
a greater likelihood of the employee demonstrating resilience in the areas of performance and
psychological health.
For adversity occurring at the team level, the attributes and processes at the individual and
organization levels would influence the processes and likelihood of the team demonstrating
resilience (Bowers et al., 2017). Given that adversity facing the team also has implications
for individual employees, team members each demonstrating their own resilience through
the execution of appropriate strategies would facilitate the translation of a team’s capacity
for resilience to the execution of processes that would result in the team demonstrating resil-
ience. In addition, the unique configuration of team member resources and capabilities would
facilitate the team’s execution of processes to demonstrate resilience (Gucciardi et al., 2018).
At the same time, organizational resources would also influence the team’s ability to execute
processes that would result in a greater likelihood the team would demonstrate resilience
(Gittell et al., 2006). Consequently, the team’s demonstration of resilience would increase the
resources of the organization for addressing crises in the future.
Adversity occurring at the organizational level affects the organization itself, team function-
ing, and individual employees within the organization. Therefore, the capacity for resilience
and processes at all three levels has the potential to affect the likelihood of the organization
demonstrating resilience during a period of crisis (Lengnick-Hall et al., 2011). Resources
possessed by individual employees, as well as their own demonstration of resilience to the
adversity, should positively influence the ability for the organization to show resilience to the
adversity. Similarly, the capacity for resilience possessed by teams within the organization
each being linked to the demonstration of resilience by the team through within-team pro-
cesses should increase the facilitation of the between-team processes necessary for an organ-
ization to demonstrate resilience. Furthermore, the successful resolution of the crisis should
have positive implications for the organization itself, teams within the organization, and the
individual employees.
22 Research handbook on organizational resilience

CONCLUDING THOUGHTS

The study of resilience in organizational settings has made great strides in recent years, as
researchers have devoted increased attention to distinguishing the concept of resilience from
related constructs and articulating how resilience operates at different levels within organiza-
tional settings. The primary goal of this chapter was to highlight the commonalities in studying
resilience at the employee, team and organization levels by identifying how each level can
be characterized by a capacity for resilience, the demonstration of resilience, and processes
linking capacity to demonstration. We have also attempted to illustrate the multilevel pro-
cesses that need to be considered when studying resilience in organizational settings.
An examination of the literature reveals that the level of theoretical development in the
area of organizational resilience is far ahead of the empirical examination of how employees,
teams and organizations confront high levels of adversity and either demonstrate resilience or
some other trajectory. Modeling the bottom-up and top-down processes occurring as an entire
organization addresses significant adversity is of course no small feat. Not only do processes
linking attributes at a given level of the system to the demonstration of resilience at that level
need to be modeled, but the bottom-up and top-down influences across the employee, team
and organization levels need to be addressed. Furthermore, examining resilience at different
levels assumes researchers have access to a large enough sample size at each level to draw
accurate conclusions regarding the impact of different attributes and processes at each level.
Therefore, empirical research on resilience in organization settings will require collaboration
among researchers from multiple areas in order to conduct longitudinal research examining
entire organizations prior to, during and following exposure to high levels of adversity. We
believe that conducting multilevel examinations of resilience will set the stage for the devel-
opment and evaluation of interventions and training to enhance resilience across employees,
teams and organizations.

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3. Resilient personality: is grit a source of
resilience?
Arran Caza, Brianna Barker Caza and Mehri E. Baloochi

Resilience, the ability to function under adversity, is important in most aspects of life, but
especially so in organizations (Britt et al., 2016; Caza and Milton, 2012). Workers face mount-
ing stress from chronic issues such as employment uncertainty, growing work demands, 24/7
connectivity, and blurring work boundaries (Ashford et al., 2018; Kolb et al., 2012; Kossek
and Perrigino, 2016). Moreover, acute workplace crises may be increasing in severity and
frequency (Williams et al., 2017). As a result, it seems hard to overstate the importance of
being able to recover from challenges at work. Indeed, resilient individuals have been found
to enjoy many positive outcomes, including greater wellbeing, better mental health, higher
life satisfaction, and more self-efficacy (Lee et al., 2013; Liu et al., 2017; Mayordomo et al.,
2016). Resilience is also positively associated with important attitudes and behaviors such
as job satisfaction, engagement, organizational commitment, and job performance (Elitharp,
2005; Kossek and Perrigino, 2016; Cooke et al., 2016; Wang et al., 2017).
In this chapter, we consider resilience from an individual perspective, seeking to clarify the
nature of the resilient personality. We focus specifically on the relationship of the relatively
new trait construct of grit (i.e., perseverance and consistency of interest in pursuit of long-term
goals; Duckworth et al., 2007) with individual resilience. Numerous authors have linked grit
and resilience (Crawford-Garrett, 2018; Duckworth, 2017; Fazeli et al., 2018; Price, 2019;
Stoffel and Cain, 2016), but the exact nature of the relationship between the two constructs
remains unclear. To clarify the situation, we take two steps: (1) we examine the relationship
between grit and hardiness (i.e., control, commitment and challenge; Maddi, 2004), since
hardiness is a well-established indicator of trait-level resilience; and (2) we examine the
relationship between grit and a variety of resilient outcomes. Using updated meta-analytic
data, we find that grit is not associated with the resilient personality trait of hardiness, and
while grit may contribute to individuals’ resilient outcomes in some contexts, it may impede
them in others. As a result, we argue that grit should not be considered a part of the resilient
personality.

BACKGROUND

In broad terms, resilience refers to an individual’s ability to cope with adversity and to
continue functioning in stressful circumstances (Bonanno, 2004; Masten, 2001). Within this
broad definition, researchers have expressed disagreement about the exact nature of resilience
(Britt et al., 2016; Caza and Milton, 2012). Resilience is a multifaceted concept that has been
discussed in many different ways, even just within the organizational literature (Linnenluecke,
2017; Sutcliffe and Vogus, 2003). As a result, explanations of resilience vary greatly, focusing
on a range of individual, interpersonal and systemic factors (Southwick et al., 2014). Parts

25
26 Research handbook on organizational resilience

of this book address all of these factors, but our concern here is with individual qualities that
contribute to resilience. In particular, we are interested in relatively stable traits that foster
resilient outcomes, focusing on grit since it has recently been proposed as a new indicator of
trait resilience (Duckworth, 2017; Price, 2019). Below, we summarize the current understand-
ing of trait resilience, and then consider grit relative to that understanding.

Hardiness as Trait Resilience

Studies highlight that some individuals possess characteristics which enable them to thrive in
challenging circumstances (Connor and Davidson, 2003; Friborg et al., 2005). Research on
personal qualities that predict resilient outcomes, or the so-called “resilient personality,” has
identified a variety of individual differences that might make a person more likely to thrive
during adversity. However, in many of these studies, the term “resilience” is used in a gener-
alized way that does more to obscure meaning than clarify it.
For example, there has been a great deal of research on ego resiliency, but that construct
involves successful modulation and change in response to environmental dynamism (Block
and Kremen, 1996). Ego resiliency may well contribute to resilient outcomes (i.e., positive
adaptation in difficult situations), but it is also relevant in many other situations where no
significant adversity is present (Klohnen, 1996). Similarly, the Resilience Scale (Wagnild
and Young, 1993) suffers from validity concerns and confounds aspects of trait resilience
with resilient outcomes. It was originally developed from statements made by “older women”
who had successfully adapted to “major life events” (i.e., who displayed resilience), and is
described as comprising five characteristics (Wagnild, 2009). However, factor analysis finds
only two components (Wagnild and Young, 1993), and the construct is typically operational-
ized as a single factor (Wagnild, 2009). Some of its components reflect traits that might con-
tribute to resilience (e.g., perseverance), but others are more reflective of states and resilient
outcomes (e.g., meaningful life). Indeed, consistent with the claim that the scale measures an
outcome state more than a stable trait, its lead author has explicitly called for study of how
Resilience Scale scores change with time (Wagnild, 2009). As a result, neither ego resiliency
nor the state-like characteristics measured in the Resilience Scale are likely to assess resilient
personality accurately.
In contrast, the dispositions that comprise hardiness are both conceptually and empirically
consistent with the idea of a resilient personality. The construct emerged from Maddi and
colleagues’ 12-year study of managers at the Illinois Bell Telephone company, where some
managers maintained their wellbeing and performance despite extreme downsizing and organ-
izational turbulence (Maddi and Kobasa, 1984; Maddi, 1987). In the 35 years since that time,
hardiness has proved to be a powerful factor underlying the resilient behavior of individuals
facing a wide variety of personal and professional adversities (Eschleman et al., 2010; Maddi,
2005).
Hardiness is an individual’s tendency to display three attitudes – control, commitment and
challenge – which work together to shape responses in stressful circumstances (Kobasa et al.,
1982; Maddi, 2004, 2006, 2013). Control, which is contrasted with powerlessness, is defined
as the tendency to believe one can influence one’s surroundings in useful ways. Feelings of
control encourage individuals to exert effort, because they believe they have the potential to
realize important outcomes. Commitment, in contrast to alienation, refers to the tendency to
be actively involved in events, rather than remaining isolated and passive. Commitment helps
 Resilient personality 27

individuals to find purpose that can buffer them against turbulent situations. Challenge, in
contrast to security, is defined as the belief that change is a normal aspect of life, not a threat to
stability and safety. An attitude of challenge helps individuals to see change as an opportunity
for growth (Kobasa et al., 1982; Maddi, 2004).
Together, these three attitudes promote better outcomes under stress because they help
people to accept difficulty, persist despite it, and direct effort toward useful activity (Maddi,
2006). Rather than exaggerating or denying challenges and utilizing ineffective strategies,
hardy individuals are more likely to employ problem-solving approaches, seek assistance,
and practice self-care (Maddi, 2006). As a result, hardiness helps individuals maintain a pos-
itive perspective and respond effectively (Patton et al., 2016; Maddi, 2004; January, 2016).
Hardiness has been linked to many resilient outcomes, including quality of life (Senneseth et
al., 2017), psychological empowerment (Calvo and Garcia, 2018), and wellbeing (Alfred et
al., 2014). Hardiness is likewise associated with lower levels of non-resilient outcomes such as
psychological distress (Senneseth et al., 2017) and burnout (Calvo and Garcia, 2018).
In sum, hardiness seems to be the most important individual characteristic of the resilient
personality. Of course, other traits have been linked to resilient outcomes; for example, neu-
roticism appears to decrease the likelihood of resilient outcomes, while optimism increases the
likelihood (Friborg et al., 2005; Smith, 2006). But neither of these traits are defined or meas-
ured as the tendency to exhibit resilience. Moreover, the mechanisms by which they might
influence resilience remain to be confirmed, and are likely to include the three dispositions of
hardiness. As such, we adopt hardiness as the cornerstone of a resilient personality.

Grit

While hardiness has received decades of attention, grit is a relatively new topic in personality
research. Since being defined a little more than a decade ago (Duckworth et al., 2007), it has
attracted widespread attention (Crede et al., 2017; Jachimowicz et al., 2018). It has also been
frequently described as associated with resilience (Crawford-Garrett, 2018; Fazeli et al., 2018;
Stoffel and Cain, 2016) and even called resilience (Duckworth, 2017; Price, 2019). It is thus
important to clarify the relationship between grit and resilience.
Grit refers to one’s tendency to work “toward challenges [and] maintain effort and interest
over the years despite failure, adversity, and plateaus in progress” (Duckworth et al., 2007,
p. 1088). Grit has two facets: perseverance and consistency of effort (Duckworth et al., 2007;
Duckworth and Quinn, 2009). Perseverance refers to the tendency to work hard and continue
working despite setbacks or challenging contexts. Consistency of interest is the tendency to
have long-term stability in one’s goals. Although some work has raised the possibility of stud-
ying these two facets separately (e.g., Disabato et al., 2018), most empirical work has treated
grit as unidimensional, and so we do likewise here.
An important factor in grit’s popularity is the range of positive outcomes it has been linked
to, and the variety of contexts in which those positive effects have been observed (Crede et al.,
2017). Most relevant to our concerns, grit is associated with a variety of outcomes reflecting
resilience. For example, grit has been linked to greater wellbeing (Kannangara et al., 2018;
Sharkey et al., 2018) and life satisfaction (Datu et al., 2018; Disabato et al., 2018). Grit also
is associated with increased job satisfaction and organizational citizenship behavior (Jordan
et al., 2018; Ion et al., 2017; Dugan et al., 2018). Moreover, grit is negatively associated with
28 Research handbook on organizational resilience

anxiety (Sharkey et al., 2018), burnout (Halliday et al., 2017), and turnover intentions (Jordan
et al., 2018). As a result, grit appears potentially to be related to resilience.
Nonetheless, the study of grit also faces some controversies, which threaten its utility as an
individual factor that explains resilient outcomes. The first issue concerns debate about the
factor structure of grit. As noted above, some have questioned whether grit should be treated
as a single construct with two facets or as two distinct factors (Disabato et al., 2018). Although
the uni-dimensional approach has dominated the literature, a recent meta-analysis suggests
that perseverance, used alone, is a better predictor of some outcomes, and should therefore
be studied independently (Crede et al., 2017). Relatedly, others have proposed including
additional factors in the construct of grit, particularly a measure of adaptability in response to
one’s environment (Datu et al., 2018). We return to the issue of grit’s dimensionality later, in
the context of our findings.
The second controversy concerns grit’s uniqueness or discriminant validity. Specifically,
there has been considerable debate, and seemingly contradictory evidence, about the rela-
tionship between grit and the Big Five personality trait of conscientiousness. Duckworth and
colleagues (2007) have suggested that grit is distinct and explains incremental variance after
controlling for conscientiousness (also see Reed et al., 2013; Tedesqui and Young, 2018).
Other work suggests a middle ground, wherein some parts of grit may be considered conscien-
tiousness while others are distinct (Abuhassan and Bates, 2015; Fite et al., 2017). And at the
other extreme, Schmidt and colleagues (2018) present evidence that grit is not at all distinct
from conscientiousness, but rather reflects two of its constituent facets (also see Ivcevic and
Bracket, 2014; Rimfeld et al., 2016). This chapter does not resolve the issue of grit’s relation-
ship with conscientiousness. However, if grit is shown to be distinct from conscientiousness,
our findings contribute to the understanding of that construct. In contrast, if grit is shown to be
an aspect of conscientiousness, then this work helps us to understand that trait’s relationship
to resilience.
While grit has been associated with resilience-related outcomes, there has been little direct
examination of the relationship between grit and resilience. Instead, a range of confusing,
and seemingly incommensurate, claims have been made about grit’s relationship with resil-
ience. Some have treated grit and resilience as overlapping or even homologous constructs
(Crawford-Garrett, 2018; Fazeli et al., 2018; January, 2016; Price, 2019; Stoffel and Cain,
2016). Others have proposed that grit is an antecedent of resilience (Shaw et al., 2016; Patton
et al., 2016; Sanderson and Brewer, 2017; Brown, 2015). Further confusing the issue, empiri-
cal findings have been equally contradictory, indicating both negative (Hardeman, 2016) and
positive (Kannangara et al., 2018) relationships. Accordingly, we turned to the techniques of
meta-analysis to resolve the issue.

APPROACH

Meta-analysis is a statistical procedure for aggregating the results of prior studies (Hunter
and Schmidt, 2004). It combines the findings from previous work to provide an integrative
summary of what is known (Cooper et al., 2009). A complete meta-analytic report is beyond
the scope of this chapter, but we updated a previous meta-analysis of grit in an effort to make
sense of the relationship between grit and resilience.
 Resilient personality 29

Concerning hardiness, we used Eschleman and colleagues’ (2010) meta-analysis. Although

it was several years old, its results were derived from 180 samples collected during 30 years of
research, and should thus provide reliable findings. In contrast, since the formal study of grit is
still relatively new, the available meta-analysis – by Crede and colleagues (2017) – used only
88 samples reflecting less than 10 years of study. We therefore chose to update that work. We
used Google Scholar in December 2018 to conduct a forward citation search on both of the
grit measures: the Grit Scale (Duckworth et al., 2007) and the Grit-S Scale (Duckworth and
Quinn, 2009). This search was limited to the years 2014 to 2018, as previous years would be
incorporated in the existing meta-analysis (Crede et al., 2017).
We reviewed the first 1000 items identified in the search, using the title, abstract and key-
words to identify peer-reviewed articles, working papers, conference papers, dissertations,
chapters and unpublished reports which appeared to provide original research that included
a measurement of grit. This initial screening retained a pool of 187 articles, which we investi-
gated in greater detail. Because trait assessments are unreliable among young children (Allik et
al., 2004), we excluded samples of middle school age and younger. We also excluded reports
that were not in English, did not report a relationship between grit and a variable of interest,
and any items that were included in the meta-analysis by Crede and colleagues (2017). The
final result was a pool of 56 research reports, comprising 75 samples and 53 155 individuals.
One of the authors extracted all of the relevant data, and then a second author independently
extracted data from a subset of the items. All authors reviewed the data; areas of discrepancy
were resolved by discussion. Using simple weighted correlations (Hunter and Schmidt, 2004),
we combined these data with the findings of Crede and colleagues (2017) to generate updated
estimates of grit’s correlations with numerous other constructs.
Our goal was not to create a complete report of all of the correlates of grit, but rather to
better understand the relationships of grit with hardiness and resilience. Therefore, in addition
to directly assessing the correlation between grit and hardiness, we combined previously
studied correlates into two broad categories: (1) stable correlates including demographic
attributes and personality traits, which allowed us to assess the similarity of grit and hardiness’
relationships with other individual qualities; and (2) states, attitudes and behaviors that might
serve as indicators of resilient outcomes, allowing us to assess the potential contribution of grit
to resilience. Table 3.1 provides a summary of the correlates we examined in each of the two
categories. (Complete details about the coding and data used are available from the authors.)

FINDINGS
Table 3.2 provides grit’s estimated correlations with the constructs of interest, as well as
the equivalent correlations for hardiness (from Eschleman et al., 2010). Our goal here was
two-fold: to determine the relationship between grit and hardiness, and to judge whether grit
may be a trait-level indicator of an individual’s tendency toward resilient outcomes. Taken
together, the pattern of correlations in Table 3.2 suggests that grit is distinct from hardiness,
and that grit is not a trait-level predictor of resilient outcomes.
30 Research handbook on organizational resilience

Table 3.1 Summary of correlate groups used in meta-analysis

Demographic Attributes
● Age
● Marital status
● Work experience
Personality Traits
● Agreeableness
● Conscientiousness
● Openness to experience
● Optimism
Potential Indicators of Resilience
● Authenticity & meaning (e.g., meaning in life, felt authenticity, sense of coherence)
● Engagement (e.g., cognitive, physical, affective, burnout (reverse coded), involvement)
● Growth & learning orientation (e.g., learning intention, growth mindset, learning goal orientation, and lifelong learning strategies)
● Motivation & self-direction (e.g., self control, self discipline, ambition, intrinsic motivation)
● Resilience (as a self-reported outcome state)
● Success: Externally-rated (e.g., other-rated performance, IQ, wealth index, GPA)
● Success: Self-rated (e.g., perceived ability, expectancies for success, predicted outcomes)
● Wellbeing: Mental (e.g., life satisfaction, happiness, depression (reverse coded), anxiety (reverse coded), and mental health
composite)
● Wellbeing: Physical (e.g., physical health composite, health situation, and fitness)
● Wellbeing: Stress (e.g., direct reports of stress levels as well as emotional demands, negative events, and role conflict)
● Work satisfaction (e.g., job satisfaction, team satisfaction, turnover intentions)

Grit versus Hardiness

The most direct way to assess the relationship between grit and hardiness would be to examine
the correlation between the two constructs. Unfortunately, we are aware of only two studies
that report such a correlation, both of which are dissertations and were thus not subject to peer
review (i.e., Cunningham, 2018; Price, 2019). Moreover, the Cunningham (2018) study had
a small sample size (N=37) and did not use the standard measure of hardiness (Cunningham,
2018). As a result, any conclusion drawn from this study must be considered extremely
tentative. That said, Cunningham (2018) reported a small negative relationship that was not
statistically significant, while Price (2019) reported a positive correlation of .48. As a result,
we have little direct evidence about the relationship between grit and hardiness.
Given the lack of direct evidence, we turned to the meta-analytic data to examine relation-
ships in the two constructs’ respective nomological networks for similarities or differences. In
terms of demographic attributes, the evidence is not strong. Grit appears to have slightly larger
correlation than hardiness with age, but this difference is not statistically significant. Grit also
has larger correlations with marital status (r(g) = .20 vs r(h) = .02) and work experience (r(g)
= .12 vs r(h) = −.06). However, these latter values are based on very limited data, and must be
considered tentative.
In contrast to the relatively weak demographic data, there is more reliable data on the
relationships of grit and hardiness with several personality traits. Grit has a smaller, but not
significantly different, relationship than hardiness does with openness to experience. Grit has
a significantly smaller relationship than hardiness with optimism (r(g) = .05 vs r(h) = .43), and
has opposite relationships with agreeableness (r(g) = .25 vs r(h) = −.09) and conscientiousness
 Resilient personality 31

Table 3.2 Summary of meta-analytic correlations with grit and hardiness

Correlate Hardinessa Gritb

Correlation 95% Number of Total number Estimated 95%
(r) Confidence samples (k) of size (N) correlation Confidence
Interval (r) Interval
Hardiness – – 1 37 −.05 –
Demographic Attributes
Age .05 .00, .10 36 19 939 .11 .02, .20
Marital status .02 −.07, .11 1 672 .20 –
Work experience −.06 −.10, −.02 1 208 .12 –
Personality
Agreeableness −.09 −.17, −.01 19 17 855 .25 .14, .36
Conscientiousness −.05 −.14, .04 32 25 356 .63 .45, .81
Openness to experience .35 .35, .35 19 17 490 .15 −.06, .36
Optimism .43 .37, .49 6 2 722 .05 −.26, .37
Resilience Indicators
Authenticity & meaning .45 .40, .50 7 8 580 .41 .32, .50
Engagement .33 .20, .47 22 7 671 .25 .02, .48
Growth & learning – – 8 4 913 .07 −.35, .50
orientation
Motivation & – – 25 16 383 .44 .02, .87
self-direction
Resilience – – 5 653 .17 −.14, .48
Success: External-rating .17 .09, .25 74 47 832 .13 −.10, .35
Success: Self-rated – – 9 2 400 −.05 −.58, .48
Wellbeing: Mental .39 .31, .48 58 28 846 .31 .04, .59
Wellbeing: Physical .25 .20, .30 5 1 515 .10 −.16, .37
Wellbeing: Stress −.26 −.43, −.08 9 1 693 −.17 −.43, .10
Work satisfaction .35 .30, .40 13 10 742 .23 .03, .43

Notes:
a
Values taken from Eschleman et al. (2010). Samples may not be independent because some correlates were
aggregated into larger groups.
b
Combines new data collection with results in Crede et al. (2017). Samples may not be independent; some
correlates in Crede et al. (2017) were aggregated into larger groups.

(r(g) = .63 vs r(h) = −.05). As such, the personality evidence suggests that grit and hardiness
are distinct constructs, since they have dissimilar relationships with other traits.
The final comparison between grit and hardiness concerned their relationships with
a variety of state outcomes, such as attitudes and performance results. Among the outcomes we
examined, there was more similarity than not in the relationships observed. Table 3.2 suggests
there are only small, relatively unimportant differences in the correlations of grit and hardiness
with feelings of authenticity, task engagement, performance, mental wellbeing, and stress.
Similarly, grit has smaller, though not significantly different, relationships than hardiness does
with physical wellbeing and work satisfaction.
In sum, based on their relationships with each other and other constructs, it seems that
grit and hardiness are distinct phenomena. Grit is thus not measuring trait resilience, as it is
reflected in the hardiness. Hardiness is known to contribute to resilient outcomes (Alfred et al.,
2014; Calvo and Garcia, 2018; Senneseth et al., 2017), and thus is an important part of a resil-
ient personality. While grit is not hardiness, it might nonetheless make its own, independent
32 Research handbook on organizational resilience

contribution to resilient outcomes, and thus be a second element of resilient personality. We

examine this possibility next.

Grit is Not Trait Resilience

Our second goal was to assess whether the available evidence suggests that grit reliably con-
tributes to resilient outcomes. Others have suggested that grit is related to resilience (Brown,
2015; Patton et al., 2016; Sanderson and Brewer, 2017; Shaw et al., 2016). However, the
balance of evidence seems to suggest the contrary: grit does not consistently contribute to
resilient outcomes.
One way to examine the question of grit’s relationship with resilience is direct measure-
ment. As shown in Table 3.2, five studies have correlated grit with a self-report measure of
resilience, and the results suggest a small positive relationship. However, the variability in
those studies means that a population value of zero cannot be ruled out. Thus, in terms of direct
measurement, the best available evidence indicates that grit has only a small, or even zero,
relationship with resilience.
Similarly, grit’s relationships with personality traits provide no evidence that grit will make
any consistent contribution to resilient outcomes. Specifically, the fact that grit has small or
zero relationships with openness to experience and optimism does little to imply that grit
is a source of resilience. Openness to experience is a personality trait that predisposes an
individual to being imaginative, behaviorally flexible, curious and perceptive (McCrae and
Sutin, 2009). Flexible and creative responding is important to psychological health in general,
but especially so in times of adversity (Kashdan and Rottenberg, 2010), and as a result, both
cognitive and emotional flexibility have been linked to resilience (Bonanno and Burton,
2013; Bonanno et al., 2015). Similarly, optimism, which is a tendency to expect favorable
experiences in the future, predisposes individuals to proactive action and is considered to be
an important source of resilience (Chang, 1998; Segovia et al., 2012). In fact, flexibility and
optimism are seen as so tightly linked to resilience that they have been included in scales to
measure resilience (Hobfoll et al., 2015). Consistent with the importance of openness and
optimism in resilient outcomes, hardiness has strong positive relationships with both traits. In
contrast, grit has little or no relationship with them. As a result, grit’s relationship with other
personality traits casts doubt on its likelihood of consistently leading to resilient outcomes.
Table 3.2 also presents correlations between grit and a variety of outcomes that might
indicate resilient responses. Admittedly, none of these measures are direct assessments of
resilience, since we have no information about the role of adversity in these data. Nonetheless,
they can give us some indication of whether or not grit is linked to indicators of “doing well” in
the context of everyday challenges. Since common workplace stressors such as job demands,
economic insecurity and long work hours are responsible for significant variance in physical
health, mental health, morbidity and mortality (Goh et al., 2015), one could argue that those
who resist succumbing to such negative symptomology are displaying resilience (Kossek and
Perrigino, 2016). To the extent that one assumes hardship is a universal aspect of life, then
outcomes such as mental wellbeing, physical health, career success, and engagement may
serve as proxy indicators of resilient outcomes. Indeed, it may have been this sort of thinking
that led others to suggest that grit promotes resilience, since grit and hardiness have similar
correlations with many of these outcomes.
 Resilient personality 33

However, even in this instance, there is some evidence suggesting that grit will not consist-
ently contribute to resilient outcomes. In particular, grit has a very small or zero correlation
with a growth and learning orientation. In other words, gritty individuals are no more likely to
learn from adversity than anyone else, nor does their grit predispose them to see setbacks as
learning opportunities. Likewise, grit has a near zero correlation with self-rated success; gritty
individuals do not feel any more successful than others. In other words, grit does not incline
a person to feel they are “doing well” despite adversity. These zero correlations suggest that
there is little reason to think grit makes a person more likely to be resilient. On the whole, grit
does not seem to be a component of the resilient personality.

DISCUSSION
Our aim in this chapter was to consider grit’s role in promoting individuals’ resilient outcomes,
and the meta-analytic results reviewed highlight important observations about the nature of
grit and individual resilience. Grit is defined, in part, by the dogged pursuit of goals despite
hardship and setbacks (Duckworth et al., 2007). Combining that definition with the fact that
grit is associated with several outcomes that often reflect resilience probably explains why
some researchers have suggested grit is either a source of resilience or a measure of trait resil-
ience. However, in light of the data reviewed here, we do not agree. Rather, the data suggest
two conclusions: grit and hardiness are distinct constructs; and grit will not be a consistent
source of resilient individual behavior. As such, grit should not be considered part of a resilient
personality. Below, we explain these conclusions and their implications for further research.
Our first claim is the most straightforward. Grit and hardiness are not similar constructs
being called by different names. Rather, they appear to be quite distinct. Empirically, although
they have similar relationships with some attitudinal and behavioral outcomes, they have
different (sometimes even opposite) relationships with important demographic and personality
traits. This empirical distinction between grit and hardiness is consistent with the differences
in their conceptual definitions. Hardiness consists of three dispositions that incline people to
accept difficulty, persist despite that difficulty, and to direct their efforts in the most productive
direction available. In contrast, grit’s conceptual definition overlaps with just one of those
three dispositions. A gritty person, like a hardy one, will carry on despite setbacks, but being
gritty does not make one more likely to accept setback gracefully or to use one’s energy in the
best way.
It may be that measurements of grit are capturing phenomena reflective of the commitment
aspect of hardiness (but not control or challenge). Although all three components of hardiness
are considered important in producing resilient outcomes (Maddi, 2013), perhaps in some sit-
uations, or for some specific outcomes, one component is more important than another. If so,
it could explain why grit sometimes has outcome relationships similar to those of hardiness,
while at other times it does not (i.e., grit looks like hardiness in contexts where commitment is
the most salient aspect of hardiness). This possibility is worth exploring, and could contribute
to a clearer understanding of both constructs, as well as the situations in which different traits
are more beneficial in overcoming adversity.
This matter also connects back to the current controversy about the factor structure of grit.
Duckworth and colleagues have made two claims about grit: that current measures capture two
dimensions – perseverance and consistency – and that those two dimensions are best under-
34 Research handbook on organizational resilience

stood as halves of one larger whole (Duckworth et al., 2007; Duckworth and Quinn, 2009).
However, others disagree. Among the strongest critiques is a seemingly growing consensus
that the most important element of grit, at least as currently operationalized, is perseverance
(Crede et al., 2017; Disabato et al., 2018; Jachimowicz et al., 2018). There is less agreement
about whether consistency is unimportant or just poorly measured, but the idea that current grit
scales are only measuring perseverance seems to be gaining empirical support, and suggests
that the construct of grit would benefit from further conceptual development.
Our second claim is that grit will not reliably lead to resilient outcomes. The weight of
evidence suggests, on the whole, that there is no consistent relationship between grit and
resilience. This “non-relationship” could arise in two ways: grit could be entirely unrelated
to resilience, or it could have different implications for resilience in different contexts (i.e.,
moderators). We are inclined to believe that the latter is the best explanation.
For example, grit is highly correlated with conscientiousness (i.e., careful vigilance) and
motivation (i.e., goal-directed arousal and energy), so we should expect a gritty person to work
hard in achieving their goals. Indeed, unflagging perseverance will lead individuals to exert
effort, and high consistency of interest will keep that effort focused on particular outcomes.
As a result, in contexts where consistent effort is rewarded, grit should lead to positive results.
When resilience depends on carrying on undaunted, we should expect grit to lead to resilient
outcomes. Consistent with this expectation, grit has been linked to success despite challenge
in a variety of contexts that reward hard work (Duckworth et al., 2007; Crede et al., 2017).
However, resilience involves more than perseverance. Another key component of resilient
responding is adaptability (Caza and Milton, 2012; Chen and Miller, 2012; Sutcliffe and
Vogus, 2003). To thrive in the face of challenge at work may require a different approach – or
even a different goal entirely. The ability to disengage from a potentially unattainable goal is
a protective factor that helps prevent physical and psychological distress (Dunne et al., 2011).
The fact that there is little relationship between grit and openness to experience, and between
grit and a learning orientation, indicates that grit does not predispose one to learn from experi-
ence, to be willing to adapt, or to be likely to think of creative alternatives. As a result, grit is
unlikely to offer any advantage when resilience depends on flexible responding.
Moreover, there may be situations in which grit actually reduces flexibility. Grit has the
potential to prevent individuals from pursuing useful alternatives, if its strong consistency
of interests leads to rigidity (Chen and Caza, 2018). Evidence of this potential downside of
grit has been observed in standardized testing results. While grit is typically associated with
higher grade point averages (Crede et al., 2017), it has no significant relationship with Law
School Admission Test scores (Zimmerman and Brogan, 2015), and a negative relationship
with Scholastic Assessment Test scores (Duckworth et al., 2007). These standardized tests
are time-constrained and reward only correct answers (not effort). Grit may lead individuals
to keep working on one particularly difficult question and thus not have time to answer other
questions. Probably in recognition of this potential disadvantage of grit, some researchers have
suggested that grit needs to be expanded to include a facet reflecting situational adaptability
(Datu et al., 2018).
In sum, the apparent null relationship between grit and resilient outcomes is not surprising,
since there are contexts in which grit could increase resilience, have no effect on resilience,
or reduce resilience. And this variable relationship between grit and resilience highlights
important directions for future research. The most important of these is the need for theory and
research to specify the sort of adversity under consideration. Most studies of resilience have
 Resilient personality 35

considered large-scale, one-time life adversities, such as the loss of a spouse (e.g., Bonanno et
al., 2005). However, the factors that allow individuals to adjust to the loss of a spouse may be
quite different from those required to thrive amidst chronic adversity such as abusive leader-
ship. Among other issues, adversity will vary in terms of intensity, duration, and life domain.
Each of these factors may have important – and different – implications for resilience.

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4. Team resilience in organizations: a conceptual
and theoretical discussion of a team-level
concept
Silja Hartmann, Matthias Weiss and Martin Hoegl

Resilience, that is, positive adaptation despite setbacks or adversity (Sutcliffe and Vogus,
2003), has become a strategically important behavior in organizations (King et al., 2016). In
recent years, scholars have started to elaborate on the collective construct of team resilience
(e.g., Bowers et al., 2017; Gucciardi et al., 2018; Morgan et al., 2017; Stoverink et al., 2020)
and to empirically investigate this team phenomenon (e.g., Carmeli et al., 2013; Meneghel
et al., 2016a; Stephens et al., 2013; for a review of empirical team resilience research see
Hartmann et al., 2020). Despite this increasing scholarly attention, conceptual development of
team resilience is still in its infancy and is worthy of further refinement (Chapman et al., 2020;
King et al., 2016; Luthans et al., 2015).
To address this issue, in this chapter we take a process perspective to develop a conceptual
framework of team resilience as a collective and dynamic process. Specifically, we highlight
the collective mechanisms that may help explain how teams can develop resilience in the
face of adversity. In doing so, we discuss different theoretical perspectives that may enable
a theoretically grounded understanding of the different elements in the team resilience process.
Thereby, we offer the following contributions to the literature. First, our process model
accounts for relational and interactive underpinnings of team resilience and discusses how
team resilience develops through team members’ interactions. This is an important contribu-
tion as even though research on other team-level constructs has shown that team members’
interactions are key in understanding collective-level constructs (Bandura, 2000; Woolley et
al., 2010), scholars have only started to consider this in research on team resilience (Barton and
Kahn, 2019; Morgan et al., 2017). Thus, a stronger focus on the collective dynamics underly-
ing team resilience is greatly needed. Combining previously disconnected streams of theoriz-
ing, we highlight different affective, social and cognitive team processes that teams may need
to enact team resilience in the face of adversity. Second, our process conceptualization rec-
onciles and integrates other conceptualizations of team resilience, e.g., capacity and outcome
approaches, that have been discussed in the literature (e.g., Bowers et al., 2017; Maynard and
Kennedy, 2016; Stoverink et al., 2020), together with the role of adversity for team resilience.
In so doing, we specify in which stages of the team resilience process these aspects play a role.
By elaborating on how different conceptualizations may together enable a more holistic and
temporal understanding of team resilience, we go beyond existing conceptualizations and
address the inherent dynamics of team resilience. Combined, these contributions are intended
to address the scholarly calls for conceptual clarity and theoretical integration concerning
research on team resilience in organizations (King et al., 2016; Luthans et al., 2015).

39
40 Research handbook on organizational resilience

CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK OF TEAM RESILIENCE AS

A PROCESS

Work in teams is characterized by interdependence among team members (Wageman, 1995).

Team members must collaborate, coordinate their action, and rely on each other to accomplish
their goals and function as a unit (Hackman, 2012; Hoegl and Gemuenden, 2001). As such,
team members constantly interact, discuss their perspectives on jointly experienced events,
and develop shared meanings and interpretations (Kozlowski and Klein, 2000; Maitlis and
Sonenshein, 2010). In line with this logic, we argue that team resilience emerges as a collective
level construct. Drawing on Morgan et al. (2013), we define team resilience as a dynamic,
social process that enables a team to positively handle adverse circumstances that the team col-
lectively encounters. This definition reflects that resilience entails two defining elements. One
element reflects the experience of adversity, which creates a threat to an entity’s performance
and well-being (Richardson, 2002). The second defining element of resilience reflects positive
adjustment in the face of or after the adverse experience, through which the entity returns to
a previous state, for example, of performance or well-being, or even bounces beyond it and
grows (Luthans, 2002). In the following sections, we develop a conceptual framework of team
resilience as a social process, illustrated in Figure 4.1.

Figure 4.1 Conceptual framework of team resilience as a process

Our conceptual framework portrays the following rationale: the team resilience process
starts with the collective experience of adversity, that is, the trigger of the resilience process
(Morgan et al., 2013). To cope with the adverse experience, a team must draw on collective
team interaction processes and make use of affective, social and/or cognitive collective mech-
anisms (Bandura, 2000; Barton and Kahn, 2019; Sutcliffe and Vogus, 2003). Certain team
and contextual factors may influence these team interactions and, in turn, potentially affect
 Team resilience conceptual 41

whether a team manages to achieve a resilient outcome (Bell et al., 2018; Gucciardi et al.,
2018). In particular, these specific team and contextual factors comprise the team’s resilience
capacity, which refers to the general potential of a team to be resilient if and when adversity
strikes (Kahn et al., 2013; Stoverink et al., 2020); team composition such as team diversity
or team structure (Stuart and Moore, 2017); and contextual factors like leadership or organ-
izational context (Dimas et al., 2018). These different factors may either promote or inhibit
adaptive team interaction processes (Barton et al., 2015). Depending on the effectiveness of
the team interaction processes, the team outcome varies on a continuum from the demonstra-
tion of positive adaptation, learning and growth, that is, a team resilient outcome, to a dysfunc-
tional team outcome that fails to meet the pre-adversity trajectory, that is, a non-resilient team
outcome. As such, the more effective the team interaction processes are, the higher the degree
of team resilience is (Alliger et al., 2015). Experiences from this team resilience process may
then influence the potential to deal with subsequent adversity, that is, the resultant new team
resilience capacity (Luthans et al., 2015; Moenkemeyer et al., 2012). Thus, an initial team
resilience process is likely to influence subsequent team resilience processes (Sutcliffe and
Vogus, 2003). In the following sections, we illuminate the different elements of this processual
understanding of team resilience. In doing so, we highlight different theoretical perspectives
that can provide a better understanding of the different elements in the team resilience process.

THE EXPERIENCE OF ADVERSITY

The collective exposure to adversity is one defining element of the team resilience process
(Morgan et al., 2013) and a prerequisite to demonstrating a team resilient outcome (Stoverink
et al., 2020). Scholars characterize circumstances as an adversity if these circumstances are
a threat toward identity, well-being and/or performance (Masten, 2001; Richardson, 2002). To
provide a typology, Fisher et al. (2019) differentiated forms of adversity relating to intensity,
frequency, duration and predictability. Adverse experiences of high intensity could be created
through crises such as medical emergencies or organizational disasters (Dutton et al., 2014;
Maitlis and Sonenshein, 2010). Yet, even smaller and less intense incidents may accumulate
and link together in ways that produce major disruptions (Rudolph and Repenning, 2002).
Thus, some scholars argue that seemingly mild stressors can also create substantial threats
to well-being if they are experienced unexpectedly or repeatedly over longer periods of time
(Alliger et al., 2015; Fisher et al., 2019). Examples of these adverse circumstances include
time pressure or contextual ambiguities like organizational change (Alliger et al., 2015). As
such, both discrete events, which are bounded in space and time, and more time-blurred cir-
cumstances may be experienced as adverse.
In team environments, common external adversity is likely to lead to common strain as
a shared experienced for team members (Westman, 2001). Even if adverse circumstances
are perceived differently by single team members initially, it is likely that the different per-
spectives converge into a shared experience of strain in a team through crossover processes
(Bakker et al., 2009; Chen et al., 2015; Hobfoll et al., 2018). Adverse circumstances are
emotionally activating and are likely to lead to negative emotions (Maitlis and Sonenshein,
2010). Individual team members’ negative emotions may spread across the team via implicit
mechanisms such as emotional contagion or behavioral entrainment or explicit mechanisms
such as empathy leading to a shared adverse experience and feelings of anxiety (Barsade and
42 Research handbook on organizational resilience

Knight, 2015; Barton and Kahn, 2019; Menges and Kilduff, 2015). Further, as team members
frequently interact and communicate in their joint work, team members may start to develop
shared meanings (Bakker et al., 2009; Maitlis and Sonenshein, 2010; Totterdell et al., 2004).
Highlighting the dynamic nature of resilience, the form and the shared experience of
adversity are likely to influence the team interaction processes through creating different
forms of anxieties. Thus, the experience of adversity is an important feature of the team
resilience process. As Bell et al. (2018, p. 2742) note concerning teams operating in extreme
environments, “salient features of the context may implicate the factors and relationships that
are critical in understanding team effectiveness in the particular environment.” To scrutinize
these reciprocal effects between the type of adversity a team experiences, the anxiety it creates,
and the interaction processes in which a team engages to cope with these circumstances,
scholars may draw on theories of dynamic interactionism (Johns, 2006; Pangallo et al., 2015;
Tett and Burnett, 2003). Theories on dynamic interactionism assume that human behavior
and situations mutually influence one another (Johns, 2006). This implies that the effects of
certain team factors and processes may be activated, constrained or intensified by salient cues
presented through the adversity (Tett and Burnett, 2003). Thus, the effects of team member
interactions on team outcomes may differ depending on the type of adversity (Pangallo et al.,
2015).

TEAM INTERACTION PROCESSES

In analogy to other team-level constructs (e.g., Bandura, 2000; Woolley et al., 2010), we argue
that team resilience emerges as a collective construct through interactive, coordinative and
synergistic team interaction processes, which describe the actual behaviors teams use to cope
with adversity (Barton and Kahn, 2019; Kozlowski and Klein, 2000; Oeij et al., 2018). In the
following sections, we highlight how affective, social and cognitive team interaction processes
may contribute to a team’s resilience.

Affective Team Processes

Maitlis and Sonenshein (2010) found that emotions are one of the core themes underlying
sensemaking from adverse experiences such as change and crises and that adverse experiences
mostly evoke negative emotional reactions. Intense negative emotional experiences may
inhibit team resilience, as feelings of anxiety and fear intensify in a team context, which may
lead to narrowed scopes of attention and maladaptive behaviors (Cornelissen et al., 2014;
Vendelo and Rerup, 2009; Weick, 1990).
Yet, according to the broaden-and-build theory (Fredrickson, 2001), positive emotions can
undo the negative effects of pronounced negative emotional arousal, broaden the scope of
attention, and build resources that are needed to address adverse situations. Further, research
suggests that the crossover of positive emotions within a social relationship might be stronger
than the crossover of negative emotions (Westman et al., 2013). As such, positive emotional
team cultures may ameliorate workforce strain and the negative effects of collectively felt
stressors (Knight et al., 2018). This is because positive collective emotions fuel broadening
and building mechanisms in social interactions, which may enhance the quality of social
interactions and foster positive group outcomes (Rhee, 2006; 2007). For example, through
 Team resilience conceptual 43

triggering humans’ need to connect with others (Frijda, 1986) and stimulating self–other
overlap (Waugh and Fredrickson, 2006), positive collective emotions may enhance cohesion
and a sense of “we-ness” in teams (Rhee, 2007). Thus, when experiencing challenges, positive
collective emotions can draw team members together, which helps them overcome negative
events (Liu and Maitlis, 2014). Further, Barsade and O’Neill (2014) found that a positive emo-
tional team culture may foster team collaboration and enable team functioning in challenging
contexts. Finally, teams sharing positive emotions may experience cognitive broadening and,
thus, be able to build on each other’s ideas and put different perspectives together in new ways
(Rhee, 2006), which may help to develop new solutions for problems (Rhee, 2007). For these
reasons, positive affective interactions may help teams build their resilience (Meneghel et al.,
2016b).

Social Team Processes

We refer to social team processes as describing how team members relate and interact in col-
laborating as a collective. Prior theorizing and research on team resilience suggest that social
processes are crucial to understanding how team resilience develops (Barton and Kahn, 2019;
Giannoccaro et al., 2018; Sutcliffe and Vogus, 2003). For example, prior research investigated
how certain dimensions of high-quality connections in teams relate to a team’s capacity to be
resilient. Carmeli et al. (2013) found that connectivity, which describes the connection’s level
of openness to new ideas (Stephens et al., 2011), positively relates to team resilience capacity
because it enables idea-generating interactions and more effective information processing in
the team. Moreover, Stephens et al. (2013) highlighted that emotional carrying capacity, refer-
ring to the capacity to constructively express more positive and more negative emotions within
a relationship (Dutton and Heaphy, 2003), positively relates to a team’s resilience capacity.
The authors argue that the sharing of negative emotions helps teams work through team
members’ concerns, whilst the sharing of positive emotions helps the teams recover from these
concerns (Stephens et al., 2013). Finally, supportive team climates have been associated with
team resilience capacity (Meneghel et al., 2016a). This is because social support is a valuable
resource, and supportive behaviors equip teams for action (Friedman et al., 2018).
In the face of adversity, the enactment of positive social interaction is likely to be an impor-
tant process that enables the team to reach a resilient outcome (Olekalns et al., 2020; Vogus
and Welbourne, 2003). According to the theory of high-quality connections (Dutton and
Heaphy, 2003), positive human connections are life-giving and help members of the positive
connection feel belongingness (Kahn, 2001) and grow (Miller and Stiver, 1997). Engaging in
mutual support and mutual empathy helps to build and strengthen collective resources, which
are needed to cope with adversity (Carmeli et al., 2015; Hobfoll et al., 2018). Barton and Kahn
(2019) suggest that during adversity, teams need to shift their focus from the operational tasks
to the relational team patterns. This relational focus is likely to help team members work
through feelings of anxiety that are triggered through the experience of adversity (Barton and
Kahn, 2019). Thereby, emotional connections among team members are strengthened, provid-
ing team members with a feeling of safety or, in other words, enacting a holding environment
(Kahn, 2001). In extremely adverse situations, enacting holding environments might be criti-
cal to reduce collective suffering. In this regard, the theory on care and compassion (Dutton et
al., 2014) suggests that showing compassion may lead to greater affective commitment (Lilius
et al., 2008) and is an important capacity for collective healing (Powley, 2009). Further, enact-
44 Research handbook on organizational resilience

ing care in teams through narrative practices helps develop higher potency, collective agency,
and hope, which in turn are likely to enable team resilient responses to adversity (Lawrence
and Maitlis, 2012). In contrast, if team norms promote psychological detachment from each
member’s own pain and the pain of colleagues, it seems that distress is nurtured, rather than
reduced, at a collective level (Kahn, 2018). This suggests that it is important to embrace
painful experiences, as neglecting them could jeopardize group functioning. Yet, organiza-
tional contexts may inhibit the expression of and the compassion for suffering, as employees
often feel that showing suffering in a workplace context could be perceived as weakness or
incompetence (Kanov et al., 2017). Thus, it seems that fostering caring practices in teams is
crucial to fostering team resilience (Lawrence and Maitlis, 2012).

Cognitive Team Processes

Cognitive team processes are important for accessing and collectively processing information
in order to make sense of and regulate adverse experiences (Bandura, 2001; Barton et al.,
2015). This can partially be explained by the collective learning theory, which differentiates
between processes of intuition, interpretation and integration (Crossan et al., 1999). In the
process of intuition, team members may detect “patterns and/or possibilities inherent in a per-
sonal stream of experience” (Crossan et al., 1999, p. 525). Detecting signals of adversity is
an important first step, as teams need to become aware of potentially changing environmental
demands (Barton et al., 2015). Whereas early detection of irregularities may minimize the
negative consequences of adversity and signal the need for action (Waller, 1999), failure to
detect adversity is likely to increase a team’s vulnerability to this adversity (Weick, 1993).
Based on their first intuition, team members may engage in interpretative acts and share their
intuition through team communication to create shared meaning (Kostopoulos et al., 2013).
Collectively updating and questioning existing mental schemes is important to enable team
adaptability (Maitlis and Sonenshein, 2010). Finally, the teams’ shared understanding must be
integrated into coherent action in order to enable resilience (Crossan et al., 1999; Weick and
Roberts, 1993). In this regard, cognitive processes such as team reflexivity help teams formu-
late needs for the modification of team behaviors (Schippers et al., 2015) and plan strategies
for handling adversity (Gomes et al., 2014). This is important as team routines may not be
adequate to handle uncommon adverse situations (Weick, 1993).
Highlighting these different mechanisms, prior research shows that a shared situation
awareness and constant communication in the face of adversity are crucial to facilitating team
coordination and enabling team resilience (Gomes et al., 2014). With regard to communication
in extreme settings, Power (2018) notes that team members need to consider which informa-
tion is relevant for different team roles and communicate accordingly to make communication
more efficient. To collectively update and challenge existing mental schemes, teams may
engage in team reflexivity in the face of adversity, which has been identified as an important
cognitive process that promotes team resilience (Siegel and Schraagen, 2017). Similarly,
reflective debriefings provide a means to learn from past experiences by discussing what hap-
pened, why it happened, and how team interactions could be improved in future events (Allen
et al., 2018). Because of these positive effects, managers may want to implement regular
after-action reviews, which should provide the psychological safety to foster open discussion
and collective sensemaking (Dunn et al., 2016).
 Team resilience conceptual 45

INFLUENCING FACTORS

Certain factors may influence the affective, social and cognitive team interaction processes
and may thus either promote or inhibit the enactment of team resilience in the face of adver-
sity. In the following, we highlight the role of team resilience capacity, team composition and
contextual factors.

Capacity for Team Resilience

Team resilience capacity describes the potential of a team to show positive adaptation if and
when the team faces adverse circumstances (Alliger et al., 2015; Stoverink et al., 2020; West
et al., 2009). Team resilience capacity comprises the combined knowledge, skills and attitudes
a team holds as a collective, which enable a team to cope with adversity successfully. Teams
may hold this capacity regardless of whether they have ever faced or will ever face a setback or
adversity (Britt and Sawhney, Chapter 2, this volume). Team resilience capacity is categorized
best as an emergent state since it is dynamic and may change over time (Marks et al., 2001;
Stoverink et al., 2020). Prior research has found that team resilience capacity may promote
teamwork in the absence of adversity and may foster favorable collective outcomes such as
higher in-role and extra-role team performance (Meneghel et al., 2016a; 2016b), team viability
and a positive group experience (Dimas et al., 2018), as well as team cohesion and cooperation
(West et al., 2009).
Even though having a high team resilience capacity is no guarantee for achieving a team
resilient outcome in the presence of adversity, a stronger team resilience capacity equips teams
with the predisposition to demonstrate a resilient outcome when adversity strikes (Britt et al.,
2016; Moenkemeyer et al., 2012; Todt et al., 2018). This is because team resilience capacity
may increase a team’s potency and team members’ beliefs that they can deal with adverse
situations. This may ameliorate the team interaction processes (Bandura, 2000). For example,
teams that have a high team resilience capacity may feel fewer negative emotions in the face
of adversity, because they may feel more capable in this situation. This may enable adaptive
sensemaking and problem-oriented action (Maitlis and Sonenshein, 2010). Further, team
resilience capacity may trigger a higher sense of belonging and connection during situations
of adversity (Alliger et al., 2015). Thus, team members may be less likely to detach from
each other and engage in conflicts and instead may start to support each other and share their
anxieties (Barton and Kahn, 2019).

Team Composition

Team compositional factors may have an influence on team interaction processes and may
thus influence team resilience. For instance, based on simulation modelling, Giannoccaro et al.
(2018) found that team size was negatively related to team resilience, which was measured as
adaptation to disturbances in the team environment. They argue that this is because collective
decision making may be more complex and difficult in large teams than in small teams. Also,
team composition in relation to team members’ personality characteristics may be related
to team resilience. For example, teams low in neuroticism might be better able to maintain
a positive and supportive team atmosphere even in stressful situations (Barrick et al., 1998),
which might foster team resilience. Further, team diversity might be important to consider as
46 Research handbook on organizational resilience

high diversity could inform cognitive team interaction processes, but could also foster team
conflicts through social categorization processes (Sutcliffe and Vogus, 2003; van Knippenberg
et al., 2004). Finally, structural issues might relate to team resilience (Stuart and Moore, 2017).
For instance, pair-based structures might be better suited to promote information sharing
within teams than functional or divisional structures, which is why pair-based structures might
facilitate team cognitive interaction processes (Ellis et al., 2003).

Team Context

Contextual factors such as team leadership and organizational features may guide team
members’ interactions (Weller et al., 2019) and may thus influence team resilience. For
example, Dimas et al. (2018) and Vera et al. (2017) argued that transformational leaders
stimulate more positive social interactions in teams and promote more creative and adaptive
cognitive team processes, which fosters team resilience. In their empirical studies, they found
positive relations between a team’s transformational leadership and team resilience capacity
(Dimas et al., 2018; Vera et al., 2017). Further, organizational practices may relate to team
resilience. Conservation of resources theory (Hobfoll, 2001) suggests that positive organi-
zational practices provide teams with resources beneficial for team interactions (Vera et al.,
2017). In this regard, organizational practices aimed at fostering employees’ well-being have
been found to relate positively to team resilience capacity (Vera et al., 2017).
Building on our conceptual framework, we expect that in the face of adversity team context
exerts influence on team resilience outcomes via the team interaction processes. In other
words, team context may influence team resilience outcomes because it affects the team affec-
tive, social and cognitive processes.

TEAM RESILIENCE OUTCOMES

In the face of adversity, the team interaction processes can enable the team to adjust to this
adversity positively. This resilient team outcome manifests the demonstration of team resil-
ience (Britt et al., 2016). Positive adjustment primarily involves two dimensions: a normative
judgment about what kind of aspect should be evaluated as positive and a judgment about the
level of the realized outcome that is sufficient to label it as resilient (Masten, 2001).
Concerning the first judgment, scholars have suggested that a team resilient outcome is
foremost established in the form of team performance (Stoverink et al., 2020), which may be
operationalized in terms of quantity, quality, efficiency or effectiveness of work (Gucciardi et
al., 2018). Even though in some potentially adverse work environments, such as in aerospace
or crisis management, teams may only operate together for specific projects, many teams will
work together over longer periods of time. In these cases, we suggest that scholars also need
to consider to what extent the team stays intact as a unit after experiencing adversity to allow
inference about the extent to which a team proves resilient. For example, after a collective
experience of adversity team members might not consider themselves to be part of the team
any more or the team’s emotional culture might suffer. We suggest that such occurrences
would preclude the demonstration of team resilience. As indicators in this respect, scholars
may consider examining team cohesion, team identification, or team affect as markers of team
resilience (Alliger et al., 2015).
 Team resilience conceptual 47

The second judgment concerns the level of the criterion that marks positive adjustment.
The level of this criterion prior to the adverse experience must be evaluated against the level
of the criterion after experiencing adversity to determine resilience (Bonanno et al., 2015).
Concerning team performance as one of the most often discussed criteria, in the face of
adversity, team performance initially is likely to suffer from adverse circumstances before the
team adapts (Gucciardi et al., 2018). In order to demonstrate team resilience, teams need to
bounce back or even go beyond their initial level of performance (or any other chosen crite-
ria) (Stoverink et al., 2020). Yet Gucciardi et al. (2018) noted that resilient teams may either
bounce back very quickly or may recover very slowly. As such, the element of time is critical
in determining whether a team is resilient or not (Fisher et al., 2019). However, in the extant
literature, there is still a void regarding the specification of how long a recovery period may
take to still be regarded as a resilient trajectory.

INTERTEMPORAL EFFECTS

A process perspective on resilience suggests that “early experience shapes later experience”
(Sutcliffe and Vogus, 2003, p. 97). This implies that teams interpret and handle future threats
depending on the attitudes, beliefs and feelings that they derived from prior adverse experi-
ences. Thus, team members’ experiences in facing an adverse situation will determine future
team resilient capacities. For this reason, future team resilience capacity is influenced by the
outcome of the team resilience process in our conceptual framework. Different theoretical
perspectives help to shed light on this notion.
According to social cognitive theory (Bandura, 1986), psychosocial functioning must be
understood in terms of reciprocal causation. This means that “cognitive, affective and bio-
logical events, behavioral patterns, and environmental influences all operate as interacting
determinants that influence one another bidirectionally” (Bandura, 2001, pp. 14–15). This
suggests that, depending on the collective experience in the face of a specific adverse situation,
team resilience capacities may either grow or decline (Luthans et al., 2015). This is in line
with the conservation of resources theory (Hobfoll, 1989). The key tenet of this theoretical
perspective argues that resource loss is the major trigger of stress. Resources are defined as
“objects, personal characteristics, conditions, or energies that are valued in their own rights,
or that are valued because they act as conduits to the achievement or protection of valued
resources” (Hobfoll, 2001, p. 339). Hobfoll (2001) argues that resource loss predicts future
loss and that entities with fewer resources are more vulnerable to resource loss, which is why
resource loss can foster resource loss spirals. Thus, if a team is unable to demonstrate a team
resilient outcome after facing adversity, this may weaken its future team resilient capacity.
Yet resource gain spirals are also possible (Hobfoll et al., 2018). As entities strive to obtain
and protect resources, and as entities with more resources are less vulnerable to resource loss,
a team’s experience of a resilient team outcome may strengthen future team resilience capacity
(Hobfoll, 2011). Given these assumptions, the conservation of resources theory allows predic-
tions about how the past trajectories of teams can influence their future functioning in the face
of adversity (Stoverink et al., 2020).
Finally, the broaden-and-build theory (Fredrickson, 2001) may be applied to explain how
past team functioning predicts future team functioning. The broaden-and-build theory posits
that affective experience is self-perpetuating so that emotions may accumulate and compound
48 Research handbook on organizational resilience

over time (Fredrickson, 2013). Whereas positive emotions may trigger the growth of additional
resources such as social relatedness, negative emotions can foster the loss of resources through
different processes such as through behavioral withdrawal (Garland et al., 2010). Applied to
team resilience, this suggests that positive emotional dynamics, derived from the collective
demonstration of resilience, are likely to create upward spirals of human functioning, whereas
negative emotional experiences, derived from the failure to demonstrate team resilience, might
create downward spirals.
Summing up, a process perspective on team resilience implies that team resilience may
change over time. In other words, subsequent team resilience capacity may either be strength-
ened or weakened depending on the experiences of teams in the face of adversity. These
capacities influence team interaction processes in the face of adversity so that the outcome
of one team resilience process will assert influence on subsequent team resilience processes.

CONCLUSION

Building on prior work on different analytical levels (e.g., Fisher et al., 2019; Gucciardi et
al., 2018; Stoverink et al., 2020; Sutcliffe and Vogus, 2003), in this chapter we have provided
a conceptual framework that illustrates team resilience as a collective process. We have under-
lined different affective, social and cognitive team interaction processes that may help teams
cope with adversity and reach a resilient outcome. From this processual collective perspective,
team interaction processes are central for understanding how team resilience develops (and
why certain teams fail to develop resilience). Further, we have discussed how different views
on team resilience, that is, capacity and outcome approaches, may be integrated in our proces-
sual understanding, and we have highlighted different theoretical perspectives that researchers
may draw on to explain different elements in the team resilience process. In future studies,
scholars may specify which element of the team resilience process they are studying and may
further make use of the theoretical perspectives provided. Thus, we hope that our conceptual
framework facilitates an integrative exchange between team resilience scholars and further
assists theoretical integration in the study of team resilience in organizations.

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5. Reframing resilience on novelty and change
Maria Laura Frigotto1

INTRODUCTION
In recent years, resilience has become a key concept across academic disciplines and in organ-
izations’ and individuals’ experiences (Linnenluecke, 2017; Fisher et al., 2018; Ducheck,
2019). The popularity of resilience might be related to the current times. Resilience has been
called “the key term of an era” (Bartezzaghi, 2013), for it responds to a generalized crisis
situation – economic, social and philosophical – and it trusts that human wit and abilities can
overcome it.
Resilience is defined as an individual, an organization, or a system’s (from now on “subject”)
ability to bounce back, respond and recover when facing disturbances (Linnenluecke, 2017).
Stemming from materials engineering, resilience has been exported into the social sciences
and nuanced to identify the ability of a subject to live through tough adversities and persist by
positively adapting or even thriving (Fisher et al., 2018; Kossek and Perrigino, 2016). In the
area of organizational psychology, resilience is a necessary ability in the workplace: one must
respond adaptively and flexibly to increasing challenges because of technological change,
competitive pressures and organizational reshuffling (Fisher et al., 2018). In organizational
studies, resilience is a property that was first studied in high-reliability organizations (HROs),
such as first responders, emergency management organizations, power plants, air traffic
control organizations, and the like. Building on the experience of HROs, resilience then came
to business organizations, where it implies business continuity and continuous business model
reinvention (Hamel and Välikangas, 2003).
This broad interest contrasts with the present understanding of resilience in organizations as
both a construct and a phenomenon. Fisher et al. (2018) stated that definitions and theoretical
elaborations of resilience in organizational studies display some clear areas of consensus, such
as on the positive outcome of resilience, but also greatly vary and contain important areas
of inconsistency that are open to different conceptualizations of resilience as an attribute,
outcome or process. Overall, there is a substantial divergence in the definitions, theories and
operationalizations of resilience across studies that still needs to be reconciled under more
robust and general definitions and theories (Ducheck, 2019; Fisher et al., 2018; Linnenluecke,
2017; Kossek and Perrigino, 2016). Calls for contributions to clarify what is to be conceived of
as resilience date back one or two decades (Carpenter et al., 2001; de Bruijne et al., 2010) and
have recently been renewed (Britt et al., 2016; Vanhove et al., 2016; Ducheck, 2019). Recent
literature reviews on resilience (Kossek and Perrigino, 2016; Linnenluecke, 2017; Williams et
al., 2017; Fisher et al., 2018; Giustiniano et al., 2018) have opened the way to a more robust
and clear understanding of resilience that could bring about more cumulative knowledge and
lead toward an intermediate phase in the concept’s evolution. However, Williams et al. (2017),
Kossek and Perrigino (2016), and Ducheck (2019) argued that after these accurate reviews,
further theoretical elaboration is needed to reduce the opacity and confusion still present. With

53
54 Research handbook on organizational resilience

this aim, this chapter will offer an elaboration of the resilience construct in relation to novelty
and change.
Novelty is central to organizations and organizational studies: it is the lifeblood of indi-
vidual and organizational life and is the core of evolutionary theories (Becker et al., 2006;
Frigotto, 2018). Change is the main condition of individuals and organizations (Weick and
Quinn, 1999); as Heraclitus claimed, “panta rei,” that is, the only constant is change (Pettit et
al., 2010), and novelty is the source and trigger of change (Frigotto, 2016). Regarding the link
between novelty, change and resilience, Linnenluecke (2017) showed the origins of resilience
in two papers by Staw et al. (1981) and Meyer (1982) (the latter first mentioned “resiliency”)
that addressed how organizations respond to external threats within an evolutionary frame-
work; these studies are also milestones in the literature on change in organizations. In addition,
the literature agrees that resilience mainly refers to adverse triggers (Fisher et al., 2018). In
fact, for positive triggers, which are framed in terms of opportunities, the literature talks more
openly and more generally of change (Frigotto, 2018). However, the separation between
resilience and change seems to be more complicated and has not fairly been articulated. In this
chapter, I argue that resilience implies different kinds of change depending on the different
profiles of the novelty of adversity triggers.
A definition of resilience based on novelty and change would advance our understanding in
at least three ways. First, defining novelty will lead to the development of a clearer relationship
with change and resilience. In particular, resilience outcomes can be separated into three types
that – building on increasing novelty profiles – rely on different change modes: absorption,
adaptation and transformation. This will open to further and more explicit cross-fertilization of
research between resilience and change. Second, a definition of resilience grounded in novelty
allows us to show the evolutionary nature of resilience itself because it is renewed and revived
continuously, being itself the changing ability to face novelty. Third, the relativity of novelty
across diverse subjects allows for building resilience in terms of mechanisms that play along
the diffusion of knowledge among individuals and communities.
This chapter presents an advancement of the framework elaborated by Fisher et al. (2018),
where novelty and change are explicitly introduced in the theoretical conceptualization
of resilience: novelty is used to elaborate on the type and nature of adversities that trigger
resilience, and change is used to elaborate on the type and nature of the resilience outcomes.
Considerations of resilience mechanisms are also added.

The Resilience Literature from Determinedness to Indeterminateness

In the resilience literature, novelty is not explicitly present. This is not surprising: in evolution
or innovation literature, despite being so central, it has remained largely implicit (Frigotto,
2018). However, in the specific case of resilience, this might also relate to the fact that resil-
ience stems from materials engineering, which builds on a fairly robust and stable knowledge
system where adversities are fixed and well defined; hence, resilience is also fixed and well
defined, and novelty is not evident.
In engineering, a disturbance is a dynamic force called a “shock” that hits a material;
resilience indicates the ability of a system (i.e., a material) to absorb energy before breaking
(Kalpakjian and Schmid, 2016). According to this conceptualization of resilience, each mate-
rial displays a certain resilience in relation to a specific well-defined disturbance; for instance,
 Reframing resilience 55

the Charpy pendulum is used to measure it. Once it is measured, it is established and it is
always the same.
Over time, the meaning of resilience has been extended to other areas of research, and this
has transformed resilience into a more metaphorical meaning that displays the property of the
subject and how the subject can survive and keep functioning despite the difficulties that may
arise (Linnenluecke, 2017; Williams et al., 2017). Along this transition, the constructs of resil-
ience have become evocative in highlighting an important ability of the subject when over-
coming major difficulties. In particular, the definiteness of the original engineering construct
faded. For instance, the equivalent to the individual or the organization of the perpendicular
shock in the Charpy pendulum was reframed in terms of “adversities.” Adversities could be
evoked and imagined but require further elaboration to be specified into a list of empirical
cases and theoretical types. In addition, through this transition, their conception changed, and
novelty became a central dimension of their nature.
However, a clear shift from adversities conceived as engineering shocks stemmed from the
contribution of Charles Perrow and continued through HRO studies. Perrow (1984) introduced
a conceptualization of adversities as internal vulnerabilities taking the form of small failures,
deviations and other malfunctions that can escalate into negative consequence events. These
vulnerabilities are because of the increasingly complex technological systems that are embed-
ded in organizations (Perrow referred to large-scale disasters of the time such as Chernobyl
or Bhopal and to the evident vulnerability of the organizations devoted to dealing with them).
Basically, in this perspective, complex systems are opaque to human understanding because
their functioning is not analytically defined and is only indirectly controlled through buffers
and other forms of redundancy; resilience is framed in terms of “reliability,” and adversities
are “generic” small potential failures. Adversities cannot be specified further because of the
opaqueness of the system. Building on this, Wildavsky (1988) added that adversities can be
distinguished between those that can be foreseen (and that enter the area of “anticipation”) and
those that consist of unknown challenges unanticipated before they manifest (that belong to
the area of resilience). In the first case, they can be avoided; in the second case, they should
be contained.
Perrow (1984) and Wildavsky (1988) constructed the essence of the adversities that trigger
resilience as undetermined and ill-defined. Weick developed this conceptualization further by
reframing adversities as “the unexpected,” namely, in terms of what is not expected and not
thought, given the present “sensemaking” (i.e., the process through which people interpret
and give meaning to their experience; Weick and Roberts, 1993; Weick, 1993; Weick and
Sutcliffe, 2001). Through this evolution, resilience has also been reframed as “less determin-
istic” (Linnenluecke, 2017, p. 8) and highly dependent on the context and organization or
system that enacts resilience.
This conceptualization of resilience as the ability to resist and respond to indeterminate
adversities has made resilience extremely appealing to business organizations facing increas-
ingly changing contexts. Here, resilience is the response to unpredictable environments and
a source of competitive advantage through scanning for environmental “warnings” and con-
stantly pursuing change (Hamel and Välikangas, 2003). This perspective on resilience spread
across the most diverse areas and empirical contexts of management research on resilience
(e.g., business models, Hamel and Välikangas, 2003; supply chain, Rice and Caniato, 2003;
tourism, Dahles and Susilowati, 2015).
56 Research handbook on organizational resilience

THE RELEVANCE OF NOVELTY IN THE STUDY OF RESILIENCE

Including novelty in the definition of resilience provides several advantages. First, novelty
allows for the elaboration of resilience in terms of both stability and change, thus clarifying
how resilience can be conceived of as a source of stability by ensuring the maintenance of
functioning despite adversities and also as a source of change by stimulating positive adap-
tation and thriving through adversities. Within each area of research, resilience: (1) responds
both to exceptional, devastating events and to a larger set of disruptions and disturbances
that do not match with those “the system is designed to handle” (Boin et al., 2010, p. 8); (2)
relies on diverse mechanisms, such as a return to the status quo and the pursuit of change
(Lengnick-Hall et al., 2011), flexibility and redundancy (e.g., Pettit et al., 2010), exploration,
and exploitation (e.g., Lee and Rah, 2016); and (3) is revealed by several diverse outcomes,
such as stability, adaptability and growth (e.g., Hamel and Välikangas, 2003). In general, such
variety has been interpreted as deriving from the multifaceted nature of resilience in dealing
with traditional and contemporary challenges (Giustiniano et al., 2018). However, I argue
that novelty can better explain this variety because different levels of the novelty of adversity
triggers are associated with different kinds of resilience mechanisms and resilience outcomes.
Second, novelty is a relative concept defined in relation to the state-of-the-art and awareness
of knowledge (Frigotto, 2018); however, resilience is an ability that is changing in nature as
new adversities occur over time. Therefore, a definition of resilience grounded in novelty
allows us to elaborate on the evolutionary nature of resilience. In fact, resilience addresses
both known adversities and novel ones. Therefore, resilience is not a fixed set of “must haves”
but is renewed continuously, being itself a changing ability. This chapter elaborates on how
resilience changes in relation to the novelty of the adversities that it is conceived to address,
including the cases in which it is not aware of their existence or of their form or manifestation
time.
Third, novelty is a relative concept in a further sense (i.e., in relation to a subject): novelty
does not appear equally new to all the people in an organization or to all organizations in an
industry. In other words, knowledge is not homogeneously distributed, and a definition of
resilience grounded in novelty articulates that resilience, in addressing disturbances that are
novel to a subject but are not to the system, stimulates learning from others in various forms
(e.g., communities of practice or of mutual aid, diffusion of procedures through tightly coupled
systems, knowledge sharing systems, etc.). Conversely, resilience addressing disturbances that
are novel to all subjects stimulates the generation of new knowledge.

Novelty Dimensions

As Levinthal (2008) argued, novelty reflects knowledge, and in a sense, knowledge is its
opposite: novelty consists of what is not known. A novel adversity is one that has never been
addressed by a subject and that requires a new solution. A novel adversity can hit a subject for
the first time, for example, a divorce, or can hit the subject in a unique way despite being expe-
rienced earlier, for example, a second divorce. In entrepreneurial life, consider, for instance,
the first and second business failures, whose roles in acquiring knowledge are well-known in
the literature (Ducheck, 2018). Novelty reveals that there is some knowledge that is missing or
that needs to be acquired. In fact, everything includes some novelty, even standardized actions,
 Reframing resilience 57

because no manifestation is exactly the same as the previous ones. For this reason, novelty can
be considered a continuous variable rather than a dichotomic one.
Novelty can be defined along three dimensions (Frigotto, 2018). The first is relativity.
Novelty is related and defined by what is known in a certain time and by a certain subject.
Novelty is relative in two ways: (a) in relation to some state of knowledge in a certain time
and space; and (b) in relation to some subject, for example, system, organization, team or
individual. Hence, novelty refers to the fact that knowledge changes over time and is not
homogeneously distributed.
The second dimension is the degree of novelty: the understanding of novelty should also
consider how new something is in relation to what is already known. The degree of novelty
impacts the ease of grasping novelty. Novelty might be similar to what is known or completely
different, implying that it will be easier or more difficult to detect and be dealt with. For
example, the novelty of Galileo’s heliocentric theory revolutionized knowledge about astron-
omy; in fact, it was hard for his contemporaries to accept and consider the theory as scientif-
ically valid. Conversely, today, the recently discovered new planets represent an important
add-on to the existing knowledge in astronomy but not a revolution.
The third dimension is novelty awareness. The fact that knowledge is available to someone
or at some point in history does not mean it will be used. Awareness refers to the access
subjects have to available knowledge and to the awareness of novelty itself. In other words,
awareness concerns the knowledge of what is unknown (the fact that I know that there is
some novelty), as well as the knowledge that is necessary to deal with novelty (what is the
knowledge that allows the subject to reduce novelty into something known). The way in
which Polaroid did not see that the digital revolution was coming is an example (Tripsas and
Gavetti, 2000). The direct implication is that if there is high awareness of some novelty, one
can address it deliberately, and even when this is not done, it might immediately be recognized
when it appears in an organization’s sights.
Considering the three dimensions together, it is possible to build three novelty profiles of
increasing novelty. Growing novelty profiles (minor, medium and major) reflect the increas-
ing amount of knowledge that is missing to reduce novelty to something known, manageable
and controllable. This lack of knowledge does not have to be understood as missing areas of
knowledge, but also in terms of a lack of connections between available areas not related in the
available knowledge structure (Frigotto, 2018).

A DEFINITION OF RESILIENCE BUILDING ON NOVELTY AND

CHANGE
Fisher et al. (2018) provided a framework for defining resilience that encompasses adversity
triggers, resilience outcomes, resilience mechanisms, and resilience-promoting factors (Figure
5.1). The inclusion of novelty into resilience research will build on this framework and is
organized along the articulation of these constructs, facilitating the accumulation and integra-
tion of knowledge, save for resilience-promoting factors, which lay beyond the scope of this
chapter.
58 Research handbook on organizational resilience

Source: Adapted from Fisher et al. (2018).

Figure 5.1 Resilience framework

NOVELTY AND ADVERSITY TRIGGERS

Novelty Unifying Predictability and Unexpectedness

Several authors have elaborated on the nature of adversity triggers, explaining what justifies
their different disruptive potential. In some way, it is possible to interpret this elaboration in
terms of novelty.
Lampel et al. (2009) stressed that novelty is related to its moment of manifestation; here,
the rarity of events affects the perception of relevance and probability that leads to larger
impacts. In the same line, Britt et al. (2016) built on predictability, intended as the possibility
to know the moment in which a challenging event will occur so that the subject can prepare
for it. Westrum (2006) identified regular threats, irregular threats, and unexampled events
according to their predictability; however, he explicitly claimed that under predictability, it
is not possible to “predict when the event will take place” (Westrum, 2006, p. 55; emphasis
added). Westrum’s predictability means the possibility to recognize threats, given that threats
appear in various forms and are hard to recognize (thus, his reference to “unexampled events”).
Weick and Sutcliffe (2001) referred to the “unexpectedness” of adversity triggers to stress that
the adverse nature of an event lies in its relationship with the subject’s expectations and not in
absolute terms. In this line, Quarantelli (1989), Boin and ‘t Hart (2007) and Lagadec (2007)
coined the category of “new emergencies” to address emergencies whose appearance, evolu-
tion, impact and consequences are “inconceivable” before they actually occur. These latter
adversities build the set of “the unthinkable” (Lagadec, 2007). These authors clarified Weick
and Sutcliffe’s (2001) contribution by making two distinctions. In the first, expectations do not
 Reframing resilience 59

include some event because of selective attention biases, for instance, because it occurred too
far back in time and has been forgotten. In the second, expectations do not include some event
because that event is not deemed possible and could not be imagined before it takes place.
While labeling it differently or developing different meanings for the same labels, these
contributions distinguish among adversity types, building on the possibility to know, not
only when, but mainly, that adversity triggers will appear and how this will happen. Westrum
(2006) implied that a complete “example” of such adversity must be available; the other
authors referred to a much less practical form of knowledge of adversity constructed by
expectations and imagination. Implicitly, they articulated that adversity triggers along novelty,
referring to the more or less available knowledge on triggers.

Adversity Triggers by Major, Minor and Medium Novelty Profiles

It is possible to articulate adversity triggers according to their “novelty profile,” which builds
on novelty awareness, novelty degree and novelty relativity. This profile shows the intensity
and potential of adversity triggers for negative outcomes (Britt et al., 2016). Minor, major and
medium novelty profiles are extreme types, and further minor profiles could be identified.
A minor novelty profile combines low novelty degree, high novelty awareness, and high
novelty relativity (where novelty concerns one or a few subjects but not all). For instance, in
the realm of HROs, an adversity trigger with a minor novelty profile would be firefighters’
intervention to extinguish a fire in a barn. Each fire is different; however, this case is pretty
standard. In the same category, a fire in a plant is very challenging but is typically expected
with a certain degree of risk.
A major novelty profile combines high novelty degree, low novelty awareness, and low
novelty relativity. The classic example of an adversity trigger with a major novelty profile is
the 9/11 terrorist attack. This attack not only called for new responses, but also for new con-
ceptualizations and categories that could be used to understand them. In fact, a new paradigm
of emergency management preparation and of homeland security in the United States has
arisen from that event (Frigotto and Narduzzo, 2012).
A medium novelty profile combines two different situations: one in which there is high
novelty degree, high novelty awareness and high novelty relativity, and another in which there
are low levels of novelty degree, high novelty awareness and low levels of novelty relativity.
The first case could be a special fire requiring a special technique to be extinguished, one that
has not been rehearsed for a lot of time and hence challenges firefighters who have forgotten
it. The second case could be a new threat provided by a cyber-attack that has never been expe-
rienced but that can be utilized for further knowledge gain.

Adversity in Content, Timing, Duration, Consequences and Interactions

Adversity triggers are typically considered to be a category with different types, for example,
natural disasters, organizational restructuring, interpersonal conflict, competitive revolu-
tions, and so forth (Fisher et al., 2018; Linnenluecke, 2017). The previous section provided
a perspective on their nature building on novelty. It is also necessary to articulate the forms
in which adversity triggers appear. Adversity triggers exist because their content, moment of
manifestation, duration, consequences or interactions are challenging (see Table 5.1). Hence,
I can elaborate that novelty appears in the different forms of adversity triggers because they
60 Research handbook on organizational resilience

Table 5.1 Adversity triggers by source of adversity

ADVERSITY DESCRIPTION EXAMPLE

TRIGGERS BY:
CONTENT The event consists of something New technology
“significant, severe or traumatic in nature” Organizational restructuring
Interpersonal conflict
TIMING The manifestation of the event is not Revenues of the new product do not grow as rapidly as
expected in that moment (the event has an expected
early or late manifestation) A central worker resigns in a critical phase
DURATION The event:
(a) Lasts longer or less or (a) The financial crisis in Italy continues after other EU
(b) Consists of minor but continuous countries have regained their positions
events (b) Continuous excessively stringent deadlines that require
fast-paced work and produce stress
CONSEQUENCES Consequences of the event are exceptional
on some of the following aspects:
(a) Intensity or magnitude (a) The blackout on 31 July 2012 in India left 600 million
(b) Sign people in the dark
(b) A promotion that is not accepted or recognized by
collaborators
INTERACTIONS The event has an impact on connected The 2011 earthquake in Japan provoked a tsunami a nuclear
domains disaster
A personal life-threatening event impacts business
performance because of bad or distracted decisions being
taken

are not known or because they are not expected and hence contain knowledge that is not
fine-grained. For instance, an adversity characterized by a high novelty profile can appear as
something that is not novel regarding its content, but can be novel in terms of its duration:
a worker who is key resigns in the middle of a critical project. For the following elaboration,
I build on Weick and Sutcliffe (2001) and Frigotto (2018), and this articulation also extends
the temporal dimension of adversities pointed out by Fisher et al. (2018).
It is straightforward to think of adversity triggers that display challenging content, such as
competitive shifts, for instance, new technologies or new regulations that shake the competi-
tive arena (Hamel and Välikangas, 2003), or crises, for instance, related to a natural disaster,
a business failure, an organizational restructuring, or an interpersonal conflict that creates
worker stress. These are “significant, severe or traumatic in nature” (Fisher et al., 2018,
p. 15). However, adversity triggers can also derive from an event occurring in an unexpected
moment or that lasts longer than expected. Another form of adversity triggers builds on the
consequences of an event that is larger or opposite to what is expected. For instance, in 2010,
the Icelandic volcano ash diffused all over Europe, and air traffic was paralyzed beyond the
Icelandic air traffic area. Being promoted to a higher responsibility job is expected to provide
new challenges, but also life satisfaction; it becomes an adversity trigger when the promotion
is not recognized and accepted by collaborators, hence becoming a source of disturbance
rather than reinforcement of success. Finally, adversity triggers might derive from or expand
in different (related) domains and become larger and more complex. For instance, the 2011
earthquake in Japan provoked two related disasters: a tsunami and a nuclear emergency.
 Reframing resilience 61

NOVELTY AND RESILIENCE OUTCOMES AND MECHANISMS

Resilience Outcomes

In the literature, two main perspectives on resilience outcomes coexist (Ducheck, 2019). The
first conceives of resilience as the ability to resist adversities, recover after them, and return
to the initial state. Here, the emphasis lies in the ability to cope with disturbances and resume
standard performance (Lengnick-Hall et al., 2011). The second understands resilience as the
ability to change, which enables survival and “come out of the crisis stronger than before”
(Ducheck, 2019, p. 5), as well as to achieve higher performance levels (Hamel and Välikangas,
2003). In this view, the core ability is in adaptation and transformation (Lengnick-Hall et al.,
2011). More specifically, several scholars have developed distinctions among the different
outcomes of resilience and on the different mechanisms that these outcomes entail. Folke
et al. (2010) distinguished “specified resilience” from “general resilience,” separating when
resilience refers to a range of shocks that are particular and well-identified from the resilience
referring to “any and all parts of a system” in relation “to all kinds of shocks, including novel
ones.” (Folke et al., 2010, p. 3). Wildavsky (1988) even excluded the response to well-known
triggers from resilience, positioning them in the realm of anticipation; Boin et al. (2010)
specified that resilience concerns adversities that exceed the boundaries of the normal triggers
addressed in normal operations: they “fall outside the range of normal and expected distur-
bance” (Boin et al., 2010, p. 9).
The articulation of these outcomes associated with the different degrees of specificability
and predictability of disturbances can be explained in terms of different profiles of novelty.
When triggers are well defined within given knowledge (low novelty profile), they can easily
be understood and typically even specified into exemplars; in addition, they can be predicted
and anticipated with a range of risk. With low novelty profiles of adversity triggers, resilience
brings the performance back to the initial level (as displayed in Figure 5.2a), and adversities
are contained. The outcome is absorption resilience. As knowledge decreases, it becomes
more difficult for resilience to reproduce the original performance level without engaging in
change. In this situation, change can entail either a reformulation of the way in which an equal
level of performance is provided or, as the second perspective suggests (Ducheck, 2019),
change provides the achievement of growth and of higher performance levels by creating
more impactful changes. In these cases, it is hard to define and predict that some trigger will
manifest, up to the extreme where it is necessary to develop knowledge further, both in terms
of understanding and response, to be able to see that some unknown adversity is taking place
and address it. To grasp the different kinds of change that medium and major novelty profiles
require, it is necessary to separate resilience outcomes into two more different types. These
two further resilience outcomes can be distinguished according to the increasing level of the
novelty profiles of adversity triggers; they reflect the understanding and response required to
address them and the growing levels of change necessary to incorporate them. Both incorpo-
rate change by taking it as an opportunity to reach higher levels of performance, rather than by
phagocytizing and canceling it, as a disturbance to the stable performance level (Folke et al.,
2003, p. 352). These outcomes are adaptive resilience and transformative resilience (Figures
5.2b, 5.2c, respectively).
62 Research handbook on organizational resilience

Source: Adapted from Fisher et al. (2018).

Figure 5.2a Resilience framework – minor novelty profile

Absorptive Resilience

Absorptive resilience is a form of stability of the system, where change is controlled by either
limiting or canceling it. Here, the resilient outcome shows that including change translates into
a nearly zero impact on the system (Linnenluecke et al., 2012). Absorptive resilience is meas-
ured in terms of return time and efficiency, where the possibility to return to the initial state is
taken for granted. In this perspective, disturbances are temporary and “a rather narrow range
of predictable external conditions” (Holling, 1973, p. 1). In Meyer’s perspective (1982), this
form of resilience outcome is associated with the ability of an organization to absorb an envi-
ronmental jolt and restore prior stability; this builds on adversities that are well-known, either
directly or indirectly, in experiencing other subjects. It is associated with a minor novelty
profile, meaning that the awareness of the kind of adversities that might take place – along
with the knowledge concerning their manifestation, nature and response – is well developed.
This does not imply that these adversities are negligible but that their identification is not
highly challenging because there are cognitive and often operative frameworks that can guide
their recognition and handling. They are often estimated through risk management techniques,
and typically, anticipation (Wildavsky, 1988) is performed to address them.
One example of absorptive resilience concerns the reaction of winter sports tourism busi-
nesses to fluctuating snow conditions over the years. Artificial snowing systems have also
been developed to cancel out this potential adversity. Nevertheless, this adversity sometimes
still results in a crisis that requires higher levels of absorption resilience. For instance, in
the Alps, the 2003–2004 season was very snowy, with good business success for hotels or
 Reframing resilience 63

Source: Adapted from Fisher et al. (2018).

Figure 5.2b Resilience framework – medium novelty profile

ski lifts. Conversely, the 1989–1990 season was very dry and also recorded extremely high
temperatures that hampered the use of artificial snowing systems, causing a drop in winter
sport tourism. A further example at the individual level is the resilience displayed by workers
subject to fast-paced work before an anticipated deadline: they respond by changing their work
practices for a period of time, after which they go back to their previous work pace.

Adaptive Resilience

Adaptive resilience is associated with a medium novelty profile; it responds to unanticipated

triggers that can be understood and framed using available knowledge. This includes several
different cases that range from two extremes. At one extreme, the knowledge that would be
necessary to frame and respond to disturbances has been produced, but it is not immediately
available to the subject addressing adversity; either it has been developed by others, or it had
been developed by the organization itself, but over time, memory of that knowledge has faded.
At the other extreme, knowledge has not been produced earlier but concerns a refinement or
a direct elaboration of available knowledge, so this knowledge can be translated into projects
and clear objectives that can be targeted. In both cases, the resilience outcome reflects the
achievement of a new performance level that is typically higher than the original one (Figure
5.2b). Examples of this resilience are seen in the many cases in which organizations facing an
unanticipated but persistent adversity change to adapt to it. For instance, Alessi, which manu-
factures and commercializes Italian design accessories, faced a drop in sales toward the end of
2000, which was related to the drop in weddings and practice of compiling wedding lists with
64 Research handbook on organizational resilience

Source: Adapted from Fisher et al. (2018).

Figure 5.2c Resilience framework – major novelty profile

in-store registries. A contracting market is being contrasted with an opening online channel
and Asian markets, which is still ongoing. At the individual level, adaptive resilience occurs
when a new management system is introduced, which is expected to provide an increase in
productivity. The workers operate by using this system and face an adversity because their
work practices must change. After familiarizing themselves with the system and building new
knowledge using it, they are rapidly able to restore the initial performance level and, shortly
after, increase it.
Mechanisms that support adaptive resilience concern strategies that allow recovery from
the organizational memory lessons learned from previous forgotten experiences, but also
strategies that allow for gathering solutions and competencies available in the market or by
partners and that have already been developed in similar cases. Both these strategies build on
the exploitation of available knowledge (March, 1991), either in the organization or in the
system of organizations. However, the literature in the organizational absorptive capacity is
a prominent limit in knowledge transfer (Cohen and Levinthal, 1990). Similarly, individual
cognitive rigidity, high turnover, weak storage systems (sets of procedures, practices and nar-
ratives) for organizational knowledge, and few opportunities to rehearse also limit knowledge
recovery (Olivera, 2000).

Transformative Resilience

Transformative resilience is associated with a major novelty profile. It responds to triggers

that require a shift or advancement of knowledge to be framed and addressed. Disturbances
 Reframing resilience 65

are very challenging: they trigger “sharp shifts,” “regime shifts,” or “critical transitions” and
concern a variety of adversities that are typically both unpredictable and unexpected (Folke et
al., 2010); they reflect that available knowledge is not enough to offer a clear understanding
and an effective response. From this perspective, resilience is measured by the effective “per-
sistence or probability of extinction” (Holling, 1973, p. 17), rather than the rapidity to return
to the former equilibrium, as in absorptive resilience.
In short, when major novelty occurs, it is necessary to produce more knowledge to grasp
and address it; however, the nature of major novelty implies two lines of complexity. The first
is that such knowledge typically needs to be developed building on different premises and
frameworks than those that have been based on available knowledge; the other concerns the
fact that the lack of this knowledge is not evident; therefore, it is not spelled out in targets or
projects as people are not aware that it is actually missing.
In general, the transformative resilience outcome is hard to reach because it requires a rev-
olution of the present organization, and this type of revolution is reflected by the necessary
knowledge shift. However, despite being uncertain, it also contains a higher level of perfor-
mance (Figure 5.2c).
Here, it is necessary to open a reflection on the way in which resilience is assessed and
measured and how this might have contributed to the confusion among the different kinds
of resilience outcomes and perspectives. In fact, most scholars agree that resilience implies
the achievement of a positive outcome after disturbances have occurred (Linnenluecke,
2017; Fisher et al., 2018). This is typically measured in terms of the performance level (e.g.,
revenues) that either (1) remains constant, or (2) settles on a higher level. The first case fits
the dynamics of absorptive resilience; the second case fits both adaptive and transformative
resilience, which can be unified into one category. This way of seeing resilience measures has
the advantage of normalizing the measure (e.g., in euros) from the specificity of organizational
production (e.g., safety services or technological products). However, this representation
does not show that adaptive and transformative resilience entail very different dynamics,
hence sparking confusion between the two. In transformative resilience, a transformation of
the organizational functioning and outcome occurs, building on a shift in knowledge, while
in adaptive resilience, this disruptive change does not occur. The example of Tassullo helps
clarify this point.
Since 1909, Tassullo has been a manufacturer and supplier of building materials in Italy.
They extract a special rock from mines in the Alps, called dolomite, to produce several kinds
of concrete. Since 2012, the Italian real estate market has entered a deep crisis, which was
paired with the general slow-down of investments and public initiatives. After a great deal of
downsizing and restructuring, the innovative branch of Tassullo transformed itself from a con-
crete manufacturer that produced mines as a byproduct, to a provider of sustainable storage
capacity in the form of mines, particularly for apple producers.
Many closed mines have been converted for alternative usage. The Lefdal mine in Norway
is an example of the conversion of massive abandoned mines to data centers; however, in that
case, as in many similar others, the mining company did not transform from one business to
another. Instead, Tassullo is an example of organizational resilience because the organization
engaged in change that reflects a major novelty profile resulting from the three dimensions of
novelty. On novelty degree, while other mines have been converted to host data centers, it is
completely novel to use mines to store fresh products, such as apples. On novelty awareness,
envisioning such use came through interactions with several nonrelated producers on the same
66 Research handbook on organizational resilience

territory to discuss the crisis situation of Tassullo. This solution was not apparent or foreseen
in the beginning. On novelty relativity, the knowledge and competencies developed in con-
crete manufacturing were very different from those required for the new business. So a very
challenging change was necessary for Tassullo. In addition, the fact that fresh products had
never before been stored in mines required a new competence that combined knowledge on
the storage of fresh products outside mines and knowledge on living conditions in mines: this
was novel for the system, not only for the organization.
Another example is Nokia, which transformed its business over time, changing from a pulp
mill with its own hydropower resources in 1865 to forestry, cable, rubber, and, eventually,
electronics. At the individual level, examples can be found in the stories of successful entre-
preneurs who went through other forms of failure (Ducheck, 2018). Bill Gates’ experience is
emblematic: he failed his first year at Harvard University studying law, after which he devoted
himself to the development of the first personal computer and then founded Microsoft.
Transformative resilience builds on the mechanisms described by March (1991, p. 71)
as explorative: “search, variation, risk taking, experimentation, play, flexibility, discovery,
innovation” and concerning more a “rationality of (apparent) foolishness,” where the decision
elements are so unknown and little understood that only a peculiar rationality explains how to
combine them into a choice (March, 2006). For the major levels of novelty, the literature on
HROs has shown that it is necessary to develop ad hoc solutions (Ducheck, 2019) entailing the
development of sensemaking (Weick, 1993). In fact, when adversities are totally unexpected,
they also typically trigger a “loss of meaning” in organizations (Cunha et al., 2006) that
need to construct a new framework for understanding the situation. Bricolage is a resilience
mechanism through which people improvise and find solutions creatively. “Emergent groups”
(Ducheck, 2019), made of people who self-organize into groups based on the expertise nec-
essary to address the situation (Weick et al., 1999), are also useful transformative resilience
mechanisms that have been further specified into expertise coordination practices (Faraj and
Xiao, 2006).

CONCLUSION
In this chapter, I defined resilience in relation to the novelty profiles of adversity triggers.
Resilience can be articulated into three resilience outcomes: absorptive, adaptive and trans-
formative. This definition builds on the literature, arguing that although resilience emphasizes
the ability to persist, it also implies change in several ways, and clarifies how these two appar-
ently conflicting elements can be reconciled. This theoretical contribution responds to the
call for elaboration in the recent literature (Kossek and Perrigino, 2016; Linnenluecke, 2017;
Williams et al., 2017; Fisher et al., 2018).
Within the evolution of resilience studies, novelty can trigger several advancements. Since
the early days of the organizational resilience concept, the engineering approach, moved by the
desire to design systems that can guarantee organizations stability, has tried to identify a list
of disturbances and system reactions – and through prediction – to control them. Following
Walker and Salt (2006, p. 9), I argue that the search for this control has “the [opposite] effect of
making the total system more vulnerable to shocks and disturbances” that are unforeseen and
noncontrollable in many ways. Instead, the key to increasing resilience is to focus on novelty
 Reframing resilience 67

in its different profiles and develop resilience mechanisms and outcomes that are consistent
with it.
Although further elaborations are necessary, for instance, on the resilience-promoting
factors associated with novelty, a clear limitation of the empirical study of novelty and resil-
ience is that as a bias of human perception, novelty tends to seem more predictable and better
known in retrospect than when it actually occurs (Fischhoff, 1975; Harrison and March, 1984).
This could make the assessment of novelty profiles of adversity triggers very challenging in
practice, so much so that novelty could seem to be absent or minimal. However, this is also
an effect of the relationship between novelty and knowledge and evidence of their dynamics.

NOTE
1. The author wishes to thank Arran Caza and the two anonymous reviewers for their extraordinary
comments that helped develop this chapter. I am also extremely grateful to Loris Gaio for his gen-
erous suggestions and unflagging interest in our discussions on novelty, change and resilience.

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6. Negotiation resilience: a framework for
understanding how negotiators respond
to adversity
Lukas Neville, Brianna Barker Caza and Mara Olekalns

Negotiations are often punctuated by negative events, which can generate toxic emotions and
cognitions (Coleman, 2004). These negative events are points of divergence for negotiators.
At these junctures, negotiators can either dwell on the unexpected change, stalling or halting
their progress, or, they can persevere and adapt their negotiation strategies, ultimately recov-
ering and moving forward. The implications of a negative event often extend far beyond the
negotiation in which it occurred, as individuals’ actions and even their feelings about prior
negotiations spill over to contaminate subsequent ones (O’Connor et al., 2005).
Minimizing exposure to negative events is neither a realistic nor sustainable approach, espe-
cially in the negotiation context. Negative events cannot always be avoided or controlled, and
frequently cannot be predicted. It is therefore critical for negotiators to learn to bounce back
from negative events. Yet, despite its importance, negotiator resilience is understudied in the
negotiation literature (Spector, 2006).
To address this oversight, this chapter develops a theoretical understanding of negotiator
resilience, focusing on the individual negotiator as the unit of analysis. We begin by describ-
ing the sources of adversity in negotiations, arguing that negotiations are characterized by
expected, normal adversity. Next, we briefly outline common counterproductive responses
to adversity (exit and escalation of failing tactics). Then, we introduce negotiation resilience
as a process where persistence and flexibility are paired in the service of building a personal
growth narrative. We use the analogy of “switching gears” to describe this process. Fourth,
we identify some of the individual and situational factors that might trigger the process of
negotiation resilience. Finally, we close by describing important directions for future research.

ADVERSITY IN NEGOTIATION

Negotiation is ubiquitous in organizations; it occurs any time that people “cannot achieve their
goals without the cooperation of others” (Thompson et al., 2010, p. 492). This means that
negotiating is not limited to occasional formal, high-stakes contracts. Instead, most people
negotiate on a regular basis, whenever there are resources to be allocated, tasks to be divided,
or decisions to be made (Tasa et al., 2013). Despite its ubiquity, however, negotiation remains
an inherently challenging form of interaction.
There are a few reasons that negotiations are especially challenging forms of interpersonal
interactions. First, because we cannot know counterparts’ goals, intentions and behaviors
ahead of time, negotiations are inherently unpredictable. This unpredictability means that
despite their planning and strategizing, negotiators must adapt, improvise, and change their

70
 Negotiation resilience 71

strategies in the moment, responding dynamically to their counterpart’s moves (Balachandra

et al., 2005). The ability to improvise is especially important when negotiators experience
“turning points” (Druckman and Olekalns, 2013). As we explain below, these moments are
sensitive periods which may lead negotiators and their partners to doubt their ability to reach
a satisfactory (or any) agreement. Taken together, the unpredictability, need for improvising,
and emotional tumult of turning points create the perfect storm, within which perceptions
of adversity are planted and often grow. While much of the prior literature on resilience is
focused on single, extreme and unforeseen critical events – for instance, crises, life altering
events and organizational disasters – as forms of adversity (e.g., Bonanno, 2004; Powley,
2009; Williams et al., 2017), negotiations may involve less intense, more mundane forms of
adversity. Some rare negotiation episodes may be punctuated by extreme, acute adversity, but
the day-to-day experience of negotiating involves routine and normal forms of adversity. As
we describe below, facing adversity in negotiation is not an exception or aberration, but rather
the expected, modal experience.
Negotiation adversity stems from both interpersonal and intrapsychic factors (Caza and
Milton, 2012). Together, they lead to negotiation as a context in which adverse experiences are
expected, mundane and regular – that is, negotiation as a context of normal adversity.

Situational Sources of Negotiation Adversity

In negotiation, adversity is often produced by turning points, pivotal moments in the negotia-
tion that alter the course and flow of negotiation, and which lead to either positive or negative
“departures” from the negotiation’s initial trajectory (Druckman, 2001; Druckman et al.,
2009), presaging patterns of escalation and de-escalation (Druckman, 2001), respectively.
Negative turning points may create a perception that agreement may not be possible, or may
contribute to a challenging or contentious tone that threatens the process or relationships
between the negotiating parties.
The use of hard tactics such as threats (Sinaceur and Neale, 2005), deception (Olekalns and
Smith, 2007, 2009), time pressure (De Dreu, 2003), or impasse (Babcock and Loewenstein,
1997) can disrupt, compromise or halt negotiations. Behaviors like displaying anger (Wang
et al., 2012), interruptions, or out-of-keeping acts that break established patterns (McGinn et
al., 2004) may change the flow of the negotiation itself (Druckman et al., 2009) and may also
create moments of adversity.
Situational adversity may also include new information, time pressure, or highly constrained
bargaining zones (Lewis et al., 2018) which tend to challenge negotiators or undermine
planned strategies. Changes to the broader negotiation context during the course of a negoti-
ation, like a shift in constituency pressures (Aaldering and Ten Velden, 2018) can also create
turning points that create an experience of adversity. These kinds of shifts are commonplace
– in other words, they are expected and normal forms of negotiation adversity.

Intrapsychic Sources of Negotiation Adversity

Even in situations where these negative events do not ultimately occur, the apprehension
and anticipation of them can serve as their own source of negotiation adversity. Negotiations
are motivated-performance tasks: they combine unpredictability, uncontrollability and the
prospect of social evaluation by others (O’Connor et al., 2010). Even experienced negotiators
72 Research handbook on organizational resilience

report ambivalence about the prospect of bargaining, tempering their optimism with concerns
about the risks and unpredictability of negotiations (Wheeler, 2013). Before and during the
negotiation, individuals might experience concerns about saving face (White et al., 2004),
preserving relationships (Gelfand et al., 2006), or avoiding losses (Shalvi et al., 2013). Women
in particular might fear backlash (Amanatullah and Morris, 2010). In short, even when negoti-
ations go (objectively) well, the experience of planning, anticipating and setting expectations
in an uncertain interdependent context may alone be a source of negotiation adversity.

Self-Reinforcing Dynamics

These two broad categories (situational adversity and intrapsychic adversity) are not mutually
exclusive. On a more positive note, situational adversity may not be subjectively experienced
as adverse due to habituation. But on the other hand, there may be negative interactions
between situational and experienced adversity. Anxieties and concerns about one’s negotia-
tion efficacy can lead to actual adversity (as with inefficacious negotiators settling for worse
offers; Brett et al., 1996), while structural features of the negotiation can create intrapsychic
adversity (as with negative bargaining zones creating impasses, which then produce negative
emotions, self-doubts and anxiety; O’Connor and Arnold, 2001). Lastly, there may be cross-
overs between negotiators: one negotiator’s fears and concerns might trigger behaviors that
themselves serve as a source of adversity for their counterpart(s).
In summary, decades of research on negotiation have demonstrated that no matter how well
trained or prepared a negotiator is, he or she will face negotiation adversity. And how a negoti-
ator responds to adversity can be the difference between setting in motion an increasingly con-
tentious and unproductive course of action or a positive, constructive one. The ubiquity and
impact of negotiation adversity underscores the need for understanding how individuals are
able to adapt positively to this adversity. As a result, rather than thinking about how to prevent
adversity, it is critical to understand what determines negotiators’ responses to adversity, with
a particular focus on those dynamics that culminate in “adversity adaptation” (Thompson and
Ravlin, 2017, p. 144), or when a negotiator’s response to adversity is productive, protective
and adaptive. Before turning to these adaptive responses, we first consider two maladaptive
responses to negotiation adversity, which we describe in terms of “digging in” or walking
away.

MALADAPTIVE RESPONSES TO ADVERSITY

Digging In

One of the most common responses to adversity is to persist in or escalate a failing course
of action. We use the analogy of “digging in” to describe this set of behaviors. When people
feel threatened, they respond by restricting their information processing (Staw et al., 1981).
They may respond with rigidity, falling back on well-worn routines and fail to adapt and learn
(Griffin et al., 1995). Or, they may double down on their approach, ignoring cooperative
options (De Dreu and Nijstad, 2008). These dynamics can have destructive effects, including
an escalation of commitment to failing strategies (Bazerman and Neale, 1992), self-fulfilling
 Negotiation resilience 73

negative expectations (Rubin et al., 1990), and conflict escalation (Brett et al., 1998; Kim and
Smith, 1993; Pruitt, 2005).
One of us recalls a student who, after a challenging negotiation in which the parties became
caught in a contentious, distributive spiral, reflected afterwards that the negotiation would
have gone better if only he had been even tougher and more intransigent! In short, challenges
in negotiation can blind us to opportunities and find us digging ourselves deeper into failing
strategies.

Walking Away

A second common response to adversity in negotiation is simply to walk away, exiting the
negotiation prematurely, or shying away from future negotiations. Brooks and Schweitzer
(2011) show that negotiators often (mis)manage their anxiety at the table by exiting negoti-
ations earlier, setting more easily-met (and quickly-met) goals, and by responding faster to
their counterparts’ first offers. They might seek to pursue outside options instead, finding other
negotiation partners (Giebels et al., 2003; 2000). Or, negotiators may conclude their present
bargaining session but then resist initiating negotiations in the future (Volkema, 2009). These
approaches are forms of avoidance coping (Moos and Schaefer, 1993), where the response
to a negative experience is to withdraw in ways that protect individuals from having to deal
directly with a stressor.
In negotiations, fleeing the table is often no more adaptive than digging in and escalating
a fight. Walking away from the table or committing to a destructive course of action at the
table serves only to destroy value, worsen individual and shared outcomes, and increase rela-
tional tension.

THE UNFOLDING PROCESS OF RESILIENCE IN NEGOTIATIONS

Adversity offers negotiators the opportunity to reconsider issues, options and strategies. These
adaptations may halt or reverse patterns of negative reciprocity, and provide the basis for
a renewed and improved relationship between negotiators. In this way, an adverse event can
serve as a positive interruption and an opportunity to engage in sensemaking, reflection and
re-strategizing (Caza and Olekalns, 2014). Next, we describe how negotiation resilience is
characterized by both persistence and flexibility, and motivated by the desire to craft a growth
narrative.

Defining Negotiator Resilience

We define negotiator resilience as being the process through which an individual uses experi-
ences of negotiation adversity as an opportunity to create a new, more positive trajectory for
both the negotiation and the negotiators involved. In this conceptualization, we emphasize the
important role of adversity as a catalyst for adaptation – to manifest resilience, negotiators
need to not ignore their adverse experience, but instead to confront, adapt and seek meaning
from it.
This definition, consistent with recent developments in the study of resilience at work (Caza
and Milton, 2012; Olekalns et al., 2020; Williams et al., 2017), which focuses on resilience as
74 Research handbook on organizational resilience

a process, with behaviors that characterize the unfolding of that process, and underlying psy-
chological and relational factors that drive the process. In the section that follows, we examine
these mechanisms in detail, describing the core behavioral expression of resilience, as well as
the psychological and contextual underpinnings of this positive and adaptive post-adversity
trajectory. We describe negotiator resilience as a process that unfolds at the level of the indi-
vidual (though we consider the dyad and the negotiation episode as possible units of analysis
for future research in the discussion).
We use the analogy of “switching gears” to describe how negotiators adapt to negotiation
adversity by (1) continuing to move forward, persisting with the negotiation despite fear and
uncertainty, while (2) adjusting flexibly in strategy and tactics, remaining open and flexible to
new information and opportunities. Chen and Miller (2012) describe this pairing of adaptive
strategies as a “shift and persist” model of responses to adversity. We suggest that persistence
and flexibility are used to frame the experience of adversity in terms of a broader growth
narrative.

Persistence
Malhotra and Bazerman (2007, p. 78) urge negotiators to “stay at the table […] stick around,
and investigate further,” even after a deal appears to have been lost. They share the example of
a negotiator who made follow-up calls to a client after losing a deal, simply looking to better
understand their choice. This persistence led to a conversation that reversed the lost sale.
Persistence in negotiation often is productive. At the minimum, persisting rather than
walking away will usually lead to some additional information sharing, shedding light on
each party’s position. However, some forms of persistence are counterproductive: this is at the
heart of the “digging in” response described earlier, where negotiators persist only in repeating
failing behaviors (for instance, persisting in a set of arguments that does not move the dyad
toward settlement; Hyder et al., 2000). But good-faith persistence – staying at the table and
making genuine efforts to move toward agreement – can be transformative in negotiation.
Persistence has been shown to drive performance in negotiation (Bowles and Flynn, 2010) and
greater parity in negotiator satisfaction (Patton and Balakrishnan, 2010).

Flexibility
While it is a necessary starting point, simply staying at the table is seldom enough to overcome
negotiation adversity. A second feature of negotiator resilience is a form of positive adapta-
tion: the ability to remain adaptable and flexible, shifting strategies and trying new approaches
in response to adverse situations. Spector (2006) argues that resilient bargainers are capable of
using creativity, change and flexibility to draw out opportunities from moments of deadlock,
turning impasses at the table into ripe moments for conflict resolution.
As an example of negotiation flexibility, consider the case of the negotiations around
an airport opening during the Bosnia-Herzegovina civil war of the 1990s (McRae, 2002).
A carefully-negotiated deal to hand over an airport to peacekeepers’ control came to a dead-
lock, though, as soon as the written terms were presented. The terms were to be signed by an
entity the government refused to acknowledge. The deadlock was seemingly irreconcilable,
as each side was unable to accept compromise. The UN negotiator, though, exhibited the
kind of creativity and flexibility we associate with negotiator resilience: he improvised a new
approach, suggesting two agreements instead of one, different only in the titles on the signa-
ture lines, each struck between one of the parties and the peacekeepers (McRae, 2002). The
 Negotiation resilience 75

peacekeeper did not reframe the issues at hand, but rather reframed the cognitive representa-
tion of the relationships between the negotiating parties (Dewulf et al., 2009). The frame shift
involved thinking of the interaction as two negotiations between each individual belligerent
party and the peacekeepers, rather than one triadic negotiation between all the parties.
Importantly, we think of persistence and flexibility as jointly necessary to negotiator
resilience. Without staying at the table, negotiators lack the time to explore options. But con-
versely, without a flexible, adaptable mindset, more time spent at the table may simply lead to
escalating conflict.

Growth Narratives

We have focused on flexibility and persistence as key elements of the behavioral manifestation
of negotiator resilience. These approaches can be purely instrumental: negotiators persist and
adjust to get better economic outcomes when negotiating. But we think there are underlying
psychological motives that may drive the process. In particular, the desire to craft a positive
growth narrative about oneself as a negotiator may motivate individuals to engage in both
persistence and flexibility in order to live out this desired story arc within the context of
a negotiation.
Research suggests that an important marker of psychological resilience is how people tell
their own stories (Pals and McAdams, 2004; Tedeschi and Calhoun, 2004), because these
stories represent their internal sensemaking of the events and their responses to these events
(Vough and Caza, 2017). Resilient narratives are reflexive (Neimeyer et al., 2001), and
focus on growth (Bauer and Park, 2010). Growth in one’s personal narrative acknowledges
adversity, rather than discounting or repressing it (McAdams, 2008), and uses the adversity as
a resource for learning (Bauer and Park, 2010; Sonenshein et al., 2013).
When our narratives about experiences of negotiation adversity are focused on growth and
development, the nature of our negotiation trajectory is likely to tilt upward as a result because
these narratives influence our interpretation and experience of future adversities. The stories
we tell about our past have long-term implications for how individuals think about our current
potential (Maitlis, 2009). Stories of growth from past negotiation adversity shape how we see
ourselves as negotiators, which in turn shapes our reactions to future challenges.
Some prior negotiation research has examined resilience as a trait, that is, an individual dif-
ference rather than as the process and set of behaviours that we describe here. Nonetheless, we
see the role of narratives even in trait resilience: the resilient negotiator is described as being
motivated to self-improve, and likely to ascribe meaning to adversity (Nelson et al., 2016).
Negotiators who build growth narratives for themselves about persistence and flexibility in
the face of setbacks are not downplaying or minimizing the experience of adversity, but rather
using it to create a positive identity.
Growth narratives also provide a bridge between individual negotiation episodes, allowing
individuals to see the experience with a longer-term perspective. A setback or defeat in one
negotiation, for instance, can serve as a central part of a redemption story, or be cast as a nec-
essary learning moment. In these narratives, a challenging or adverse negotiation is a part of
a broader story about development, improvement, or maturation as a negotiator: dealing with
a tough counterpart, for instance, might provoke a resilient negotiator to develop or discover
their capacity to remain resolute and resist pressure.
76 Research handbook on organizational resilience

This psychology of growth-based story-telling can support the flexibility and persistence
described earlier. We might stay at the table longer or experiment with different approaches,
because we frame the negotiation as an opportunity to learn and develop rather than merely an
attempt to pursue a single negotiated outcome.

ENABLING CONDITIONS FOR NEGOTIATION RESILIENCE

We have described what negotiator resilience looks like: a process characterized by persistent
yet flexible responding to either psychological or situational adversity. We have argued that
this process is triggered in part by negotiators’ psychological tendency towards the develop-
ment of a growth narrative to make positive sense of adversity. Yet while this psychological
tendency may predispose individuals towards the creation of a growth story, there are also
many complicating factors that suppress such a narrative. First, the realization of negotiator
resilience is effortful. The maladaptive strategies we described earlier (walking away and
digging in) are likely to be less cognitively effortful. Further, the unpredictability of the
negotiation context will often trigger defensive interpersonal responses that can throw the
negotiation into a tit-for-tat downward spiral (Olekalns et al., 2020).
It is therefore critical to understand what leads negotiators to respond resiliently to adver-
sity. Certainly, some negotiators may be simply more prone to resilience as an individual
difference (i.e., trait negotiation resilience; Nelson et al., 2016). However, we argue that there
are cognitive processes and situational factors that can promote the emergence of resilience
processes in negotiation. We divide these “resilience foundations” (Olekalns et al., 2020)
into three categories: (1) factors that make the pursuit of growth narratives more salient; (2)
variables that reduce the perceived cost or increase the perceived benefit of persistence; (3)
characteristics that enable flexible thinking.

Role Identity Leads to the Pursuit of Growth Narratives

Individuals’ self-definition of themselves as a negotiator may influence their need to create

a growth narrative. The difference between negotiating and being a negotiator is that the
option of exit and walking away is more costly when “being a negotiator” is central to one’s
identity. When something is seen as a central part of our identity, we will feel committed to
creating and maintaining a positive view of ourselves in that identity (Dutton et al., 2010).
Those who see negotiating as a central part of their identity therefore are likely to look more
carefully for opportunities to maintain the positive value of their negotiator identity. They do
so by seeking out creative or novel solutions to adversity so that they can maintain a positive
view of themselves in the context of a valued identity. Similarly, the centrality of a negotiator
identity may serve to promote the creation and maintenance of growth stories. When one is
a negotiator, rather than someone who merely happens to negotiate, there is a motivation to
grow and improve in order to foster a positive identity (Vough and Caza, 2017).
It is important, however, that the content of this identity is not defined by simply arriving at
a deal every time. Having a narrow view of oneself as a negotiator who always gets the deal
could actually be a barrier to resilience. For example, if negotiation is costly (e.g., transaction
costs, time, etc.), and impasse certain, changing one’s goals or walking away may be an impor-
tant protective mechanism (Dunne et al., 2011). As a result, it is critical that the content of
 Negotiation resilience 77

one’s role identification is broad enough to allow for a variety of different negotiator behaviors
to be included as “in-role.”

Factors Influencing the Costs and Benefits of Persistence

Relational history and perceived relational future

Negotiators who recount a significant relational history or who perceive a long relational future
with their partners are more likely to see the benefit of investing time and effort into cultivating
positive adaption when they face adversity. Negotiators will persist in the negotiations, and
increase the flexibility of their responses, in order to preserve investments made in building
a relationship with their negotiation counterparts. Impasse is relationally costly. The greater
our investment in that relationship – for instance, when we have worked to build rapport and
shared bonds – the greater our motive to respond resiliently. On the flipside, individuals who
are forward-looking and who perceive a lengthy relational future (or think of subsequent
negotiations as nearer in the future; cf. Henderson et al., 2006) with their negotiation partners
will also be more motivated to persist even when they face adversity.

Outcome expectations
Even if we lack the relational history or relational future to keep us at the table, research sug-
gests that expectancies can be powerful motivators of persistence. Liberman et al. (2010) had
negotiators engage in challenging bargaining with outgroup members. When they manipulated
positive expectations, it motivated persistence and flexibility, allowing negotiators to break
through deadlock. These positive expectations can be built at the level of negotiating dyads
by routines that create a sense of possibility, including expressions of hope (Cohen-Chen et
al., 2017), humor (Forester, 2004), and third party interventions (Goldberg and Shaw, 2007).

Self-efficacy
The belief in one’s competence as a negotiator is protective against the impulse to withdraw
or concede early. If we think of ourselves as highly capable, we are less likely to spend the
negotiation searching for an exit. Brett and colleagues show that self-efficacy can help miti-
gate the challenges that come from a lack of alternatives in a negotiation (Brett et al., 1996).
But research on self-efficacy in negotiation suggests that it can also be protective against the
“digging in” problem. O’Connor and Arnold (2001) show that self-efficacy helps to insulate
negotiators against distributive spirals (i.e., an escalating and self-reinforcing pattern of low
information sharing and low cooperation). Self-efficacy matters most when it is about overall
negotiation ability (rather than general self-efficacy or self-efficacy at the level of a single
negotiation; Miles and Maurer, 2012).

Factors Increasing Negotiators’ Capacity for Flexibility

Perspective-taking
We think that resilience depends on empathy’s cognitive cousin: perspective-taking.
Perspective-taking is the ability to understand and anticipate the perspectives, opinions, reac-
tions and preferences of others (Galinsky et al., 2008). Research shows that perspective-taking
(but not empathy) serves to promote the discovery of hidden tradeoffs or options (Galinsky
et al., 2008). Perspective-taking allows for deeper understanding of a counterpart’s needs
78 Research handbook on organizational resilience

and constraints, which can inform the search for solutions. We think of perspective-taking as
a resource that enables flexibility.

Incremental beliefs
Incremental beliefs drive flexibility, allowing negotiators to consider other possible courses of
actions and outcomes (Wong et al., 2012). This provides the cognitive foundation for broad,
flexible repertoires of action. Incremental beliefs about one’s counterpart are similarly central
to persistence: Haselhuhn et al. (2010), for example, show that those with incremental beliefs
more readily recover from trust breaches, since they are more likely to see their partner’s
behavior as changeable between situations instead of fixed by an unchangeable moral char-
acter. Seeing negotiation behavior (one’s own and others’) as malleable rather than fixed can
help to promote flexibility.

DYNAMIC OUTCOMES OF NEGOTIATOR RESILIENCE

Next, we consider what outcomes might occur when negotiators adaptively “switch gears.”
Our view is that processes of negotiator resilience contribute to virtuous cycles, strengthening
outcomes both within and across negotiation episodes. We describe these as consequences of
resilience, but not part of the negotiation resilience construct itself.

Outcomes Within Negotiations

Objective value
The simplest likely outcome of resilience may be high-quality deals. Those who stay at the
table and respond with flexibility are more likely to discover previously hidden options or
solutions. However, we are careful to note that not all resilient negotiators will (or should)
settle, and that agreement alone is not necessarily a marker of resilience. Negotiators are often
vulnerable to a “getting to yes bias,” or impasse aversion, and will acquiesce to settlements
worse than their alternatives (Tuncel et al., 2016). We think of growth narratives as protective
against this possibility: if we think of the benefits of a negotiation beyond the simple material
value of a deal (for instance, as a learning experience, a chance to build or strengthen relation-
ships, or a starting point for personal improvement), the value of the negotiation is more easily
separable from the outcome. In short, we think that negotiator resilience will lead to both more
and fewer settlements: more deals overall, but fewer deals produced by agreement bias.

Subjective value
Recent work has focused on subjective value as a marker of “bouncing back” from adversity.
Lewis and colleagues (2018), for instance, draw on the subjective value framework (Curhan
et al., 2006), focusing on negotiators’ feelings about the process, relationship, instrumental
outcome, and about themselves as negotiators. Their findings suggest that resilient negotia-
tors are not necessarily Pollyannas, simply glossing over a negative experience. They found
no difference in how negotiators appraised the value of the negotiated deal itself. Instead,
resilient negotiators reported higher subjective relationship and process satisfaction. We think
of finding sources of value (beyond the deal) in difficult negotiations as a consequence of
resilience.
 Negotiation resilience 79

Outcomes Across Negotiations

Initiation
One of the guiding concerns that shapes people’s willingness to initiate a negotiation is
a concern about protecting their image and “face” (Miles, 2010). We think of resilience, and
in particular the development of growth narratives, as a powerful force in driving people to
negotiate, even after experiencing adversity. Initiating a negotiation provides the opportunity
to enact the narrative of growth across negotiations. And, in addition, a growth-oriented
approach (in which negotiations provide the basis for personal development) reduces the per-
ceived risks of face loss from initiating negotiations. Resilient negotiators anticipate challenge,
conceive of it as a resource for learning and improvement, and actively seek it out by initiating
negotiations.
As an example, Volkema and Kapoutsis’ (2016) Restaurant Negotiation asks students to
initiate an uncomfortable negotiation about ordering off-menu at a restaurant. They report
students linking the experienced challenge of the exercise with their willingness to negotiate
in other settings. The process of building a growth narrative as a negotiator naturally lends
itself to initiating future negotiations. Adverse negotiations begin a story; initiation provides
the opportunity for negotiators to write a continuation of that story.

Strengthened efficacy
Earlier, we considered how negotiation self-efficacy (O’Connor and Arnold, 2001) might
encourage resilient negotiation. However, we can equally easily see self-efficacy as an
outcome of resilience. The persistence, flexibility and growth narratives that mark resilience
both benefit from self-efficacy and contribute to it, in a positive feedback loop. Those who
maintain flexibility and persist, especially in the service of building a growth narrative, are
likely to emerge with a greater sense of agency and ability from having experienced adversity.

FUTURE DIRECTIONS

We see the study of negotiator resilience as a ripe area for theoretical and empirical work. We
know very little about the content of negotiators’ growth narratives, for instance, despite the
centrality of the idea to our conception of resilience. The predictors and outcomes we describe,
including the potential for virtuous cycles and positive feedback loops, merit empirical testing.
Our theory is also largely cognitive: it focuses on perceptions, chosen strategies and tactics,
and the cognitive work of crafting narratives. However, negotiation is inherently affective, and
the experience of setbacks and adversity can be emotional. We choose this approach because
we know that emotion can be cognitively controlled (Ochsner and Gross, 2005), and a cogni-
tive approach brings us closer to workable interventions and training for negotiators. Future
work, however, may want to consider these resilience processes with greater consideration to
the affective processes involved (emotion, emotion regulation, etc.).
In the section that follows, we identify two opportunities arising from this integration of
resilience and negotiation. The first is to emphasize the suitability of negotiation as a context
for studying everyday adversity and resilience. The second is to consider how resilience can
be built, especially among those who lack self-efficacy, face confrontational counterparts, or
struggle with the social emotions we describe as predictive of resilience.
80 Research handbook on organizational resilience

Negotiation as a Laboratory for Resilience Research

As we have argued, negotiation provides a context where adversity is expected, routine and
even unavoidable. It offers a way of studying the everyday forms of adversity that may be less
well represented in the resilience literature, focused on the subjective experience of adversity
rather than the externally observable moment of crisis. Most negotiations lack the extremity of
crises, emergencies and disasters, making it an excellent context to study “normal adversity”
and resilience in quotidian life. We position this chapter as a contribution to negotiation resil-
ience, but many of the dynamics described here could also be applied to responses to adversity
in other mundane social contexts.
Negotiation researchers have developed a well-honed experimental paradigm with exercises,
manipulations and measures that allow for generalizable insights from student negotiators in
the laboratory (Buelens et al., 2008; Herbst and Schwarz, 2011), which suggests a productive
path forward for incrementally building and refining empirical insights into resilience.
One specific way that experimental negotiation research can provide a more nuanced
understanding of the process of resilience in organizations is by shedding light on dyadic
resilience processes. To do so, research will need to move beyond an understanding of nego-
tiator resilience and toward a theory of negotiation resilience as jointly created by negotiators
in a dyad or group. We have highlighted the importance of relationships, but a range of other
collective resilience-promoting routines are possible. Vogus and Sutcliffe (2007), for instance,
considering organizational resilience, argue that resilient collectives “treat success lightly,”
anticipating the unexpected and assuming that there are unseen risks always at play. This
raises concerns about rapport alone: one can easily imagine negotiators reaching agreement
too easily, saying yes where they ought to say no (Wheeler, 1997). So, future work needs to
examine how negotiating dyads and groups blend the rapport that motivates resilience with the
vigilance and adaptability that comes from expecting setbacks and anticipating the need for
change and flexibility. As a future direction, this approach may reveal the potential for positive
crossovers in negotiator resilience. The experience of negotiating with a resilient partner may
strengthen one’s own resilience.

Interventions and Training to Build Negotiation Resilience

What remains unanswered is how to build the capacity for resilience where it does not
naturally occur. We have identified how negotiators’ traits or strong relationships between
negotiators might enhance resilience, but this is an unsatisfying conclusion: we also need to
study how resilience is created in situations where it is least likely (e.g., among inefficacious
negotiators and in confrontational dyads).
One intervention approach might consider post-negotiation reflection, going beyond previ-
ous work on learning and knowledge transfer (Bereby-Meyer et al., 2010; Loewenstein et al.,
2003) to consider how negotiators cope with the psychological cost of earlier adverse nego-
tiations. Cognitive reframing suggests that post-negotiation reappraisals may be one avenue
through which resilience can be promoted (Helgeson et al., 2006). Benefit-finding is a process
by which negotiators are encouraged to actively revisit and interrogate their negotiation expe-
rience in order to draw out growth, meaning and positive consequences from their moments
of adversity. One study (Lewis et al., 2018) shows that this approach may promote subjective
value from negotiation. Future research should also explore other resilience-building inter-
 Negotiation resilience 81

ventions in negotiations, including reflection as a means of bolstering individual and dyadic

resilience in negotiations.

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 PART III

RESILIENCE PROCESSES AND

DYNAMICS
7. Emotion regulation as a process to foster
resilience
Sophie A. Kay and Kelsey L. Merlo

Most adults experience at least one potentially traumatic event in their lifetime. In spite of
this, many individuals are able to bounce back and not only overcome their unfortunate expe-
rience, but flourish in the face of adversity. This ability of individuals to adapt successfully
in response to adverse events has led to a robust area of research exploring capacities for and
demonstration of resilience over time (for a review see Britt et al., 2016). Less understood,
however, are the mechanisms that enable individuals to be resilient. Taking a process view,
we argue that the successful regulation of affective experiences is an important yet often over-
looked component of demonstrating resilience.
While the specific conceptualization of resilience has been the topic of considerable debate,
prevailing definitions emphasize positive adaptation in response to significant adversity (Britt
et al., 2016). Adverse events trigger emotional reactions at different levels. For example, after
a tragedy, media outlets are flooded with pictures depicting individuals and communities expe-
riencing intense grief. Those who lived through an adverse event know how the accompanying
emotions can weigh a person down. We argue that managing these emotions is a critical com-
ponent of demonstrating resilience. In this chapter, we apply an affective lens to the process of
resilience over time with an emphasis on emotion regulation (see Kay, 2016).
To capture the transient and event-based nature of affective experiences from adverse
events, we frame our discussion in the context of emotion episodes (Russell and Barrett,
1999). Next, we address how various emotion regulation strategies (e.g., Gross, 1998;
Grandey, 2000) influence the duration and reactivation of emotion episodes as a mechanism
of resilience. Finally, we discuss the social context of emotion regulation and resilience within
organizations, emphasizing the influence of social support and social sharing of emotions for
promoting resilience in employees and communities more broadly.

EMOTIONAL EXPERIENCE
“It was the most devastating experience I ever had. When I saw the roof collapsing, I tried
warning them; but when I found out, it was too late. I have witnessed my family dying. It
was the most terrible thing to watch.” Douglas deSilvey, Hurricane Katrina Survivor (Nicole,
2018).
A one-time catastrophe, such as a tornado, or a chronic stressor, like a degrading work
environment, each produce lasting emotional reactions that extend well beyond the instigat-
ing event. Emotions following a traumatic event may plague a person for weeks, months or
years, after the event is long over. These affective states can vary dramatically over time and
influence work and non-work related attitudes and behaviors (Judge et al., 2006; Weiss and
Cropanzano, 1996). Emotions in response to significant adverse events can best be understood

86
 Resilience and emotion regulation 87

as emotion episodes that emerge in response to the event and dissipate over time (Russell and
Barrett, 1999). We suggest the psychological construction of an emotion episode is important
to the discussion of resilience.
Emotion episodes are “pop up” affective experiences that emerge in response to some
antecedent event (Russell and Barrett, 1999). This in contrast to core affect, which describes
the always present dimensions of valence and arousal that underlie all affective experiences.
For example, seeing a tornado on the horizon may act as an antecedent event that prompts the
emergence of an emotion episode. Prior to seeing the tornado, a person is not in an emotion
episode but is characterized by levels of core affect (e.g., neutral). After seeing the looming
tornado, core affect swings to negatively valenced and highly arousing. The episode is psy-
chologically constructed, meaning that a host of cognitive, affective and physiological changes
occur that create the unique experience of the emotion episode. The subject appraises the
tornado as an immediate threat as their heart rate increases, their palms become sweaty, and
they feel an overwhelming urge to run away. All of these pieces come together to create an
emotion episode that is interpreted as fear, but extends far beyond the underlying dimensions
of negative affect and high arousal.
This psychological construction of an emotion episode is important to the discussion of
resilience in three significant ways. First, this emphasizes the role of an antecedent event
in prompting an emotion episode. For the purposes of this chapter, we focus on significant
adverse events. These events are not trivial, unlike an annoyance such as a hangnail, but are
events that pose a credible threat to healthy human functioning. Adverse events can range from
traumatic life events, such as a natural disaster, death of a family member, or an assault, to
chronic stressors, such as sexual harassment, discrimination, or an abusive work environment.
While these events differ in terms of their intensity, frequency, duration and predictability
(Britt et al., 2016), they are all likely to cause a negative emotion episode.
Second, this psychological construction emphasizes the unique interpretable stance indi-
viduals develop related to instigating events. Individuals draw from their own background
and cultural scripts to construct an emotion episode, so that the same event may prompt vastly
different emotion episodes (or no emotion episode at all) in different people or in the same
person at different times. A tornado may be experienced as either terrifying or thrilling. Sexist
behavior may be infuriating or normal. Adversity does not lead to the same emotional reaction;
hence we do not define adverse events in terms of their severity. Instead, we focus on the
severity of the emotional reaction in response to adverse events as a mechanism for resilience.
Third and finally, this approach emphasizes the transience of emotion episodes. Emotion
episodes emerge and dissipate over time. For example, after seeing a tornado I may experi-
ence an emotion episode of fear, but I am not afraid for the rest of my life. At some point, the
emotion fades. This management of an emotion episode in response to an adverse event is
an important component of resilience. The transient nature of an emotion episode highlights
the need for language to describe and characterize these changes. To aid our discussion of
emotion episodes, emotion regulation, and resilience, we draw from language used to assess
event-related potentials (ERPs) in imaging research.
The language used to characterize ERPs in imaging research is well-suited to describing
emotion episodes since they are conceptually similar in several ways. First, ERPs and emotion
episodes both emerge in response to some antecedent event (e.g., presentation of a stimulus for
ERPs, adverse events for emotion episodes). Both represent a deviation from some baseline
(e.g., underlying brain activity for ERPs, general core affect for an emotion episode). Most
88 Research handbook on organizational resilience

importantly, both can be characterized by the degree of the deviation from this baseline. It is
this degree of deviation, and the language used to describe it, that provides a useful grounding
to discuss the emergence and dissipation of an emotion episode across time (see Figure 7.1).

Figure 7.1 Depiction of an emotion episode unfolding after an adverse event

There are several assumptions underlying our discussion of the emergence and dissipation
of an emotion episode. First, we assume there is some underlying tipping point where an
emotion episode emerges. The processes leading to the emergence of emotions have been of
interest to researchers for decades (e.g., Lazarus, 1966) and are still hotly debated. For the
purposes of this chapter, we simply assume that, at some tipping point, an emotion episode
is psychologically constructed and emerges from underlying core affect. Second, we assume
a similar threshold for the end of an emotion episode, although we recognize that the slow
dissipation of an emotion episode is unlikely to be as clear cut as a threshold implies. Finally,
where this tipping point occurs may vary. Some individuals may have a much higher threshold
for reaching an emotional episode, while others may more readily enter emotional episodes in
response to events.
For purposes of discussion, we use an earthquake as an example of an adverse event to map
out the phenomenology of an emotion episode. Following this natural disaster, individuals
psychologically construct their emotion episode; they appraise the antecedent event, their
core affect changes, and a physiological response begins to manifest as a personally identified
emotion episode (e.g., fear, shock, despair, anger, etc.). The intensity of this emotional episode
is captured by its amplitude measured from the theoretical tipping point. More intense emotion
episodes have a larger amplitude, that is, the distance from the tipping point is larger. The
rapidity of its onset can be captured by its onset latency or how quickly the emotion episode
emerges after the instigating event. Emotion episodes that occur very quickly after the instigat-
ing event have a shorter onset latency compared to emotion episodes that emerge more slowly.
At some point, an emotion episode must eventually end. The rapidity with which an
emotion episode ends can be captured by its offset latency or how quickly the emotion episode
dissipates. Emotion episodes that last longer have a larger offset latency compared to brief
emotion episodes. While negative emotion episodes can, at times, be beneficial by directing
 Resilience and emotion regulation 89

attention (Eastwood et al., 2001; Fredrickson, 2001) and enhancing memory (Kensinger,
2007), they are generally considered to be disadvantageous. Intense negative emotions are
related to decreased rationality and self-control (Pham, 2007), decreased problem-solving
(Lyubomirsky and Nolen-Hoeksema, 1995), and degraded decision-making (Loewenstein and
Lerner, 2003). Beyond these consequences, we suggest resilient people more quickly leave an
emotion episode. For example, after a severe earthquake, individuals will likely experience an
emotion episode. Those who move past emotions demonstrate resilience, while an individual
with a longer offset latency will be “stuck” in the emotion episode and display less resilience.
The relationship between affect and resilience is not confined to a single emotion episode.
Instead, the relationships between experienced affect, emotion regulation and resilience are
likely to unfold across extended periods of time as emotion episodes are instigated, experi-
enced, regulated, ended and then reactivated. This reactivation of an emotion episode can
occur over subsequent weeks, months, and, in severe cases, years after an initial adverse event.
This can be prompted by a variety of mechanisms. The length of time between reactivated
emotion episodes is an important component of demonstrating resilience. For example, indi-
viduals who frequently experience negative emotion episodes after an earthquake may become
crippled by the adverse event and fail to exhibit resilience (see Figure 7.2).

Figure 7.2 Depiction of a reactivated emotion episode from a subsequent adverse event

Onset and offset latencies of reactivated emotion episodes are an important component of
individuals demonstrating resilience. Just as the original emotion episode emerges and dissi-
pates over time, subsequent emotion episodes follow similar patterns. The rate of emergence
and dissipation, in addition to how frequently these subsequent emotion episodes occur,
informs how individuals function long after the original adverse event and is thus an important
component of resilience.
Of course, individuals do not passively experience their emotions, but actively work to
manage and regulate various aspects of their affective experience. In the following section, we
introduce emotion regulation (Gross, 1998) and emotional labor (Grandey, 2000) frameworks
for understanding how individuals manage the expression and experience of affect.
90 Research handbook on organizational resilience

RESILIENCE AND EMOTION REGULATION

“Anyone dealing with a tragedy needs to look for something positive in it […] That will
overcome any negative feelings you have about it.” John Michael Bradford, Hurricane Katrina
Survivor (Joseph, 2015).
While few explicitly identify the connection between emotion regulation and resilience,
one notable exception is Troy and Mauss (2011). In their theoretical chapter, they argue that
emotion regulation ability is critical to resilience, suggesting that emotion regulation ability
is a moderator of the relationship between stressful events and adaptive emotional responses.
They propose that those with high internal emotion regulation ability (i.e., ability to use
attentional control and cognitive reappraisal strategies) are more likely to have adaptive emo-
tional responses and display resilience after adversity, compared with those with low emotion
regulation ability.
While this accords with our thinking, Troy and Mauss (2011) focus on one’s ability to
regulate emotion. Emotion regulation ability refers to the individual difference of one’s use
of emotion regulation strategies. Although we agree that one’s capacity to successfully alter
one’s emotional state is related to resilience, this view implies limitations for understanding
how to foster resilience. Specifically, this model suggests emotion regulation ability is an
antecedent to resilience. Individual differences, including abilities, are considered relatively
stable and difficult to change. If we study emotion regulation ability as a moderator that exists
before the experience of adversity, this suggests that those low in this ability are predetermined
to be less likely to demonstrate resilience. This would be a glum outlook for learning how to
foster resilience.
Instead, we propose that emotion regulation is an important mechanism to explain how
individuals experience a deeply stressful event but bounce back over time. More precisely, we
suggest that emotion regulation is an adaptive process for managing the detrimental emotional
experiences associated with adverse events. Individuals who are better able to regulate aspects
of their emotional experience will be more likely to exhibit resilience (see Figure 7.3). In the
following sections, we will discuss how emotion regulation can influence (a) the end of a nega-
tive emotion episode; (b) the reactivation of a negative emotion episode; and (c) the facilitation
of positive affect as mechanisms of resilience.

Figure 7.3 Mechanisms of emotional experience and emotion regulation in the process
of adversity leading to resilience over time
 Resilience and emotion regulation 91

Processes of Emotion Regulation and Emotional Labor

Although it is established that emotion regulation is a mechanism to handle stress, few

researchers directly connect resilience and emotion regulation (Kay, 2016). This is an over-
sight: how individuals manage their affective reactions in response to adverse events is an
important mechanism of resilience. The regulation of affective experience has been of interest
to researchers for decades and is dominated by the two related yet distinct theoretical models
of emotion regulation (Gross, 1998) and emotional labor (Grandey, 2000). In this section, we
examine these frameworks as they relate to resilience.
Emotion regulation research is largely based on Gross’s (1998) process model of emotion
regulation. The process model of emotion regulation organizes emotion regulation strategies
by temporal points in the emotion-generation process. Emotions unfold in the following order:
situation, attention, appraisal, and response. For example, imagine talking to an irritated
co-worker. One first faces the co-worker (situation), which may elicit one’s own negative feel-
ings. This emotion comes into awareness (attention), is evaluated (appraisal), and then leads
to an outward expression based on one’s emotion state (response). Based on the unfolding of
emotion over time, Gross (1998) proposes five families of strategies that can be employed at
different points: situation selection, situation modification, attentional deployment, cognitive
change, and response modulation. The first four strategies of situation selection, situation
modification, attentional deployment, and cognitive change are considered antecedent-focused
because they are used before an emotion fully emerges (Mallory and Rupp, 2016). Meanwhile,
response modulation regulation strategies are response-focused because they occur after the
emotion has completely emerged. Although these strategies are conceptually distinct, individ-
uals may utilize multiple strategies in a single encounter.
A related but slightly different theoretical approach is emotional labor, which can be viewed
as emotion regulation in the workplace (Grandey, 2000). The process of emotional labor
begins with display rules, formally defined as the organizational expectations of the emotions
that should or should not be displayed as part of one’s work role (Diefendorff and Greguras,
2009). Display rules necessitate emotion regulation when individuals feel emotions that are
incongruent with expectations for expression. Emotional labor research has primarily focused
on two main regulation strategies: surface acting and deep acting. Surface acting refers to
putting on an emotional mask, such as smiling despite what one is feeling and suppressing
true emotions. Deep acting refers to trying to genuinely feel the emotions one is express-
ing (Grandey, 2000). There is some conceptual overlap between Gross’s process model of
emotion regulation and emotional labor strategies; Grandey (2000) indicated imperfect but
notable similarities between strategies in Gross’s model with deep and surface acting (Mallory
and Rupp, 2016). Specifically, surface acting is similar to response modulation strategies,
while deep acting is similar to antecedent-focused strategies. With five families of strategies
rather than two, Gross’s model offers a more comprehensive taxonomy of emotional regula-
tion. Therefore, in this chapter, we focus on Gross’s (1998) process model to explain emotion
regulation in relation to resilience but integrate findings from emotional labor.
The five families of emotion regulation strategies from Gross’s (1998) model can be
sorted into three categories that target the different aspects of the emotional experience: the
external situation by changing the environment, the internal situation of how one is thinking
of the situation, or the outward response of emotional expression (Mallory and Rupp, 2016).
External regulation strategies focus on altering the physical environment. Situation selection
92 Research handbook on organizational resilience

refers to taking actions that affect the likelihood of being in a situation that will give rise to
a desirable or undesirable emotion – for example, avoiding an unpleasant co-worker. Situation
modification refers to actions that directly alter a situation in order to change its emotional
impact – for example, taking a break from a stressful meeting. External situation strategies can
be especially useful because they reduce the experience of negative emotion, either through
likelihood or duration.
When individuals are unable to avoid an emotional situation, internal regulation strategies
are useful. These strategies focus on altering one’s internal state to prevent an emotion from
fully emerging. When using attentional deployment, people selectively direct attention in
order to alter their emotional experience. One technique of attentional deployment is distrac-
tion, defined as shifting attention towards a particular aspect of the situation or away from the
situation. The other internal strategy of cognitive change refers to altering one’s appraisal of
the situation, by changing one’s perception of the situation. Reappraisal is the main tactic of
cognitive change strategies, which alters emotion by changing the meaning or self-relevance
of a situation. For example, one could reappraise by trying to empathize with an irritated
co-worker having a bad day. Troy and Mauss (2011) suggest that these internal regulation
strategies are particularly important for developing resilience, as we explain in more detail
below.
Lastly, if an individual is unable to employ an emotion regulation strategy before an
emotion has fully emerged, response-focused strategies can be used. This category of response
modulation strategies includes suppression or hiding one’s true emotions, as well as faking or
expressing emotions one is not truly feeling. However, extensive research in emotional labor
suggests that emotion regulation strategies that involve acting in an inauthentic way, such as
response-focused strategies like surface acting, can be detrimental for well-being (Grandey
and Gabriel, 2015). We suggest below how this stream of research can shed light on which
emotion regulation strategies may be most beneficial in fostering resilience.

Ending an Emotion Episode

As discussed, experiencing a significant adverse event is likely to lead to a negative emotion

episode. Using emotion regulation strategies to manage the emotional experience is an impor-
tant component of resilience. Several studies suggest that the effective regulation of negative
emotion promotes positive outcomes following adversity. For example, of those who had
recently experienced a stressful life event, the ones who implicitly valued emotion regulation
and habitually used cognitive reappraisal strategies showed better psychological health (Hopp
et al., 2011). New and her colleagues (2009) suggest that one’s ability to regulate emotional
responses to negative stimuli may be a protective factor in the face of trauma exposure and
associated with resilience. However, results from their fMRI study indicate that regulation
of emotional responses may be impaired by trauma exposure. Healthy control subjects
appeared to be more successful at decreasing emotional responses to negative stimuli than
the trauma-exposed groups, regardless of whether subjects had symptoms of PTSD following
trauma (New et al., 2009). Further, when examining trajectories of distress among police
officers in their first four years of service, resilient officers demonstrate lower levels of neg-
ative emotion (Galatzer-Levy et al., 2013). Lastly, a positive correlation was found between
resilience and the tendency to use reappraisal strategies (r = .42**) but not suppression strate-
 Resilience and emotion regulation 93

gies (r = .01), suggesting that managing the affective experience is an important component of
resilience (Karreman and Vingerhoets, 2012).
In addition, individuals may manage attentional resources to end an emotion episode
more efficiently. Adverse events that draw individuals’ attention repeatedly back to the
event involve rumination, defined as “conscious thoughts that revolve around a common
instrumental theme and that recur in the absence of immediate environmental demands
requiring the thoughts” (Martin and Tesser, 1996, p. 7). This can increase the likelihood that
individuals remain in emotion episodes for longer periods of time. Laboratory studies indicate
that preservative thinking when stressed is related to prolonged physiological arousal and
delayed recovery (Roger and Jamieson, 1988). Successful attentional deployment efforts may
short-circuit this ruminative process. Attention deployment emotion regulation strategies are
related to decreased negative emotion, anxiety, and depressive symptoms (Goldin and Gross,
2010). By managing attentional resources and minimizing affective rumination, individuals
are able to decrease the offset latency of an emotion episode, that is, more quickly end the
emotion episode.
Extending this literature, we suggest that the regulation of negative emotion episodes leads
to increased resilience. Becoming trapped in a negative affective state can prevent individuals
from moving past an adverse event. Thus, we argue that emotion regulation strategies that can
decrease the offset latency of an emotion episode are a mechanism for increased resilience. In
particular, cognitive reappraisal and attention deployment strategies should allow individuals
to leave negative emotion episodes more quickly.

Reactivating an Emotion Episode

A significant adverse event is unlikely to trigger only one emotion episode. Instead, the emo-
tional consequences may linger long after the initial adverse event, with new emotion episodes
being prompted by relevant stimuli. Although controlled reactivation may be a useful tactic
in counseling sessions, we focus on reactivation of emotional experiences outside of clinical
contexts. Antecedent-focused emotion regulation strategies such as situation selection and
situation modification may minimize the chances of instigating negative emotion episodes.
The reactivation of an emotion episode may occur through two mechanisms. First, encoun-
tering events that are directly related to the original adverse event may serve as an instigator.
For example, returning to a damaged home after an earthquake is likely to prompt a new
emotion episode. Second, seemingly unrelated external stimuli can instigate an emotion
episode if they become temporally associated with the original traumatic event. These stimuli
may become imbued with meaning as “warning signals” (Ehlers et al., 2002) that prompt an
intrusive re-experiencing of the original event. For example, an individual may have ordered
a cup of coffee immediately before an earthquake hit. In the future, hearing the coffee beans
being ground may serve as a “warning signal” and prompt an emotion episode.
Strategically avoiding or changing situations can minimize the reactivation of an emotion
episode. Of the five emotion regulation strategies outlined by Gross (1998), situation selection
and situation modification have received the least empirical scrutiny (Quoidbach et al., 2015).
Individuals are not particularly adept at forecasting their emotions accurately and tend to
overestimate the intensity and duration of their affective responses to various events (Gilbert et
al., 2002). While this bias is usually associated with suboptimal decision making (e.g., Wilson
et al., 2005), it can be useful for avoiding emotionally distressing situations following an
94 Research handbook on organizational resilience

adverse event. If a triggering situation is anticipated to produce a strong, long-lasting negative

emotion episode, individuals may try to avoid these. Individuals may avoid returning to the
location where an adverse event was originally experienced. By strategically selecting and/or
modifying their environment, individuals may be able to increase the amount of time between
reactivated emotion episodes. While managing the experience of negative emotion episodes
is likely to be an important component of demonstrating resilience, it is by no means the only
component. In the next section, we discuss the role of positive affect and resilience.

Facilitating Positive Affect

Beyond the regulation of negative emotion episodes, positive emotion is also important for
promoting resilience. The broaden-and-build theory of positive emotions and the undoing
hypothesis (Fredrickson, 2001) propose that positive emotions broaden one’s thought-action
repertoire, build personal resources, help down-regulate negative emotions, and improve
coping (Tugade and Fredrickson, 2004). These are each ways for positive emotions to aid
in building resilience (Fredrickson et al., 2003), as supported by a good deal of empirical
evidence. In a study of students after the September 11th attacks, positive emotions mediated
the relationship between pre-crisis resilience and later depressive symptoms, and assisted
post-crisis growth in psychological resources (Fredrickson et al., 2003). Similarly, a study
using two time points one month apart found that positive emotions partially mediate the rela-
tionship between time 1 and time 2 resilience (Cohn et al., 2009). Similarly, positive emotions
mediate the effect of trait resilience on the duration of cardiovascular reactivity (Tugade and
Fredrickson, 2004). On the team level, collective positive emotions in teams are positively
related to team resilience (Meneghel et al., 2016).
Existing research also suggests that regular experiences of positive affect are important
for promoting resilience. Daily positive emotions assist resilient people in rebounding from
negative events and daily stress (Ong et al., 2006). Those low in resilience tend to have a more
difficult time regulating negative emotions and have heightened reactivity to stressful life
events (Ong et al., 2006). Boosts in positive affect during daily life protect people’s mental
health following childhood adversity (Geschwind et al., 2010); moreover, the effect of positive
affect was independent of negative affect, suggesting each represents two separate emotional
pathways. Generating positive affect from pleasant daily events could explain how people
build resilience following adversity.
Emotion regulation strategies may influence positive affect in several ways. Individuals can
reappraise the adverse event to elicit positive emotions, such as gratitude and love (Fredrickson
et al., 2003; Tugade et al., 2004). For example, individuals who experience an earthquake may,
with time, be able to reframe the event to elicit more positive emotions such as gratitude (e.g.,
I’m thankful to be alive) or love (e.g., forming deeper interpersonal connections with others).
The cognitive reappraisal of adverse events may shorten the offset latency of a negative
emotion episode and also facilitate the development of positive emotion episodes.
Emotion regulation strategies may also be used to influence affective states more broadly.
Specifically, emotion regulation may lead to more positive affective states absent from an
emotion episode. Regular experiences of positive core affect seem to be important for promot-
ing resilience. Tugade and Fredrickson (2007) argue that prolonging and enhancing positive
emotions (e.g., savoring) can increase resilience.
 Resilience and emotion regulation 95

Specifically, individuals can engage in external regulation strategies, such as situation

selection or situation modification, to promote occurrences of positive core affect. Individuals
are likely to underestimate the positive emotional consequences of certain events, such as
going on a romantic date (Hoerger et al., 2012). Despite this, individuals are probably able to
identify situations that make them happy. By intentionally self-selecting into or crafting these
situations, individuals may be able to increase levels of positive affect. Intentionally seeking
out time with friends or taking the time to engage in self-care routines can help bolster an
individual’s resilience by promoting positive core affect.

Response-Focused Strategies of Emotion Regulation

Missing from our discussion is the role of response-focused strategies of emotion regulation.
This is intentional, as we focus on emotion regulation strategies as a mechanism for fostering
resilience. However, not all emotion regulation strategies may be beneficial. Specifically,
emotion regulation strategies that emphasize regulating the expression of emotion, such as
faking or suppression (Gross, 1998), may be detrimental to developing resilience.
A breadth of research indicates that response-focused emotion regulation strategies
are related to worse outcomes. Studies using Gross’s model found that suppression led to
increases in physiological responding and decreases in cognitive functioning on the individual
level (Richards et al., 2003). At the social level, suppression leads to lower levels of rapport
and affiliation, and increased blood pressure for partners in social interactions (Butler et al.,
2003).
In the emotional labor literature, detrimental effects are found for surface acting. Several
meta-analyses (e.g., Hülsheger and Schewe, 2011; Kammeyer-Mueller et al., 2013) demon-
strate the burdensome effect of surface acting compared to deep acting. Surface acting has
negative relationships with job satisfaction and positive relationships with stress and exhaus-
tion, while deep acting appears to be less taxing over time (Hülsheger and Schewe, 2011;
Kammeyer-Mueller et al., 2013).
Theory suggests that emotional labor is taxing due to depletion of resources (Hobfoll, 1989)
and emotional dissonance, defined as the discrepancy between felt emotion and displayed
emotions to meet display rules (Rafaeli and Sutton, 1987). Hochschild (1983) argued that
emotional labor is detrimental because it requires one to be incongruent with the self, which
leads to feelings of tension. Similar to cognitive dissonance, emotional dissonance is likely to
lead to stress and alienation when dissonance threatens the self-concept (Pugh et al., 2011).
These response-focused emotion regulation strategies, such as surface acting, require an
inauthentic expression of emotion which creates emotional dissonance. We suggest routinely
engaging in emotional dissonance-producing strategies is likely to impede the development
of resilience, as this regulation strategy does not assist in reducing the amount of time in
a negative emotion episode. Actually, these response-focused strategies could prolong the
experience of the negative emotion episode and reduce the likelihood of displaying resilience.
However, one aforementioned study found no correlation between suppression and resilience
(Karreman and Vingerhoets, 2012), rather than an expected negative correlation. We suspect
this could be due to the time scale in which resilience was studied. Suppression could help end
an emotion episode momentarily, but at the cost of increased likelihood of emotion episode
reactivation. In this way, suppression may have no relationship with demonstrating resilience
96 Research handbook on organizational resilience

when examined in short-term contexts, but is detrimental when studied in the long term. We
discuss the role of time in greater detail in the following section.

Incorporating Time

The connections we propose between emotion, emotion regulation and resilience require flex-
ible transitioning between micro and macro time perspectives. Individuals are not constantly
in an emotion episode; although an emotion episode can be reactivated, individuals must at
some point leave the episode. Thus, discussion around the regulation of emotional experience
focuses on comparatively small timeframes of minutes or hours. Resilience to an adverse
event, on the other hand, is demonstrated in the weeks, months or even years following the
event.
Britt and his colleagues (2016) recommend researchers studying resilience collect (a)
baseline functioning; (b) documentation of significant adversity; and (c) multiple measures of
positive adaptation following adversity. While collecting these data points would be ideal, it
can be difficult to predict when one will experience adversity. It is unclear, based on existing
literature, how long after an adversity one is expected to display positive adaptation. This
suggests that the best or most appropriate time scale to study resilience is unknown.
There are no clear expectations as to when people should display positive adaptation fol-
lowing adversity. Some study resilience following an adverse event in as short as ten days
(Fredrickson et al., 2003), to six months (Bonanno et al., 2007), to four months and a follow-up
at 18 months (Bonanno et al., 2005), to baseline with follow-ups once a year over four years
(Galatzer-Levy et al., 2013).
To study the emotional consequences of adverse events and resilience, a compromise must
be struck between these micro and macro time perspectives. It seems unrealistic to ask individ-
uals to provide the micro-level data needed to capture emotion episodes and emotion regula-
tion over many weeks or months. More macro assessments that occur once a month are unable
to capture the affective experience as it unfolds. To bridge this gap, we suggest that resilience
in the context of emotional experience and emotion regulation could be studied using meas-
urement bursts. This type of method entails repeated bursts of intensive assessments over
different temporal intervals. Use of measurement bursts can be useful for studying long-term
intra-individual change (Sliwinski, 2008). More specifically, we envision a study examining
emotional experience and emotion regulation immediately following an adverse event and at
different intervals (e.g., 2 months, 6 months, 1 year). This would allow researchers to examine
emotion episodes in a micro time perspective while connecting them to macros changes.

THE SOCIAL CONTEXT OF RESILIENCE

Our discussion has focused on the individual emotional experience following an adverse
event and how emotion regulation can foster resilient outcomes. However, we do not live in
a vacuum; experiences are shaped by our environments. In this section we describe how the
social sharing of emotions, and the social context in which these experiences occur, are impor-
tant for demonstrating resilience.
 Resilience and emotion regulation 97

Social Sharing

Emotions are experienced individually but are highly social. Although the literature on
emotion and emotion regulation is largely focused on the individual level of analysis, emo-
tional events also provoke systematic social responses (Butler and Gross, 2009; Rimé, 2009).
Social sharing of emotion is a process defined by individuals openly communicating about
emotion-eliciting events (Rimé, 2009). Social sharing is an emotion regulation strategy that
does not fit perfectly within Gross’s (1998) emotion regulation framework, although it could
fit within response-focused strategies (Brans et al., 2013) since it occurs after the emotion has
fully emerged. As explained by Rimé (2009), people are eager to share negative feelings and it
is assumed that talking about negative emotions, such as venting, can be a relief. Social sharing
can reduce the negative feelings of an emotional event, especially when sharing stimulates
cognitive work (Nils and Rimé, 2012).
Rimé (2009) argues there are two types of social sharing modes, cognitive and socio-affective,
which have differential effects on the sharer. The cognitive mode occurs when the sharing
stimulates cognitive work that prompts the sharer to abandon frustrated goals, reorganize
motivations, accommodate schemas, re-create meaning, and reappraise their emotional
episode (Rimé, 2009). Meanwhile, the socio-affective mode provides the sharer with support,
comfort, legitimization, bonding and empathy, fulfilling their socio-affective needs (Rimé,
2009). While the socio-affective mode can be temporarily relieving, it is unlikely to lead to
emotional recovery if shared in absence of cognitive contribution (Rimé, 2009). This idea is
supported in an experiment by Nils and Rimé (2012). After watching an emotional video,
those who engaged in cognitively-focused sharing felt less upset by the video and reported
lower negative affect compared to those who engaged in non-cognitive sharing. Furthermore,
those who engaged in socio-affective modes of sharing were more emotionally impacted and
reported higher negative affect, suggesting that simply talking about one’s emotion actually
exacerbated its detrimental effects.
These findings suggest that sharing emotional experiences with an emphasis on cognitive
processing can be an important component of emotion regulation and can foster resilience
within organizations. In particular, leaders may be able to promote productive sharing of emo-
tions among co-workers to promote resilient teams. Strong team communication is identified
as a characteristic of resilient teams (Alliger et al., 2015). Communication that emphasizes the
constructive sharing of emotions can help facilitate resilience at the individual and team levels
(Stephens et al., 2013). Seeking guidance during an adverse event or debriefing after the event
(Alliger et al., 2015), are also thought to contribute to resilient teams. Continued, constructive
communication provides individuals with the opportunity to share emotions in ways that
encourage the cognitive processes.
Cognitively-focused sharing of emotion suggests strategies for fostering resilience for the
organization as a whole. When tragedy hits, organizations can provide formal counseling
services to their employees in the form of employee assistance programs (EAPs). EAPs after
a traumatic event help individuals process the event from a “cognitive level to an emotional
level, then back to a cognitive level by the close of the debriefing” (Bell, 1995, p. 38). The
prevalence of EAPs in organizations has increased following September 11, 2001 and has
been a core component of organizations’ responses to traumatic events (Paul and Thompson,
2006). These professional resources can aid in the sharing and processing of emotions after an
adverse event, fostering resilience among an organization’s employees.
98 Research handbook on organizational resilience

Communities

Communities often come together to support each other through difficult times. Unsurprisingly,
social support is established as a contextual protective factor that contributes to increased resil-
ience (Bonanno et al., 2007; Ozbay et al., 2007). People do not usually experience adversity
alone – natural disasters impact entire cities or regions, a death of a loved one affects an entire
family, and a victim of sexual harassment may be a sole target, but arguably is still a single
person within a larger toxic workplace environment that allows such behavior. This said, it is
important to consider the social context in studying the process of resilience.
A qualitative study of collective and individual resilience in the war-affected and
poverty-stricken people in Eritrea, the newest state in Africa, exemplifies this point (Almedom,
2004). Based on interviews with displaced persons in war-afflicted parts of Eritrea, social
support was determined as the main factor to mitigate the effects of anxiety and mental distress
due to the war. At the core of social support is emotional support; Almedom found that in the
camps of displaced people, emotional support was derived from administrators and existing
social networks such as family, friends, community. Furthermore, village units were kept
together, which was “very important because people who have shared the same experiences
and suffered together tend to form strong support groups and provide safe space for expres-
sions of pain, anger and grief” (Almedom, 2004, p. 454). When aiming to regulate emotions
resulting from adversity, communities of those with shared experiences can be useful for
fostering resilience.
Almedom (2004) proposes a model differentiating macro-level social support, such as gov-
ernment, and micro-level social support, such as family and social networks. Organizations
and teams are micro-level and provide emotional support. With this in mind, we suggest that
a number of things can be done in organizations to encourage emotionally supportive behav-
ior among workers, such as encouraging community in the workplace or retreats focused on
managing stress (see Medland et al., 2004 for examples of fostering social support in oncology
nurses).

CONCLUSION
Resilience in the face of adversity requires, at least in part, the successful management of the
co-occurring emotional experiences. By framing this experience in terms of emotion episodes
and emotion regulation, we provide a framework for understanding how people can demon-
strate resilience in micro and macro timeframes. The experience of adverse events is emotional
and can prompt the emergence and the reactivation of emotion episodes in the weeks, months
and years following the original event. Successful regulation of these emotion episodes can
not only minimize detrimental effects but can be reframed to facilitate positive affect and
subsequent flourishing in the face of adversity. Finally, the socially embedded nature of these
experiences within organizations and communities suggests the important role of co-workers,
leaders and organizations for providing support to foster resilience. By emphasizing the role of
affective experiences and emotion regulation, we highlight the personal and emotional nature
of adverse events and discuss how the successful regulation of these experiences can foster
effective resilience strategies for individuals and organizations.
 Resilience and emotion regulation 99

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8. From parts to whole: a place for individual
tacit knowledge in organizational adaptability
and resilience
John Paul Stephens

Organizations are constantly faced with challenges, and how they respond to them is ulti-
mately embedded in the capabilities of the individuals and groups that comprise the system.
How individuals and groups in organizations respond to a surprise, mistake, or challenge often
rests on some inarticulate sense of what to do or not to do. Here is an extended example from
a hospital setting:

Paul, a patient advocate, had to deal with an emergency, caring for a gang member suffering from
gunshot wounds. In addition to the patient’s immediate family, approximately 200 visitors who were
also gang members began to fill the hospital. Somehow, hospital staff had to maintain patient privacy,
mitigate the possibility of the rival gang altercation spilling into the hospital, and ensure access to
services for other patients as the ER parking lot and ICU grew full with visitors. Paul sensitively
inserted himself into the group’s grieving process, staying physically close to the patient’s family
to understand their needs and perceptions of the situation, and then “reading” the chaotic group of
mourners to identify who could help him direct the group. When the young man died later on, Paul
sensed that “This was really explosive for the family” and “you could hear the news erupt in the ICU.”
When this news prompted visitors to start streaming back into the ICU, Paul called on fellow staff
members and security to move everyone into the hallway, position staff every 30 feet, and bring in
five people at a time to pay their respects to the deceased. To Paul, this was an appropriate response
to the potentially “explosive” emotions expressed in the group’s sounds and bodily expressions.
Together with other staff members, Paul was able to compassionately guide the physical movements
of visitors in ways that allowed them to pay their respects, while simultaneously keeping them from
disturbing other patients’ care (Heaphy et al., 2016).

Paul seemed to be effectively adapting his approach, and that of other staff, based on some
unspoken understandings of the challenging situation. These examples suggest the presence
of tacit knowledge, or of knowing more than we can tell (Polanyi, 1966), in moments of
challenge and adversity in organizations. Yet it remains unclear how a form of knowledge
that is inherently individual and often known through bodily sensations or feelings, might also
enable organizational resilience. Without mapping out the links between these concepts, our
theorizing about organizational resilience remains impoverished, and there is little chance to
generalize from Paul’s example to explain and guide other cases of adapting to organizational
challenges. More specifically, it is important to understand the role of tacit knowledge in
adaptability since adaptability helps organizations to be resilient. Although there remains
a lack of full consensus around how to define and measure adaptability (Baard et al., 2014),
extrapolating from individual- and team-level studies suggests that organizational adaptabil-
ity is a capacity for changing organizational processes to produce functional outcomes in
response to environmental changes – whether these changes challenge or enable current goals.
Yet adaptability is particularly important for organizational resilience, or an organization’s

102
 Tacit knowledge and resilience 103

ability to “rebound from adversity strengthened and more resourceful” (Sutcliffe and Vogus,
2003, p. 97). In this perspective, resilience is an ability grounded in adaptations to adversity
that help organizations develop new coping skills and bolster current strengths (Sutcliffe and
Vogus, 2003). Thus, while adaptability is important for responding to changes of any kind, it
is particularly important for understanding how organizations can develop resilient responses
in the face of adversity.
To map out the role of tacit knowledge in organizational adaptability, in this chapter I draw
links between the original conceptualization of tacit knowledge by Michael Polanyi (1966)
and recent research on organizational adaptability. Tacit knowledge is involved in recognizing
patterns among features, such as when we recognize a face, or see that one set of chess moves
is more skillful than another. This recognition is based in an awareness of a set of particular
features that we may not be able to identify. Organizational adaptability is often theorized as
being based in an ability to recognize a set of cues or signals about some change in task or
environmental demands (Bechky and Okhuysen, 2011; Bigley and Roberts, 2001; Burke et al.,
2006; Hutchins, 1991). While some cues are singular and explicit (e.g. a change in wind direc-
tion when firefighting (Bigley and Roberts, 2001)), others are subtler, or embedded in a stream
of other cues (e.g. the constant and simultaneous landing and takeoff of planes on an aircraft
carrier flight deck (Weick and Roberts, 1993)). Thus, the cues imperative for adaptability in
complex and dynamic organizational environments may require awareness of sets or patterns
of features that are best discerned through tacit knowledge.
To explain how this might be possible, I first summarize theory on adaptability at different
levels: individual, group and organization. Second, I summarize how key dimensions of tacit
knowledge – its ubiquity, its embodied nature, and its challenges – present unique implications
for explaining organizational adaptability. Third, I propose how tacit knowledge might surface
through processes of expressing sensory templates, sharing and revising those templates in
relational pauses, and then enacting the tacit knowledge expressed in these pauses in adaptive
moves. Each of these processes addresses the challenges that embodied forms of knowledge
pose to organizations and, all together, contribute to our understanding of organizational
resilience and adaptability.

RESILIENCE AND ADAPTABILITY: THE ROLE OF ATTENTION

This chapter advances the literature on organizational resilience by considering how indi-
viduals contribute to the processes that enable organizational adaptability. While resilience
research has historically focused on individuals (e.g. Bonanno, 2004; Luthar et al., 2000),
more recent research has focused on resilience in teams and organizations. Organizational
resilience is important to understand since it involves rebounding from adversity, challenges
and setbacks that can threaten the lives of organizational members (Powley, 2009) or disrupt
an organization’s capacity to fulfill its goals (Gittell et al., 2006). Team resilience, or a team’s
capacity for recovering from difficulties (Carmeli et al., 2013), has received increasing atten-
tion (e.g. Maynard and Kennedy, 2016; Stephens et al., 2013). However, despite these efforts,
we know little about the factors that individuals contribute to organizational resilience, and
thus may be omitting key factors in our explanations. For example, while we know that resil-
ience at organizational (Gittell et al., 2006; Powley, 2009) and team levels of analysis (Carmeli
et al., 2013; Stephens et al., 2013) relies on positive relational connections, what might a given
104 Research handbook on organizational resilience

individual contribute in those relationships to enable resilience at various levels? What sort of
individual-level knowledge might best be leveraged to ensure organizational-level resilience?
To better address such questions, it is worthwhile to consider the underlying processes of
adaptability that ground organizational resilience. Repeatedly, across levels of analysis, resil-
ience has been described in terms of “positive” adaptations to adversity (Luthar et al., 2000;
Powley, 2009; Reich et al., 2010; Sutcliffe and Vogus, 2003). Like resilience, adaptability, or
the capacity for changing cognition and behavior in ways that produce functional outcomes
(Burke et al., 2006), has been examined at the individual, team and organizational levels of
analysis. A common thread can be found across these levels: attentiveness or mindfulness.
Individuals are deemed more adaptive when they are higher in personality traits such as
conscientiousness and openness to experience that make them more aware of their environ-
ments (LePine et al., 2000). Adaptive teams engage in a feedback process that begins with
a situational assessment of environmental changes and what they might mean for the ongoing
task (Burke et al., 2006). Finally, organizational adaptability has been characterized in terms
of “mindful organizing,” or a set of cognitive processes that involve attending to near misses,
errors and failures in order to learn from them, acting in ways attentive to the effects of those
actions, and a commitment to resilience or containing the effects of errors (Weick et al., 1999).
Attending to new and sometimes surprising cues in the environment is important if individ-
uals, teams and systems are to adapt to challenges effectively, and thus be resilient. Linking the
inherent attentiveness found adaptability to resilience is important since it suggests a bridge
across levels of analysis when trying to understand how individuals contribute to the processes
that enable organizational adaptability. More specifically, as discussed next, attention is also
key for the tacit knowledge that individuals have about challenges in their environment and
can contribute to processes of adaptation.

TACIT KNOWLEDGE, ATTENTIVENESS, AND ADAPTABILITY

Examples like Paul’s, in this chapter’s introduction, suggest that responding to challenges
effectively can sometimes be based on tacit knowledge, or of knowing more than we can tell
(Polanyi, 1966). This may especially be the case when adaptive responses are expected in
particularly dynamic conditions, such as when fighter pilots constantly ask themselves “‘Does
it feel right?’ or ‘Is the rhythm wrong?’” as they respond to other flight deck crew members in
landing a plane (Weick and Roberts, 1993, p. 363). Much has been made of tacit knowledge
across the organizational literature, particularly in the realm of organizational learning and
knowledge (e.g. Argote, 2013; Cook and Yanow, 1993; Nonaka and Takeuchi, 1995). Yet, by
some accounts, the concept of tacit knowledge has been misused by organizational scholars,
and its conceptual richness overlooked. For example, Tsoukas (2006, p. 158) takes pains to
explain how the “interpretation of tacit knowledge as knowledge-not-yet-articulated […] an
interpretation that has been widely adopted in management studies, is erroneous: it ignores the
essential ineffability of tacit knowledge, thus reducing it to what can be articulated.” In sum,
it may be more accurate to refer to the tacit “dimension” or “component” of knowledge, as
originally articulated by Polanyi (1962[2015]; 1966). The forms of knowledge we often divide
into “knowing what,” (explicit knowledge) and “knowing how,” (tacit knowledge), “have
a similar structure and neither is ever present without the other” (Polanyi, 1966, p. 7). This,
 Tacit knowledge and resilience 105

and other tenets of tacit knowledge, present important implications for better understanding
adaptation and, thus, resilience.

Attention in Tacit Knowledge

Tacit knowledge is distinct from, yet intimately tied to explicit knowledge: the former is not
simply skilled practice waiting to be turned into “real” knowledge in the form of rules, proto-
cols or concepts. In many forms of work, the focal actor is often quite competent at performing
a set or pattern of skilled actions, but is unable to express the specific actions that comprise
their full performance (Tsoukas, 2006). Even seemingly simple acts such as hammering a nail
appropriately, and more complex acts such as making an accurate diagnosis from a patient’s
X-ray are comprised of a multitude of elements: the feelings of the hammer against the hand,
or the specific bones and organs visible in the X-ray. While hammering and diagnosing are
in focal awareness, their constituent acts are held in subsidiary or non-conscious awareness
(Polanyi, 1966). Although they remain non-conscious, these elements of our experience con-
tinuously inform how appropriately we respond to our environments.
If our experience of challenges and adversity is comprised of tacit knowledge of ele-
ments in subsidiary awareness, then we must take seriously both the ineffable, as well as
the explicit aspects of our experience. Explicit cues for adaptation, such as communication
failures (LePine, 2003; 2005) or observable changes in a patient’s condition (e.g. Burtscher
et al., 2010; Klein et al., 2006), are able to be discussed and reflected on, making them more
amenable to scientific observation, inquiry and testing. However, adapting the actions that
are in focal awareness requires a sensitivity to what might need to change in the elements
that are harder to articulate. For example, when a medical resident working as part of a small
group noticed nurses slowing down towards the end of their shift, he knew to verbally signal
the need to step up the pace of their work (Valentine and Edmondson, 2015). In another
example, nurses non-verbally negotiated key decision-making for patients with doctors when
they recognized errors. Nurses drew on their past experience, and “the immediate conditions
of the body and the unit when coordinating ordering [of tests]” (Pine and Mazmanian, 2017,
p. 728). These examples suggest that tacit knowledge of challenging situations is meaningful
for adaptive responses and thus, resilience.
Appreciating the place of tacit knowledge in our experience of challenges and adversity
points us towards how attention is enacted through our bodies. Our understandings about the
integration of complex patterns of elements are based in our own internal bodily processes.
Polanyi (1966) referred to this embodied aspect of tacit knowledge as interiorization or
indwelling, proposing that “Our body is the only thing in the world [which we] experience
always in terms of the world to which we are attending from our body” (p. 16). This embodied
perspective has developed considerable research support (e.g. Barsalou, 2008; Clark, 1998;
Johnson, 2008; Sheets-Johnstone, 2011). This research holds that “bodily states can cause
cognitive states and be effects of them,” and that simulation, or the “reenactment of perceptual,
motor, and introspective states acquired during experience with the world, body, and mind”
(Barsalou, 2008, p. 618) is a key process in cognition. Our internal, bodily processes may
not be consciously known, but they become associated with immediate, ongoing experience,
such that “it is not by looking at things, but by dwelling in them, that we understand their
joint meaning” (Polanyi, 1966, p. 18). This “indwelling” describes individuals’ capacity for
simultaneously engaging all the bodily senses to derive meaning about whole situations, or
106 Research handbook on organizational resilience

the “complex of physical, biological, social, and cultural conditions that constitute any given
experience” (Johnson, 2008, p. 72). When it comes to tacit knowledge, attention may be best
understood in terms of our ongoing sensory engagement with our environments that allows us
to hold a multitude of system elements in subsidiary awareness. Such attention and awareness
can ultimately shape the meanings we make of a situation, and thus what makes for adaptive
responses to challenges.

Challenges to Drawing on Tacit Knowledge for Adaptability

Our tacit knowledge of a situation is developed through our bodily attentiveness to elements
outside of our conscious awareness. This is important since being sensitive to those elements
may be key to appropriately adapting the actions that are in focal awareness when facing
a challenge. Yet certain qualities of tacit knowledge and the body present important challenges
to making full use of them in adapting for organizational resilience. First, tacit knowledge is
often characterized as somewhat automatic; sometimes that automaticity leads to inappropri-
ate responses to novel situations (Cohen and Bacdayan, 1994). This is seen in various accounts
of “human error,” where individuals may be so entrained in prior, habitual ways of engaging
with each other and with the organizational system that changes in events are overlooked,
leading sometimes to catastrophe (Endsley, 2001; Weick et al., 1999). While acknowledging
the import of how much we know but cannot tell, such as the “organizational unconscious-
ness” referenced by Cohen and Bacdayan (1994, p. 566), what remains below the surface of
conscious awareness may impede appropriate improvisation in novel situations.
Second, the body is often de-legitimized in organizations, rendering individuals mute
about what they might know through their bodies (Taylor, 2002). What we consciously know
through our bodies is known through “feeling,” and despite the value of such feelings for our
sense of engagement with our work (Sandelands and Boudens, 2000) and decision-making, we
tend to discount their importance (Loewenstein, 1996). Organizations that focus on knowledge
work, such as investment banking firms, attempt to control how employees use their bodies so
that they can focus on cognitive activities (e.g. providing on-site amenities so that employees
can work longer hours; Michel, 2011). Our scholarly theories and research have similarly
privileged knowledge work, and typically been aligned with the Cartesian dualism that privi-
leges the rationality and control associated with the mind, over the less predictable actions and
sensations of the body (Heaphy, 2007; Johnson, 2008). For those engaged in adaptation, and
those of us that study them, what is felt by the body may very well be seen as a distraction from
what is known more explicitly.

PRESERVING TACIT KNOWLEDGE ACROSS LEVELS FOR

ORGANIZATIONAL ADAPTABILITY

If tacit knowledge is critical for adaptability and, thus, resilience, then how might we address
the challenges outlined above? What kinds of processes would enable this individual-level
knowledge to be shared between individuals, the teams or units they comprise, and the organ-
ization to which they ultimately contribute? How would these processes mitigate the potential
for automaticity when we rely on tacit knowledge, and the inscrutability of knowledge often
expressed as a bodily “feeling?” To address such concerns, I propose that tacit knowledge can
 Tacit knowledge and resilience 107

be expressed through individuals’ “sensory templates,” or verbal and visual expressions of

the embodied and experiential qualities we use to understand situations at work (Springborg,
2018). For example, a manager uses sensory templates when she expresses “conflict resolu-
tion” as “pushing aside physical obstacles” (Springborg, 2018, p. 93) or another describes his
experience with a difficult business unit as “a big, viscous, sticky mass” (p. 109).
To express tacit knowledge through such templates in the midst of challenges or adversity,
individuals may need to engage in relational pauses, or breaks in the dysfunction that might
accompany adversity, that allow a dyad or group to process their negative emotions and
perceptions (Barton and Kahn, 2019). The holding space of a pause can allow individuals to
reflect on each other’s sensory templates and develop some sort of shared, adaptive meaning.
Finally, by jointly working through sensory templates to develop those more useful in the
challenging situation, individuals can then collectively draw on these revised templates to
rearrange or adapt how individuals and units in the system actually interact and communicate
to address the challenge (Heaphy et al., 2016; Hindmarsh and Pilnick, 2007).
This process is summarized in Figure 8.1. In the following sections, I use the example of
Paul provided earlier to elaborate on how such a process might unfold. I also point out how
these components address the challenges that tacit knowledge presents, in terms of automatic-
ity and the lack of the body’s legitimacy in organizations.

Figure 8.1 Theorized process of how individual tacit knowledge enables

organizational-level adaptability

Surfacing Tacit Knowledge Through Sensory Templates

Figure 8.1 begins with assuming some change in the organizational environment that presents
a challenge to the individuals involved. Similar to other models of adaptation, this process
assumes that the individuals that comprise teams and organizations must first attend to or be
mindful of environmental changes and assess them as threatening or not (Burke et al., 2006;
Weick et al., 1999). However, the process depicted in Figure 8.1 assumes that such “assess-
108 Research handbook on organizational resilience

ment” may not be deliberate or articulable in concrete terms. Instead, such awareness may be
based in tacit knowledge or some feeling about the changing situation. Sensory templates, or
the “sensorimotor experiences [we use] as templates upon which we build our understanding
of abstract phenomena” (Springborg, 2018, p. 93), may be helpful for surfacing that tacit
knowledge. For example, in Figure 8.1, someone might express their tacit knowledge of the
challenge they are facing as feeling like “pushing a boulder up a hill.”
The notion of sensory templates is based in assumptions that the grounding of knowledge in
our bodily experience is evident in our reliance on physical metaphors to describe our social
world (Lakoff and Johnson, 1999). Sensory templates reflect our understanding of a problem
or situation in sensorimotor or embodied terms (Springborg, 2018). Part of the durability of
tacit knowledge means that we may get stuck with certain sensory templates, affecting how we
attend, and to what we attend. To counteract this, Springborg (2015) pioneered interventions
to help individuals become more aware of their sensory templates through developing artistic
expressions (e.g. drawings, photos, poems, etc.). By intentionally expressing, and thus engag-
ing with their sensory templates of challenging situations, managers were able to characterize
the problem differently, with some even discovering that they already had the necessary
resources at hand. Moreover, having to have a dialogue about the perceptions elicited by their
artworks, and what they meant to them, helped managers share their tacit knowledge of their
situations with others. Reflecting on these artistic expressions helps people develop language
– acknowledging that it is incomplete – that expresses more of the felt holistic qualities, rather
than leaving such expression as a “hunch” or “feeling.”
Sensory templates address some of the challenges that tacit knowledge presents. Recognizing
and giving form to one’s sensory templates provides a check on automaticity, since one can
bring into focal awareness what was formerly in subsidiary awareness, interrogating what
was tacitly known. With intentional reflection and training in eliciting and refining sensory
templates, individuals may develop a more refined sensitivity to novel and challenging situa-
tions, and thus deliberately open up the potential for a wider repertoire of adaptive responses.
Furthermore, the tacit knowledge inhered in sensory templates may be legitimized by linking
those templates to consequential results, such as breaking down organizational silos, increas-
ing sales, and creating a more positive work climate (Springborg, 2018). Sensory templates
also afford legitimacy by being recognizable expressions (whether verbal or pictorial) that can
resonate with other human beings.
In Paul’s example, it was explicit that there was a patient needing critical care, and an over-
whelming number of people starting to fill the emergency department. There were multiple,
simultaneous demands on Paul’s attention but – although he may not have been able to fully
articulate it in the moment – Paul knew he had to not only stay physically close to the grieving
family to ensure they were kept well-informed, but he also had to keep the large group calm.
Without clear protocols for how to do both at the same time, Paul may have quickly reflected
on the sensory templates he tends to use when he feels overwhelmed by his work. This would
not be strange, given other accounts of patient advocates’ work that illustrate their sensitivity
to their sensorimotor experience (Heaphy et al., 2016). In Paul’s case, his sensory template
of the situation might have been expressed as trying to wrap his arms around two giant,
ever-expanding balloons, with one balloon representing care for the immediate family, and the
other representing care for the growing group of visitors and the other patients. Potentially,
such a visceral representation could lead Paul to consider a range of potential responses, such
 Tacit knowledge and resilience 109

as letting go of one balloon and handing off the other, or maybe gently releasing the air out of
one or both balloons.

Engaging in Relational Pauses to Share and Examine Sensory Templates

While Paul examines, elaborates on, and even changes his sensory template of the unfolding
situation, he is able to express what he tacitly knows in ways that preserve its holistic nature.
This does not mean that he has to hold a picture in his head of every possible scenario, but
instead means that he can potentially be open to novel ways of seeing the situation and how to
respond to it. However, to address the challenging situation fully, Paul would need the entire
organization to get involved, and rearrange how he and others work together so that they can
adapt to the challenges at hand. Sensory templates could help with this since their resonance
with other human beings affords the development of shared understandings and appreciation.
However, sharing sensory templates in the midst of challenge or adversity may be tough, given
the distractions and negative feelings being experienced. To counter this, Paul might share his
sensory template with other individuals and groups in a “relational pause,” where they shift the
collective focus from their task to whether and how their interrelating helps to manage their
anxiety (Barton and Kahn, 2019).
The concept of relational pauses is based on the understanding that human groups often
try to move away from adversity and anxiety, setting up cycles of defensive interactions
that limit resilient responses (Barton and Kahn, 2019). When group members unconsciously
adopt defensive postures, turn away from, or start to blame each other, they lose the openness
needed to listen to each other’s expertise (Weick et al., 1999), and may lose the trust needed
to let others step in to help (Bigley and Roberts, 2001; Klein et al., 2006). By contrast, recent
research suggests that individuals and teams are more resilient when they can express both the
positive and negative emotions they may be feeling in the face of challenge (Stephens et al.,
2013). A relational pause doesn’t “manage away” the anxiety, but allows for the surfacing and
processing needed to defuse anxiety and strengthen the relationships needed to respond to the
adversity effectively (Barton and Kahn, 2019).
The process of a relational pause begins with an interruption of the group task at hand. This
interruption comes from members displaying distress signals, such as frustration, complaints,
or bodily expressions, and helps members become aware of their negative emotions. Members
must notice such signals and interpret them as requiring a shift in group focus. In Paul’s case,
he could potentially share with other patient advocates, nurses, doctors, chaplains and security
personnel that he feels as if he is struggling to hold onto an ever-expanding set of balloons
that might pop at any time. Paul might also inquire into their own sensory templates: “What’s
your sense of the situation right now?” In pausing to attend to Paul’s expressions, other organ-
izational members could support him, since the pause helps people “actively attend to others,
inquiring into their experiences and responding with compassion; they empathetically validate
those others, acknowledging the reality of their experience; and they help others make sense
of their experiences” (Barton and Kahn, 2019, p. 1418).
In this way, relational pauses can leverage the tacit knowledge inherent in group members’
sensory templates, and enable more mindful attention, or attention that is more focused and
can see more things more clearly or vividly (Weick and Sutcliffe, 2006). Individuals can use
the holding space of a pause to sustain attention on their sensory templates, and attend to what
those templates mean. Without processing, the negative emotions that signal a need for change
110 Research handbook on organizational resilience

can also narrow attention and “hijack” the brain (LeDoux, 1998). Rather than such narrowing,
the relational pause would instead allow for sharing of the perceptually-broadening sensory
templates. Paul’s co-workers might not be able to pause for long, but can still share vivid
impressions, metaphors and stories; depending on their form, stories can capture our attention
in various, sustained ways (Stephens and Kanov, 2017). Such sharing would also help people
understand each other’s sources of anxiety, how these present a range of potential cues to act
on, as well as a range of potential responses. In sharing their sensory templates, people can see
things in less habitual and more vivid ways (Barry and Meisiek, 2010).
Carving out relational pauses to express and share members’ sensory templates can mitigate
some of the challenges presented by tacit knowledge. The use of a pause interrupts automatic
responses that may be inappropriate for the current challenge. The relational pause creates an
occasion to question and revise which sensory templates might be associated with the defen-
siveness, blame, anger or withdrawal that the group is experiencing. Group members have
a choice in what they can focus on during the pause, but if responding with compassion and
empathy are enabling conditions for effective pauses, then those same conditions should allow
for appreciating members’ expression of their embodied experiences. In such a holding space,
members can validate and help each other process and revise the sensory templates, and the
associated emotions and actions being expressed.
Relational pauses for the sake of sharing sensory templates are possible even in the midst
of crisis situations. Wildland firefighters, for example, take time out of their intensive work
to engage in what they call a “size-up.” In the course of a size-up, firefighters share their
perceptions of the situation by asking questions such as “What’s the time of day? What’s the
wind, weather like?” (Bigley and Roberts, 2001, p. 1291). This helps them to develop a shared
representation of the situation, or a picture that they can jointly evaluate to see what changes
need to be made. Thus, in a size-up, group members have the opportunity to share what they
sensorily perceive about the situation. As a “relational pause,” such an interruption could also
allow for empathy and appreciation of what is being expressed.

Adapting Organizational Action Based on Tacit Knowledge of the Situation

Sensory templates preserve the embodied, tacit dimension of individual knowledge, and rela-
tional pauses allow for the sharing and revision of such templates when groups face adversity.
Ultimately, though, for resilience to be realized, the tacit knowledge expressed and developed
in these ways must inform adaptive moves, or changes in behavior that allow for continued
functioning in the face of challenge. It is possible that new forms of interrelating across
a system can be realized, as far as individuals hold roles that represent different functional and
professional groups, and to the extent that groups can agree on revised, embodied approaches
to their work with other groups. For example, while Paul might express his tacit knowledge
of the situation with the sensory template of struggling to hold onto growing balloons, some
nurses might share that they feel as if a dam has burst and they are feeling “flooded.” If Paul
and the nurses recognize that these templates actually reflect similar experiences, then Paul
might respond by suggesting a “permeable dam,” one that limits flow, but doesn’t obstruct
it completely. This might help them think about how to physically arrange themselves as a
“permeable dam” to manage the crush of visitors, which they did by positioning staff every 30
feet, and bringing in five people at a time to pay their respects to the deceased.
 Tacit knowledge and resilience 111

In revising their behaviors based on the tacit knowledge expressed and developed in their
relational pauses, dyads and groups should produce different outputs that contribute to other
individuals, dyads and groups – and thus, the organization – in new ways. In this way, the
tacit knowledge held by an individual (Paul), can meaningfully influence an organization’s
adaptability and, therefore, its potential for resilience. The adaptive moves adopted across
an organization should carry forward the attentional stability and vividness developed in
the earlier stages of this adaptive process. One’s adaptive contributions to a system, and the
sensitive joining of those contributions would be based in the sustained, stable attention to
individuals’ tacit knowledge of the situation. Collectively identifying, revising and drawing on
multiple individuals’ sensory templates should provide a vivid, more highly detailed sense of
the challenging situation and how to respond to it. Informed by a sensitive approach to others,
and the situation they collectively face, adaptive responses are less automatic and habitual, and
more customized to the situation at hand. We cannot prescribe the firmness of a guiding touch
on a colleague’s hand (Hindmarsh and Pilnick, 2007) or the amount of physical proximity
that would make someone in another role more or less comfortable (Heaphy et al., 2016), but
can instead draw on an ongoing felt experience of the situation. The tacit knowledge is also
rendered more legitimate by the smooth collective performance that it affords. By drawing on
their sensory templates, people like Paul could consistently display a competence in how they
sensitively enact their own roles, and tie together the work of other roles. This competence
would be tacitly known in the interactions shared with others in the organization, but also
explicitly evident in the positive organizational outcomes accomplished.

DISCUSSION
In this chapter, I articulate how the tacit knowledge that resides in individuals can be pre-
served in ways that effect organizational adaptability and, ultimately, resilience. Aligned with
current views of performance adaptation, I account for how individual-level inputs can inform
group-level adaptation, and then how the efforts of individuals and the groups they comprise
might cohere into organizational adaptation. However, the process I propose, of individuals
expressing their sensory templates, using relational pauses to share and revise these templates,
and then to adapt their interrelating across an organization bears important contributions to our
understanding of organizational resilience. I elaborate on these contributions below, as well
as extend the implications to the role of learning and leaders in organizational adaptability.
First and foremost, this chapter’s focus on adaptability shines a light on the individual- and
group-level processes that have been relatively neglected in prior research on organizational
resilience. Unpacking these mechanisms makes for more actionable theory on resilience
(Anderson et al., 2006). For example, despite their potential usefulness, there is little clarity
about which levels of analysis the processes of mindful organizing are meant to operate in
(cf. Weick et al., 1999). This means that it has been unclear just who or what is attending to
challenges and potential adversity. In parallel, other perspectives explain organizational resil-
ience in terms of drawing on slack or flexible resources, but without specifying the processes
by which actors leverage those resources in concert with others (e.g., Gittell et al., 2006;
Ortiz-de-Mandojana and Bansal, 2016). The model proposed in this chapter suggests how
organizations can draw on individual-level tacit knowledge, and group-level development of
adaptive moves based on that knowledge, to be more resilient.
112 Research handbook on organizational resilience

Second, the proposed processes in this chapter reflect a profound appreciation for tacit
knowledge in ways not typically found in the management literature. Unlike common per-
spectives on tacit knowledge, the views expressed here do not assume that tacit knowledge is
simply explicit knowledge waiting to be articulated (Tsoukas, 2006). Instead, tacit knowledge
is treated as a particular dimension of knowledge, in which explicit forms of knowledge are
enacted in particular ways in particular situations. Treating tacit knowledge in this way opens
up new considerations for the kinds of knowledge, awareness and attention that individuals,
groups and organizations might use to be more resilient. Moreover, by accounting for its
embodied nature, these proposed processes also account for the challenges tacit knowledge
presents for individuals and their organizations. The current approach suggests that inquiring
into, expressing and sharing sensory templates in relational pauses interrupts the automatic
responses that might be inappropriate for the current challenge. With mutual empathy for
others’ embodied experience of the situation, organizational members can legitimate each
other’s tacit knowledge, especially when it becomes associated with positive, resilient out-
comes. Other models of adaptation (e.g. Burke et al., 2006) do not account for how tacit
knowledge might be preserved in meaningful ways across the adaptation process. This
makes for more practical theory, since it accounts for the potential of maladaptive automatic
responses or the lack of legitimacy tacit knowledge may face.

Extending the Reach of Tacit Knowledge: Implications for Learning and Leading

An important implication of taking tacit knowledge seriously in explaining how individuals,

groups and organizations can adapt effectively is the role of learning. Learning matters for
both individual and team-level adaptability (Burke et al., 2006). However, although scholars
assume that learning from past failures enables organizational resilience, little research has
examined what strategies enable such learning (Vogus and Sutcliffe, 2007). Tacit knowl-
edge implicates certain learning strategies, such as practice and exposure to performance
over time (Cook and Yanow, 1993; Polanyi, 1966; Tsoukas, 2006). More specifically, tacit
knowledge develops through thousands of exposures to practice trials, with the more-frequent,
task-dependent and appropriate perceptual experiences eventually forming more-accessible
embodied or grounded categorizations over time (Goldstone and Barsalou, 1998). Parallel
to Springborg’s (2018) deliberate interventional exercises in developing artistic expressions
of sensory templates, individuals engaged in work full of surprises, challenges and other
non-routine events may need to engage in deliberate practice (Ericsson, 2009) of performance
elements that most draw on their tacit knowledge.
Finally, the processes proposed in this chapter implicate the role of leaders in shaping
how tacit knowledge is used and legitimized in adaptation. Prior research on adaptation has
described how leaders guide adaptive team development (Kozlowski et al., 1996; 2009) and
how leaders might help teams review and revise their adaptive processes (Burke et al., 2006).
It is clear that leaders have an outsize view of, and influence on organizations, but the role of
a leader’s perception of the situation remains poorly understood in the resilience literature. Yet
those in positions of authority may be most effective in interrupting the defensive, disruptive
reactions in an organization for a relational pause (Barton and Kahn, 2019). As a central focal
point for organizational members, leaders may also be best positioned to model the adaptive
moves needed for a particular challenge. Followers are sensitive to leaders’ embodied interre-
lating and influence (Koivunen and Wennes, 2011; Muhr and Sullivan, 2013; Ladkin, 2013),
 Tacit knowledge and resilience 113

and if leaders openly engage with sensory templates, they may also imbue tacit knowledge
with legitimacy in the organization.

Conclusion

It is challenging to articulate our full experience of the world in general, let alone when we
are buffeted by challenge and adversity. However, appreciating the place of tacit knowledge
in our adaptability, or capacity to change in functional ways, can help us collectively access
the very personal knowledge that shapes our actions and reactions. Adaptation that is more
knowledgeable of our embodied experience in the world can only produce more meaningful,
resilient responses.

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9. The resilience of entrepreneurs in developing
economies
Thomas E. Becker and Jean D. Kabongo

Resilience has been broadly conceptualized as a capacity for positive adaptation following
adversity (Becker and Ferry, 2016; Caza and Milton, 2012; Masten, 2001). Accordingly, we
define entrepreneurial resilience as the capacity of people who start businesses to demon-
strate concrete, positive adaptation to adversity. The resilience of entrepreneurs is relevant to
understanding the success of new ventures because, to survive and grow, entrepreneurs must
overcome competition, economic disruptions, government regulations, and societal problems
(Hedner et al., 2011; Huggins and Thompson, 2015). Entrepreneurial resilience is associated
with successful entrepreneurs who, by overcoming internal and external barriers, develop
innovative business models that bring products and services to the marketplace (Ayala and
Manzano, 2014; Corner et al., 2017). The effects of entrepreneurial resilience extend to their
communities because small- and medium-sized businesses are the driving force of economic
growth (Hizam-Hanafiah et al., 2017).
We argue that the effects of entrepreneurial resilience are particularly far-reaching in
developing economies where a supply of entrepreneurs who constantly renew themselves to
overcome adversity is urgently needed (Krueger and Brazeal, 1994). Entrepreneurs in these
economies are often faced with political corruption, persistent economic instability, societal
turmoil, and other serious and chronic conditions (Marshall and Elzinga-Marshall, 2017). For
example, an entrepreneur operating a business in Uganda exists within an environment of fre-
quent ethnic conflict and social hostilities which have killed thousands of people and displaced
millions. There is also a totalitarian government and the existence of massive corruption,
reflected in Transparency International’s rating of Uganda’s public sector as one of the most
corrupt in the world (Transparency International, 2018).1 This chaotic context makes it very
hard and expensive to start and operate a stable business.
For founders of entrepreneurial firms in developing economies, the adversity associated with
general economic and political conditions accompanies, and often creates, specific difficulties
in the daily operations of managing a business. These challenges include the many procedures
and extensive time required to obtain permits to start a business, begin construction, register
property, pay taxes, and resolve insolvency; the unavailability of credit; and the cost and
documentation requirements for enforcing contracts and trading across borders (World Bank
Group, 2019). Further, the environment in developing economies is populated by “survival
ventures” whereby the business provides basic subsistence for the entrepreneur and his or her
family (Morris et al., 2018). Creation of the business is often a necessity and the entrepreneur
typically has few assets and little money to reinvest in the venture. Founders of survival ven-
tures avoid some of the above difficulties by ignoring business registration requirements, fre-
quently moving their premises, and operating on a cash or barter basis. However, these tactics
do not obviate problems with obtaining credit, enforcing contracts, trading across borders, and
insolvency, and they limit a founder’s ability to grow and sustain the business. Given these

116
 Resilience of entrepreneurs 117

challenges, entrepreneurial resilience is virtually a prerequisite for doing business in develop-

ing economies and the numerous survival ventures that operate within them.
Although important advances have been made, the inclusion of the resilience concept in
the entrepreneurship literature is recent and underdeveloped. Little has been written about the
development of entrepreneurial resilience, the specific effects it has on entrepreneurs, firms
and regions, and the processes through which these effects occur. In addition, the boundary
conditions of entrepreneurial resilience have been largely ignored. Our primary goal is to
address these gaps of knowledge by introducing an illustrative model of entrepreneurial resil-
ience, particularly as it applies to developing economies.

ILLUSTRATIVE MODEL OF ENTREPRENEURIAL RESILIENCE

It is beyond our scope to develop a comprehensive theory of entrepreneurial resilience, and it
is not clear that there yet exists enough evidence to produce a grounded theory of such breadth.
We intend our model, shown in Figure 9.1, to serve as a framework which extends what is
known in an incremental fashion. The model is illustrative in that, although it does not contain
every concept or pathway of interest, it identifies key categories and central pathways, illus-
trating them with specific variables and proposed relationships. Although most of the variables
and processes in the model are pertinent to understanding the resilience of many kinds of
employees, we argue that, due to the level and types of adversity involved, they are especially
relevant to entrepreneurs. For the same reason, we expect the model to be especially useful for
understanding entrepreneurship in developing economies.

Figure 9.1 Illustrative model of entrepreneurial resilience

118 Research handbook on organizational resilience

Antecedents of Entrepreneurial Resilience

Traits of wealth creation

Locke (2000) argued that there are certain traits that are particularly pertinent to entrepreneurs’
ability to create wealth for their firms. Many of these traits have their effects through entrepre-
neurial resilience because they help entrepreneurs manage adversity. We illustrate this point
with three traits. First, an independent vision is crucial for venture growth because it mobilizes
effort and clarifies goals. Baum and Locke (2004) provided evidence for these effects in their
longitudinal study of 229 entrepreneur-chief executive officers and 106 associates. Goals,
self-efficacy, and communicated vision had direct effects on venture growth and mediated
the effects of passion, tenacity, and skill on subsequent growth. Entrepreneurial vision and
self-efficacy were most strongly related to relevant business goals. Not surprisingly, the entre-
preneur’s vision is also a driver of the firm’s strategy (Ruvio et al., 2010) and plays a powerful
role in reducing business uncertainty (Hill and Levenhagen, 1995).
Second, successful entrepreneurs fervently desire that their visions for their products or
services and firms be achieved (Locke, 2000). This drive is rooted in a proactive disposition,
ambition, self-efficacy, and achievement motivation (Florin et al., 2007). Further, because
entrepreneurs often work long hours, especially during start-up phases, they must have high
levels of energy and stamina (Locke and Baum, 2007). With these characteristics a powerful
drive to action can exist that matches the demands of the vision. Third, entrepreneurs face
complex moral problems related to employee and customer relationships and other business
challenges (Hannafey, 2003). The most effective entrepreneurs are guided by a morally justi-
fiable set of principles, including rational decision-making, honesty, thinking for themselves,
fairness, productivity and integrity (Becker, 1998). For example, honesty is essential to
business success because it affects the reputation of the entrepreneur and the firm, and repu-
tation is inexorably tied to customer attraction and satisfaction (Locke and Woiceshya, 1995).
Although there are certainly instances of entrepreneurs behaving badly, such behavior is not in
the long-term best interests of the entrepreneur or his or her firm.
The Democratic Republic of the Congo is a prime example of why the traits of wealth
creation are likely to be essential to the resilience of entrepreneurs in developing economies.
Despite vast mineral wealth in cobalt, diamonds and copper, the DR Congo’s economy has
declined drastically since the mid-1980s due to the poor governance, civil wars, and the deteri-
oration of market prices (Exenberger and Hartmann, 2007). As reported by FocusEconomics,
based on GDP per capita, this and other economic problems have made citizens of the DR
Congo the poorest people on the planet (FocusEconomics, 2018). In this environment,
entrepreneurial resilience requires a vivid vision to build the business despite severe social
problems, and an effective strategy and massive action to do so. A strong sense of ethics
is also needed to establish a strong reputation amid political corruption and the widespread
acceptance of bribery as a business norm. Without these traits it would be nearly impossible to
find one’s way out of poverty and create a business of lasting value for the entrepreneur and
his or her community.

Other individual differences

Certain other personal characteristics provide a baseline of resilience that distinguishes among
people who can generally respond to adversity from those who have more difficulty. We
propose that core self-evaluations, social competence, and leadership skills are individual
 Resilience of entrepreneurs 119

differences that affect entrepreneurial resilience. Core self-evaluations (CSEs) are a set of per-
sonality traits composed of locus of control (the degree to which people believe that they have
control over the outcomes of events), neuroticism (level of emotional stability), generalized
self-efficacy (confidence that one can handle most problems), and self-esteem (an individual’s
emotional evaluation of his or her own worth) (Judge et al., 2003). Research has demonstrated
that CSEs predict job satisfaction, stress and burnout, performance, and economic success
(Judge and Bono, 2001; Kammeyer-Mueller et al., 2009).
We propose that CSEs are important predictors of entrepreneurial resilience because the
beliefs that one can substantially influence outcomes and handle setbacks while maintaining
a sense of self-worth are crucially important when faced with the kinds of adversity common
to entrepreneurial settings, particularly in developing economies. For example, in Venezuela,
economic policies, including an extreme fossil fuel subsidy, have led to hyperinflation,
shortages of basic goods, and drastic increases in unemployment and crime (Rosati, 2017).
Faced with such an environment, it is difficult to imagine that Venezuelan entrepreneurs could
continue to function without high CSEs.
Another individual characteristic that is central to entrepreneurial resilience in developing
economies is social competence, that is, social adeptness and good communication skills
(Rodríguez-Sánchez and Perea, 2015). As one of the components of a business model, social
competence is helpful in nearly any entrepreneurial context because entrepreneurs must work
successfully with others to make industry connections, acquire funding, share experiences,
start the business, and promote growth (Coviello and Munro, 1995; Lechner and Dowling,
2003). In a developing economy social competence may be particularly valuable. For instance,
in 2017, The International Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans, and Intersex Association reported
that in the Republic of Yemen and Iraq, sex among gay individuals is a capital offense, and in
India, Zambia and Guyana such relationships are punishable by 15 years to life imprisonment
(ILGA, 2017). According to BBC News, in Tanzania individuals with albinism are sometimes
mutilated or killed because, according to beliefs in muti (black magic), body parts of albinos
have magical powers (BBC News, 2015). Thus, in these countries aspiring entrepreneurs who
happen to be gay or albino must overcome social stigmas by being highly skilled in getting
along with people. Developing positive business relationships allows these individuals to be
favorably perceived and supported despite their sexual orientation or skin pigmentation.
Although leadership skills are important to entrepreneurs in any context, there are several
reasons why they are particularly relevant in developing economies. First, the frequency of
changes in the political and social environment in these economies makes the business context
especially ambiguous, and the magnitude of changes makes them highly stressful. According
to path-goal theory (House, 1996), directive leadership is more effective under ambiguous
or stressful conditions and, therefore, this style of leading may help entrepreneurs and their
employees deal with adverse political and social adversity. Second, given the mercurial nature
of the environment, entrepreneurs in developing economies may need to master the full range
of leadership skills more fully than their counterparts in more developed economies. For
instance, when the environment is relatively stable, leaders in developing economies can focus
more on transformational leadership (e.g., individualized consideration and idealized influ-
ence), and apply humanistic philosophies such as Ubuntu, the African worldview emphasizing
the interconnectedness of self and society (Le Grange, 2011). When the environment becomes
more adverse, these same leaders need to be adept at switching to a transactional style (e.g.,
issuing orders and using contingent reward), and apply more directive, top-down approaches.
120 Research handbook on organizational resilience

Finally, lateral and upward influence is even more important in developing economies than
elsewhere. Entrepreneurs need to use their charisma, transactional and transformational skills,
and referent power to negotiate conditions needed for the firm to prosper.
Mexico is an example of a developing economy in which entrepreneurial leadership skills
are critically important. The country continues to face urgent problems, including poverty,
rampant corruption, and systematic human rights violations (Gerson and Nieto, 2016). There
is also widespread crime related to drug cartels and corresponding abuses of law enforcement,
especially in the south and in indigenous communities and urban neighborhoods (Brown et
al., 2017). A Mexican entrepreneur in these areas who can match his or her leadership style to
the situation, using lateral and upward influence to persuade corrupt officials, police officers,
and the local cartel to leave his or business more or less alone, is more likely to survive and
thrive than someone who cannot lead his or her business through the maze of venality. These
same skills could help individuals build social networks to reform policies and regulations that
constrain small businesses in their areas.

Social factors
Family support for an entrepreneurial venture is often a cornerstone of firm success. Family
members can provide emotional and financial support and, in the cases of family businesses,
work-related effort and productivity. These contributions, or the lack of them, are especially
impactful in developing economies, where family businesses are prevalent. For instance, the
failed transition to a market economy plunged much of the Ukranian population into poverty.
Further, in 2014 and 2015, the value of Ukrainian currency dropped 80 percent of its value due
primarily to the war in Donbass and the annexation of Crimea by Russia. As of 2017, Ukraine
is the second poorest country in Europe, after Moldova. Under such conditions, help from
one’s family must be an invaluable resource, and Ukrainian entrepreneurs running survival
ventures in the largely family-run Artisan textile and farming industries may be particularly in
need of family support in all its forms.
In addition to family support, entrepreneurs can benefit from business networks and
professional associations. For example, although the Philippines still has relatively under-
developed infrastructure and limited access to basic services such as sanitation, business in
the country has begun to thrive. Part of the reason is the availability of business networks
such as the Philippines Business Referral Network, a group of like-minded business owners,
entrepreneurs and marketing professionals who believe in fostering long-term strategic busi-
ness relationships to grow their businesses (Philippines Business Referral Network, 2018).
Entrepreneurs who become involved in these kinds of networks are more likely to be resilient
because their partnerships and strategic alliances potentially add stability and social resources
during the inevitable setbacks. A similar case can be made for professional associations. For
instance, in the Philippines, there is an urgent need for improved healthcare, and entrepreneurs
in that field will benefit from a relationship with the Philippine Nurses Association, a group
that promotes the professional growth of nurses toward high standards. Professional associ-
ations provide timely information and advice regarding their fields of interest and serve as
another social support for fostering entrepreneurial resilience.
 Resilience of entrepreneurs 121

Outcomes of Entrepreneurial Resilience

For entrepreneurs
Among the most established outcomes of resilience are individuals’ health and motivation.
For instance, resilience reduces employees’ level of mental distress, burnout, and depression,
and improves their physical and psychological health, and quality of life (Hu et al., 2015).
These findings make intuitive sense in that, if resilience is the capacity to adapt positively to
adversity, the manifestation of that capacity is positive adaptation. For a given person, this
adaptation normally implies the maintenance of or relatively quick return to a healthy equilib-
rium. This applies to entrepreneurs just as it does to other workers. Lower resilience has also
been linked to a stronger intent to leave the organization (Arnup and Bowles, 2016), probably
because those with little resilience are less able to tolerate the daily hassles of the workplace.
The corresponding connection for entrepreneurs is that those with less resilience are more
inclined to quit their ventures while those with more resilience continue the business. Given
the extent of stress typically associated with founding a firm, the effect of low resilience on
escaping adversity (in the form of quitting the venture) may be even greater for entrepreneurs
than for other populations of workers.
Further, because threats to health and motivation are higher in developing economies, and
stress is greater, the effect of resilience on entrepreneurs leading survival firms is particularly
strong. For example, in Afghanistan the oldest businesses are carpet making, produce (fruits
and nuts), and opium. Entrepreneurs in these professions must compete for employees with
the mining industry and the newer construction and telecommunications employers. Add to
this the oft-changing political system, corporate and governmental corruption, decades of war
and neglect, and widespread violent crime, and it is not hard to imagine the overall stress and
other threats to well-being that face many Afghan small business entrepreneurs. Under these
circumstances, staying healthy and inspired while managing to start or grow a business must
require an uncommon degree of resilience.

For the firm

There is a growing body of work that documents the impact of entrepreneurial resilience
on venture survival, growth and performance. The traits of founders are often transformed
into the culture of organizations (Lounsbury and Glynn, 2001; Schein, 1983) and, thus, the
resilience of founders can become part of their firms. Organizational resilience, in turn,
influences firm survival and growth because resilience involves a capacity for addressing
external stressors (Dai et al., 2017), increases the ability to develop customized responses to
adversity (Lengnick-Hall and Beck, 2005), promotes a positive reputation (Gao et al., 2017),
and enhances the ability to sense and correct maladaptive tendencies (Ortiz-de-Mandojana and
Bansal, 2016).
Similarly, entrepreneurial resilience is tied to firm performance. For example, Ayala and
Manzano (2014) demonstrated that resilience, especially the characteristic of resourcefulness,
predicted entrepreneurial success. A similar effect was found among small and medium-sized
firms in Bangladesh, where aspects of entrepreneurial resilience (including entrepreneurial
orientation and readiness) were better predictors of firm performance than were characteristics
of the firm (e.g., firm size and source of capital) (Islam et al., 2011).
122 Research handbook on organizational resilience

For the region

Schumpeter (1934) considered entrepreneurship to be the driving force of any economy, and
Venkataraman (2004) discussed how entrepreneurship in technical fields can result in regional
transformation. Because entrepreneurs inevitably confront adversity, the economic perfor-
mance and growth of a region is likely to be affected by entrepreneurial resilience, at least in
certain markets. For example, Morris and Lewis (1991) argued that entrepreneurship affects
multiple components of societal quality of life, including economic vitality, the physical and
mental health of citizens, work-related values and norms, technological progress, the quality
of societal institutions, and the natural environment. Further, in their review of the literature on
money and well-being, Diener and Biswas-Diener (2002) concluded that there are large cor-
relations between the wealth of nations and the mean reports of well-being in them. Although,
past a certain level, higher income does not guarantee happiness, there are substantial rela-
tionships between income and mental health in poor nations, and the risk of unhappiness is
much higher for poor people. Thus, those regions that have resilient entrepreneurs should be
more successful economically, and this is apt to result in greater well-being of members of
the region. Well-being increases physical health, the cohesiveness of social relationships, and
other dimensions of the quality of life, and a better quality of life decreases hardships, or at
least the perceived frequency and severity of hardships (Coutu, 2002).
These effects of entrepreneurial resilience may be greatest in transitional economies such
as the one in Albania. The People’s Socialist Republic of Albania was founded under the
leadership of Enver Hoxha, and the country transformed into communism. Following the
Revolutions of 1991, the Socialist Republic was dissolved, and the fourth Republic of Albania
was established. A long period of conversion ensued and Albania, now a unitary parliamen-
tary constitutional republic, is still in transition. In moving toward a more capitalist system,
a variety of profound changes occur, including liberalization, privatization, and the restructur-
ing of government, banking and trade. Although these changes are beneficial for entrepreneur-
ship, they also present adversities due to the level of societal turmoil and historical influence.
Thus, over the long term, it is the most resilient entrepreneurs, and their firms and regions, who
are most likely to benefit from transitional economies.

Mediators and Moderators

Throughout the preceding discussion we have alluded to the economic development of nations
and regions as a moderator of the relationships between entrepreneurial resilience and its
outcomes. We have also mentioned in passing several potential mediators, that is, ways in
which entrepreneurial resilience may have its effects. In the following sections we make these
propositions more explicit and explain them in greater detail.

Mediators
Research on resilience has identified a variety of factors that may mediate the effects of
resilience on individuals. Among these are positive emotions, adaptive coping, and psy-
chological commitment. In the face of adversity, resilient people tend to have and maintain
more positive emotions than less resilient persons, probably because antecedents such as core
self-evaluations and social competence to some degree inoculate individuals against negative
situations. For example, a study by Avey et al. (2008) involving a broad cross-section of
organizations and jobs found that, in the context of organizational change, employees’ psy-
 Resilience of entrepreneurs 123

chological capital, including resilience, was related to their positive emotions. Positive emo-
tions, in turn, were related to employee attitudes (engagement and cynicism) and behaviors
(organizational citizenship and deviance). Azab et al. (2018) also observed the mediating role
of positive emotions on the link between resilience and the outcome of customers’ perceptions
of fair treatment.
Resilience also appears to affect outcomes through adaptive coping. For instance, research
has demonstrated that resilience training for National Guard members results in better coping
via self-awareness and mental agility, leading to improved health and well-being (Griffith and
West, 2013); resilient health care professionals regularly exposed to pediatric trauma adopt
optimism and sharing as coping strategies and thus experience less psychological distress and
burnout than their less resilient colleagues (McGarry et al., 2013); and resilient employees are
better than their less resilient peers at adapting to organizational change due to coping (open-
ness to and acceptance of change), which predicts their later job satisfaction and intent to leave
their employers (Wanberg and Banas, 2000).
Finally, there is reason to believe commitment to the venture mediates the effects of
resilience. There is a mass of literature demonstrating that commitment to various focuses,
including ventures, affects individuals’ work-related attitudes and behaviors and organiza-
tional outcomes such as productivity, profits and turnover (Klein et al., 2009; Meyer, 2016).
Although the evidence for the impact of resilience on commitment is sparse, it is beginning
to accumulate. For example, Youssef and Luthans (2007) found that resilience, as a psycho-
logical resource, explained unique variance in organizational commitment, beyond variance
accounted for by hope and optimism. Similar findings were reported by Çetin (2011). In
a longitudinal investigation, Shin et al. (2012) found that organizational inducements and
resilience were positively related to employees’ commitment to change. Commitment, in turn,
was positively related to the outcomes of behavioral and creative support for change.
As an example of how these mediators play out in developing economies, consider the gross
hardships caused by Dengue hemorrhagic fever. According to the World Health Organization,
Dengue fever is the most serious mosquito-borne viral disease on Earth, with 1.8 billion people
at risk, most in economically developing countries in Central and South America, Africa and
Asia (World Health Organization, 2009). Each year, 500,000 cases of Dengue hemorrhagic
fever are diagnosed, resulting in 25,000 deaths. This disease affects entrepreneurs in affected
areas in that not only may they themselves become infected, but so can members of their
families, other employees, and customers. Added to the many other challenges, Dengue makes
entrepreneurial resilience even more pertinent. Our model predicts that, compared to their
less resilient counterparts, highly resilient entrepreneurs in Dengue-infested areas produce
desired business outcomes because these entrepreneurs experience optimism and other posi-
tive emotions, utilize more adaptive coping strategies, and retain greater commitment to their
businesses. However, as explained in the next section, positive outcomes of positive emotions,
coping and commitment cannot be expected in all circumstances.

Moderators
Our model holds that adversity (in the form of challenging economic conditions, entrepre-
neurs’ lack of control, and certain types of conflicts) moderates the effects of entrepreneurial
resilience on individual, firm and regional outcomes. That is, an entrepreneur comes to an
adverse situation with a given level of resilience, and the outcomes depend upon certain fea-
tures of the situation. The model offers an explanation of why the entrepreneur has the level of
124 Research handbook on organizational resilience

resilience that he or she does at that point in time. The antecedents (e.g., entrepreneur’s core
self-evaluations, independent vision, and family support) determine the entrepreneur’s resil-
ience at the time the adverse event occurs, and the moderators affect the impact that his or her
resilience has on the outcomes. The interaction effect is mediated by the variables discussed
in the last section.
A central premise regarding moderation is that the interaction between adversity and resil-
ience is curvilinear. That is, when there is little or no adversity, resilience is irrelevant because
it is not needed, and when adversity is extraordinarily severe, resilience is ineffective because
nobody can overcome it (Becker and Ferry, 2016). As an example of the ineffectiveness of
resilience, following an extreme economic downturn even the most resilient entrepreneur
would be unable to rebound to profitability if the downturn is accompanied by a corrupt polit-
ical system, civil war, and severe poverty.
Further, as the model illustrates, we believe adversity moderates both the effect of resilience
on the mediators and of the mediators on the outcomes. For instance, under mild-to-moderate
adverse conditions, highly resilient and less resilient entrepreneurs may both experience posi-
tive emotions, though we would predict the highly resilient entrepreneurs would be more pos-
itive. Under more adverse conditions, the difference in positive emotions between those high
and low in resilience should be considerably greater because the highly resilient entrepreneurs
have higher core self-evaluations, social support and other antecedent variables. In addition,
under extreme conditions, even entrepreneurs that are able to maintain a positive outlook may
be unable to grow their ventures because positive emotions by themselves cannot necessarily
overcome the effects of extraordinary adversity.
However, in the normal range of adversity, entrepreneurial resilience should produce the
effects shown in Figure 9.1. The figure highlights several common types of adversity faced by
entrepreneurs, to wit, challenging economic conditions, a lack of control over circumstances,
and business-related conflicts. We briefly discuss these below.

Economic conditions
Our illustrations in previous sections have underscored the potential impact of resource
availability and market conditions on entrepreneurial resilience. It is easier to be resilient in
developing countries such as Turkey and Vietnam than in Uganda or Haiti because, although
the former countries are classified by the IMF World Economic Outlook as “developing,”
resources and market conditions are undeniably more favorable for entrepreneurs than in the
latter two countries. Turkey’s economy and diplomatic initiatives have led to its status as
a regional power and its location has imbued it with strategic and geopolitical importance.
Over the last 20 years, Vietnam’s economic growth rate has been among the highest in the
world (Anwar and Nguyen, 2011; Le and Tran-Nam, 2018) and its trade and industry reforms
resulted in its membership in the World Trade Organization. Therefore, economic adversity
is not as great in these two countries as in other developing economies and, thus, the need for
entrepreneurial resilience may not be as great.
On the other hand, with economic opportunity come different sources of adversity, not the
least of which is the rise of competition. The more competitors and the greater their compe-
tence, the more relevant resilience is to entrepreneurial success (Bullough and Renko, 2013;
Gunasekaran et al., 2011). Political competence in the form of lobbying and other forms of
legitimate and illegitimate persuasion is probably a source of competitive advantage in all
countries and even more so in developing economies. For instance, competing in the context
 Resilience of entrepreneurs 125

of China’s anti-monopoly law requires skilled political maneuvering to survive the uneven and
often unfair enforcement of the law (The US–China Business Council, 2014). Competitors
who have such skills are likely to overcome those who may provide superior products or
services but lack political competence.

Control over circumstances

Parker et al. (2015) examined both mediation and moderation in three studies (two experi-
ments with students and one survey of employees). Trait resilience was positively associated
with adaptive coping and performance outcomes, and these relationships were particularly
strong when highly resilient people had control over the task (i.e., discretion as to how to
prioritize, schedule and perform relevant activities) and their jobs were demanding (e.g.,
pressing deadlines). Thus, level of control and job demand moderated the effect of resilience
on performance. In addition, adaptive coping partially mediated the effect of resilience on
performance such that highly resilient persons benefited from high control because it enabled
adaptive coping.
We extend this notion to entrepreneurs in developing economies in that a lack of control
is a form of adversity, and control in developing economies may be constrained by a variety
of factors. These factors include those noted in previous sections, including ethnic conflict
and social unrest, biases against certain racial groups, political corruption, a poor economy,
poverty, the value of currency, and other conditions that limit the degrees of choice and action
of entrepreneurs. Per our general premise of moderation, we predict that such factors can
increase the relevance of resilience up to a point because they create adversity that must be
overcome. Past that point, however, resilience becomes less effective.

Conflict
Task and relationship conflict have been found to increase the positive relationship between
emotional resilience (the extent to which a person recovers quickly from negative emotions)
and self-perceptions of leader emergence in a group (Li et al., 2012). That is, resilience appears
to be most relevant when conflict is higher. In addition, results of multilevel analysis showed
that the presence of daily resilience (as a within-person state) is essential to buffer the spill-
over of interpersonal conflict at work to the nonwork domain (Martinez-Corts et al., 2015).
Specifically, on days that employees were not very resilient, interpersonal conflicts resulted in
higher work–life conflict experiences. Thus, level of interpersonal conflict at work moderated
the relation between resilience and the spillover to nonwork settings such that the relationship
was stronger with increased levels of work conflict, suggesting again that resilience is most
relevant when conflict is moderate to high. As with economic conditions and control over
circumstances, this notion applies to entrepreneurs in that moderate to high levels of conflict
correspond to similar levels of adversity. Up to a point, conflict strengthens (a) the connection
between entrepreneurial resilience and positive emotions, coping skills and commitment to
the venture, and (b) the relationships between these mediators and entrepreneurial, firm and
regional outcomes.
126 Research handbook on organizational resilience

IMPLICATIONS FOR RESEARCH AND PRACTICE

Our model has several direct implications for research and practice. We have argued that
the model is particularly relevant under conditions of moderate to high adversity, including
those conditions characteristic of developing economies. This proposition deserves attention
because, if true, it will define the boundary conditions of the corresponding hypotheses.
Testing the proposition will require examining the model at various levels of adversity, that is,
varying levels of economic conditions, control of circumstances, and conflict. This approach
will also allow an examination of our proposed curvilinearity of moderating effects, that is,
that the links between entrepreneurial resilience and mediators, and mediators and outcomes,
are such that the relationships are weak or nonexistent under conditions of no adversity and
extreme adversity and strongest under conditions of moderate to high adversity. Research on
the role of adversity would further shed light on the generalizability of the model, that is, the
extent to which the model has greater utility in some samples and settings (such as entrepre-
neurs in developing economies) versus others (such as sales employees in the United States).
A second implication for research is the need to examine the specific variables and paths
included in the model. We have emphasized that the model is illustrative in that we have
not included all possible antecedents, mediators, moderators and outcomes but, rather, have
selectively chosen variables that are grounded in prior theory and research on resilience. These
variables have not previously been organized in the way we have suggested or tested in the
context of our model, but there is some evidence tying them to resilience in certain situations.
The same is generally true of the paths included in the model in that the variables under
“antecedents” have previously been treated as antecedents, those under “mediators” have been
examined as mediators, and so on. An exception to the empirical grounding of paths is the two
types of moderation we have proposed. A few studies have investigated the variables as mod-
erators, but it is not clear from these studies whether the moderators interact with resilience,
the mediators, or both. Our model proposes that both sets of moderating effects are probable.
Finally, we suggested that entrepreneurial resilience affects the resilience of the organiza-
tion. Entrepreneurs’ resilience also may affect the resilience of employees through modeling,
social information processing, and emotional contagion. To the degree that a given entrepre-
neur is charismatic and performs as a transformational leader, employees are likely to adopt
attitudes (including believing they have the capacity for resilience) and behaviors (actually
being resilient) that are congruent with those of the entrepreneur. At a higher level of analy-
sis, if entrepreneurial resilience increases the resilience of employees and organizations, the
resilience of the geographic region in which the entrepreneurs operate may also be affected.
Although the spillover effects may often be positive (i.e., what is good for the entrepreneur
is usually good for the firm and region), there are times when they can be expected to be
negative. For instance, a highly resilient but unethical entrepreneur may have high motivation
and intend to grow the business, but his or her dishonesty could actually hinder firm growth
by decreasing customer trust. If such effects are widespread, such entrepreneurs could damage
economic performance of the region. Research investigating multilevel effects would reveal
the magnitude and limits of the spreading impact of entrepreneurial resilience.
Specific implications for practice must await tests of the model and, if needed, further model
development. However, we believe that two suggestions can be made at this time. First, at the
individual level, entrepreneurial resilience in developing economies can be fostered by way
of the antecedents. For instance, entrepreneurs in developing economies can learn leadership
 Resilience of entrepreneurs 127

skills, improve their social competence, and become involved in business networks and
professional associations. Entrepreneurs can develop themselves through resilience-related
experiences (e.g., seeking out and overcoming adversity) or training, though we believe that
learning from professionally qualified trainers is more effective than trial-and-error learning.
This expectation is supported by the evidence that resilience can be increased through carefully
designed training and development activities (Robertson et al., 2015; Vanhove et al., 2016).
Second, at higher levels of analyses, the good news is that resilience serves to overcome
adversity; the bad news is that resilience is not a panacea and its effects cannot be guaranteed if
adversity reaches extreme levels. Thus, at the regional, national and global levels, government
can act to ensure that economic conditions, entrepreneurial control over circumstances, and
external conflicts are not so unfavorable as to negate entrepreneurial resilience. A promising
approach would be to manage the number of procedures, time requirements and costs asso-
ciated with starting a business, getting a location, accessing finance, dealing with day-to-day
operations, and operating in a secure environment (World Bank Group, 2019).

CONCLUSION
We believe that entrepreneurship is a heroic endeavor, and this is especially true in developing
economies. Entrepreneurs face considerable difficulty under the best of circumstances, and in
developing economies the circumstances are exponentially more difficult. Indeed, we have
argued that such situations may sometimes exceed the bounds of resilience. Nevertheless,
entrepreneurs continue to survive and often thrive in these economies, and it is our hope that
the ideas in this chapter will encourage greater research focus on and practical attention to this
important phenomenon.

NOTE
1. We use “developing economies” to refer to countries identified as such in the International
Monetary Fund’s World Economic Database (International Monetary Fund, 2018). Uganda and
other developing countries have many positive qualities. For example, the government has protected
wildlife via creation of 60 protected areas, and the National Science and Technology and Innovation
Policy and Uganda Vision 2040 aim to transform citizens’ lives by improving the private sector,
education and infrastructure. If we seem to focus on negative qualities of the developing economies,
it is because it is these qualities that make entrepreneurship especially challenging.

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10. Organizational resilience: a social exchange
perspective
Morela Hernandez, Scott Baker, Megan Hess and
Jared Harris1

Organizations often experience hardship, whether derived from the chronic stress of a pro-
longed recession, the widespread devastation brought on by a natural disaster, or the sudden
shock of a fire on the premises. The ability to survive, and even thrive despite these hardships,
has been defined as organizational resilience: “the capacity to rebound from adversity strength-
ened and more resourceful” (Sutcliffe and Vogus, 2003, p. 97). Although understanding and
helping organizations develop resilience is a timely and important goal for business leaders
and scholars alike (van der Vegt et al., 2015), thus far researchers have mainly focused on
the use of operational (i.e., structures and roles) and psychological (i.e., attitudes and beliefs)
strategies to recover from hardship (Vogus and Sutcliffe, 2007). Relatively little attention has
been placed on understanding the role that stakeholders – defined as groups that have a defined
interest in the organization, such as shareholders, employees, customers, suppliers, competi-
tors and the community (Freeman, 1984) – can play in facilitating organizational resilience.
We know that following the catastrophic events of 11 September 2001, resources developed
from internal stakeholders in the form of employee goodwill predicted success in the airline
industry (Gittell et al., 2006). Yet how external stakeholders might similarly influence the
organization during times of hardship remains underexplored. Given the unique resources that
stakeholders help the organization generate, it is problematic that we currently lack theory
on the role that these social exchange relationships can play in developing organizational
resilience.
A well-established body of scholarship has noted that stakeholders can encourage inno-
vation, create demand, enhance employee engagement, facilitate heightened awareness to
external stimuli (Rudolph and Repenning, 2002), and generate the flexibility needed to deal
with changing circumstances (Freeman et al., 2007; 2010; Harrison et al., 2010). Such ties
can also serve to provide organizations with insight, and assistance (Leana and Van Buren,
1999), or variety (Lengnick-Hall and Beck, 2005). Though scholars have investigated the
nature, importance and general necessity of stakeholders, the question remains “why do some
organizations […] successfully adjust and even thrive amid adversity while others fail to do
so?” (van der Vegt et al., 2015, p. 971).
The purpose of this chapter is to explain the managerial processes set in motion by the
experience of hardship and to explore the role that stakeholder relationships can play in
facilitating organizational resilience. We begin by briefly defining organizational resilience
and then review the literature on social exchange theory as a basis for understanding the link
between stakeholder relationships, the experience of hardship, and organizational resilience.
Through a field study of 184 organizations across a variety of industries and 79 communities,
we examine how and why stakeholder bonds can activate unique resources to fuel organiza-
tional resilience.

131
132 Research handbook on organizational resilience

ORGANIZATIONAL RESILIENCE AND SOCIAL EXCHANGES

For organizations to overcome adversity, they must first face a substantial set-back, crisis,
or obstacle that triggers the opportunity to build resilience. The concept of organizational
resilience thus presupposes the experience of hardship, which prompts the development and
application of internal and external resources to cope with adverse events. Organizations that
demonstrate resilience resist the well-documented inclination toward rigidity in the face of
adversity (e.g., Staw et al., 1981), instead remaining flexible and adaptable to current and
potential future challenges (Weick et al., 1999). Organizational resilience can be demonstrated
in response to a wide range of experiences of hardship – rare or commonplace, severe or mild,
short-lived or prolonged – that result in a return to a strengthened and resourceful organization
(Britt et al., 2016).
Though common across the literature on organizational resilience is the enactment of psy-
chological and operational strategies, we know much less about episodes in which managerial
responses to hardship rely on stakeholders. Research based on case studies suggests that rela-
tionships between organizations and their social context can affect resilience (Lengnick-Hall
and Beck, 2005; van der Vegt et al., 2015). For example, following the New Zealand earth-
quakes (Stevenson et al., 2014), recovery efforts were more successful for businesses with
strong pre-existing collaboration networks. Toyota’s recovery efforts after the 2011 tsunami
were enabled through coordinated efforts with their overseas operations, suppliers and dealers
(Asano, 2012). Yet amidst the demonstrated importance of stakeholders embedded within the
organization’s social context, it is unclear how organizations and communities manage these
complex collaborative processes (van der Vegt et al., 2015).
One approach for gaining new insights is by examining the social exchange processes that
occur between organizations and their stakeholders. Social exchange is an interdependent
activity whereby at least two or more actors engage in an exchange of goods or behaviors in
order to generate benefit for one another (Thibault and Kelley, 1959; Homans, 1961). Each
actor in the interaction has something the other actor values. Through mutual interactions, the
exchange of these valuable goods or behaviors generates reciprocal obligations (Emerson,
1976). Different from economic exchanges (Blau, 1964), social exchanges are more diffuse
and unspecified. Participants rely upon trust, the exchanges are more open-ended, and these
exchanges produce feelings of gratitude. In contrast, economic exchanges are more explicit
and can be enforced through contracts, thus decreasing the need for trust.
Emotions are a particularly important aspect of social exchanges because of their influence
on both the exchange process and outcomes (Lawler and Thye, 1999). During the process of
social exchange, emotions can signal important information (Frank, 1993) and shape collective
cognitions. As it relates to social exchange outcomes, it is critical to consider the jointness of
the activity; that is, an activity that requires the help of others to complete. Jointness is greatest
when individuals have difficulty distinguishing between their contributions and the experience
of shared responsibility in the success or failure of the task (Lawler, 2001). When jointness
is high, social objects (e.g., an organization, institution, community) are more likely to be
perceived as the source of their feelings. Attributing emotions to a unifying social object can
increase the solidarity of the group, resulting in stronger and more expansive social exchange
relationships in the future. This can result in increased collaboration, the giving of gifts with no
expectations of reciprocity, and accepting more incomplete contracts (Lawler, 2001).
 Resilience and social exchange 133

Social exchanges can be reciprocal in nature, occurring in a sequential manner between

two actors across time. For example, Masterson and colleagues (2000) found that employees
who perceived fairness in exchange relationships with their supervisor and organization felt
obligated to reciprocate to preserve these relationships. That is, when employees experienced
fair treatment from events such as a performance review, or possibly an organization-wide
reduction in workforce, this fairness was viewed as a contribution in a social exchange rela-
tionship. This contribution laid the groundwork for a reciprocal obligation of voluntary behav-
iors from the employee as represented by higher levels of citizenship behaviors, organizational
commitment, and retention (Masterson et al., 2000). Thus, a reciprocal obligation is created for
a return at a future time as one actor provides something of value to another.
At the collective level, productive social exchanges occur from individual actors coor-
dinating their efforts and resources and providing the benefits to a group or collective
endeavor (Lawler, 2001). These exchange relationships, for instance, can enable effective
business-to-business interactions (see for a review, Lambe et al., 2001); actors’ collective
efforts produce a single good that is greater than the sum of its individual parts. In a study
of independent sales representatives and manufacturers, Anderson and Weitz (1989) found
that productive social exchanges stabilized long-term channel distribution relationships. The
development of long-term relationships provided a strategic advantage allowing manufac-
turers to achieve greater coordination, flexibility, efficiency, and cost control (Anderson and
Weitz, 1986). Notably, prior findings suggest that long-term social exchange relationships can
enable effective interactions by cultivating and demonstrating commitment among stakehold-
ers. Distinct from developing comprehensive contracts to manage business transactions, which
can be difficult, costly and time consuming, social exchange relationships provide greater
flexibility and adaptation to others, thus enabling complex exchanges across unforeseen cir-
cumstances (Gundlach and Murphy, 1993; Hallen et al., 1991).
In this research, we adopted a grounded theory approach (e.g., Corbin and Strauss, 2008;
Locke, 2001) to examine how social exchanges between stakeholders relate to how organiza-
tions demonstrate resilience. Through the iterative analysis of data from a broad cross-section
of organizations, we focused on settings in which overcoming hardship had been a salient
experience for the organization and its members.

METHODS

Research Context and Data

We collected data from 2010 to 2015 and classified hardships experienced by organizations in
our sample into four broad categories: economic, geographic, environmental, and social. Table
10.1 provides a summary of the sample by category of hardship.
Our inductive study involved 184 managers from small- to mid-sized businesses in a variety
of industries (17 agriculture, 37 manufacturing, 34 retail, and 96 service organizations) from
79 communities within a single US mid-Atlantic state. The majority of these businesses were
located in small, rural communities, but others were located in economically-depressed urban
centers. On average, these organizations had been in operation for 28 years (SD = 29.6) and
employed 80 full-time workers (SD = 416.0). The wide range of hardships experienced by
participants included both unexpected shocks and long-term stresses, and represented the
134 Research handbook on organizational resilience

Table 10.1 Summary of sample by experience of hardship

Category of hardship Description Participants by industry sector

Economic Rising input prices; declining customer 83 organizations:
discretionary spending; lack of – 6 agriculture
financing
– 21 manufacturing

– 18 retail

– 38 service
Geographic Difficulty attracting skilled workers; 54 organizations:
“brain drain”; lack of infrastructure – 2 agriculture
(roads, high-speed internet, cellular);
real estate – 10 manufacturing

– 9 retail

– 33 service
Environmental Flood; fire; storms 20 organizations:
– 6 agriculture

– 3 manufacturing

– 4 retail

– 7 service
Social Illness; turnover in leadership team; 27 organizations:
employee embezzlement; immigration – 3 agriculture
issues; crime; poverty
– 3 manufacturing

– 3 retail

– 18 service

experiences of organizations in a variety of industries – two key characteristics missing from

prior work of organizational resilience. Moreover, limiting our sample to small and mid-size
businesses, rather than start-ups or large firms, eliminated potential confounding factors, such
as the liabilities of newness or size. Likewise, limiting our sample to a single state helped to
control for the potential confounding effects of regulatory changes.
Participants were asked to write essays reflecting on the hardships their businesses had
experienced. The participants discussed their greatest challenges, their reactions, and how they
plan to approach future challenges. Sample essay prompts included the following: “Please
provide one or two recent examples of significant hardships your business has experienced.
What actions did you take to mitigate these hardships?” “Describe how your business has
overcome a difficult situation or crisis,” “Describe the major hardships that have had an impact
on your community over the past five years,” “Describe your company’s interaction with the
local community,” “Looking to the future, what are your plans for long-term operational and
financial stability (succession planning, etc.), and for continuing growth?” “What is the key
competitive advantage that will drive your business into the future?” “Is there anything else
about your business we should know, but haven’t asked?” The written accounts provided
by managers of the organizations in our sample were our primary source of data, which we
supplemented with interviews and financial records. Compensation for participating in the
 Resilience and social exchange 135

study involved the opportunity to attend an executive education program at no charge and the
possibility of receiving an award. To encourage honest reporting, participants were assured
that their responses would be kept confidential.
We also collected the financial records from 87 percent of the participants in the study.
This financial data consisted of five years of historical information about revenue, profits,
and the number of full-time employees. This information helped to validate our designation
of these businesses as “resilient,” since by definition organizations that demonstrate resilience
must not only survive but also thrive under adverse conditions (Britt et al., 2016; Sutcliffe
and Vogus, 2003). Growth in revenue, profits and size are common indications of a thriving
business, although certainly other outcomes could also be considered. We eliminated accounts
from organizations that had been in business for fewer than five years or that were not located
in economically depressed communities as defined by the Federal Historically Underutilized
Business Zones (HUBZone) program (i.e., where 50 percent or more of the households have
an income which is less than 60 percent of the area median gross income, or where the area has
a poverty rate of at least 25 percent; Dilger, 2017).
Figure 10.1 summarizes the data structure that emerged from our iterative and simultaneous
data collection, coding and analysis (following the template used by Pratt et al., 2006). It is
important to note that our data structure, in effect, represents a list of parts that emerged from
our data, and our theory of organizational resilience processes is formed from these component
parts.

FINDINGS
Overview

The first and most obvious insight from the managers in our study was that hardship threatened
the status quo and required a response for their business to endure. Both sudden and chronic
hardships created the conditions where managers experienced actual losses or perceived the
threat of potential loss. Less obvious was our discovery as we analyzed our data that the
experience of hardship extended beyond the boundaries of the business. The social context in
which the organization resided was also affected. The loss of jobs from a plant, for instance,
meant lost income for entire families as well as community decline. Thus, the experience of
hardship felt by managers ultimately reached a number of its stakeholders in myriad ways.
The experience of loss and its related uncertainty prompted managers to explore differ-
ent pathways to generate the resources necessary for combating hardships and developing
resilience. Resilience strategies that were in the realm of managerial control and influence
consisted of psychological and operational strategies. Managers pursuing these strategies
maintained optimism through adversity, planned for the future, and made operational changes
to their organizations that mitigated costs and built new capabilities. The overall potential of
these strategies, however, was somewhat limited; managers faced constant obstacles to build-
ing the slack resources required to endure hardship. Access to steady cash flow limited their
flexibility and their location often presented unique challenges in the form of limited access
to a skilled workforce.
These challenges led over half of managers in our study to also pursue a resilience strategy
that entailed engaging with the broader social context (i.e., multiple stakeholders) to gain
136 Research handbook on organizational resilience

Figure 10.1 Data structure

access to latent resources. As we analyzed the data, we realized this strategy unfolded through
managers invoking an interpretive schema, what we call a shared passion for place. This
shared understanding helped facilitate complex multi-stakeholder collaboration via social
exchange relationships. The resulting transfer of resources aided businesses in their efforts in
overcoming hardship and provided benefits back to stakeholders. That is, the social exchange
of economic and socioemotional goods for the survival of place was tantamount to fighting
for a shared, valued social object and reinforced future, reciprocal, positive social exchanges.
The experiences between stakeholders and the business that emerged from this process
reframed the meaning of the hardship itself. Through their coordinative efforts, managers,
and their stakeholders, developed a feeling of togetherness that strengthened their resolve
 Resilience and social exchange 137

to endure future hardships. Through the acquisition of new and novel resources, businesses
developed new capabilities and entered new markets. Yet amidst these benefits we also
uncovered the existence of additional constraints placed upon the business. These constraints
took the form of deciding to keep a business located in a community when moving could
have provided more growth opportunities through access to better infrastructure and markets.
Moreover, the existence of long-standing relationships also created constraints on a manager’s
flexibility to operate their business. Stakeholders made sacrifices to enable business survival
and this imposed the need to ensure that limited harm would occur to them in the future.
Below we present detailed evidence for each aggregate theme (see Figure 10.1). We specify
how managers react to the experience of hardship, their strategies to regenerate resources, and
the role of stakeholders within the process of resilience. In Table 10.2 we provide representa-
tive quotations from managers supporting the second-order themes we identified throughout
our analysis. All quotations used in the table and findings are noted with organizational iden-
tifiers [in brackets].

Context for Organizational Resilience

Being located in economically depressed Southside has required that we put some of our growth plans
on hold and be very cautious about controlling inventory. [120]

Types of hardship
Hardships took the form of shocks and chronic stressors. Shocks included hardships that came
from environmental events like floods, droughts and fires, from the unexpected loss of key
financial resources, or from social issues like the death or illness of a key employee, a political
protest or occupational fraud. Chronic stressors, as illustrated by the above quote, included
hardships that arose from recessionary economic cycles and from regional challenges such
as the loss of industry, a lack of infrastructure development, rising crime rates, and difficulty
attracting and retaining skilled workers. Hardship thus originated from multiple causes, and
could occur immediately or evolve as a chronic stressor over a long period of time.

Experience of hardship
Many of our participants indicated that slack resources – both economic and human (cf.
Bradley et al., 2011; George, 2005) – were in short supply, contributing to feelings of insecu-
rity and ambiguity in their circumstances. Yet individual managers and their businesses did
not experience the threat of loss and uncertainty in isolation; the broader social context shared
these experiences. That is, the experience of hardship provoked both actual and threatened
loss and uncertainty that managers shared with employees, stakeholders and the broader com-
munity. The effects of both shocks and chronic stressors often extended beyond any single
organization:

In October 2009, International Paper announced that it would close its [City, State], paper manu-
facturing mill, thus terminating over one thousand employees. [City] with its population of eight
thousand was devastated. Thus far, only 25% of those employees have found other employment. All
area businesses have been impacted from the “trickle down” effect of this closing. [5]

Because organizations are increasingly interconnected and interdependent (van der Vegt et
al., 2015), a specific problem affecting one organization can strongly affect other organiza-
138 Research handbook on organizational resilience

Table 10.2 Illustrative supporting data for each second-order theme

Second order themes Representative first-order data

Types of hardship “The winter of 2009–2010 was extremely difficult due to the constant freezing
temperatures and thick snow cover. [We] lost several breeding stock, an entire
season of blackbuck antelope babies, and experienced a shortage of hay. Purchasing
additional hay and paying high electric and fuel costs depleted zoo capital. In
addition, the bank cut the business credit line and obliterated the funds [we] had
relied on to advertise for the upcoming season.” [68]
Experience of hardship “At times it seems like we are in a race to see which essential input element does the
business in. Will it be a lack of labor due to immigrant labor regulation, food safety
regulation compliance, water quality regulation or some other type of regulation that
tolls the death knell for a vital and historic industry?” [117]
Maintain optimism amidst adversity “[Our company] has a corporate mentality that ‘change’ is constant and should be
embraced not feared.” [69]
Focus on a positive future “We have tried to understand the dynamics of this dramatic reduction, and continue
to add services that traditional printers did not have […] We realize the industry has
changed and will continue to change and that we must change along with it. We have
created a proactive business model rather than a reactive one.” [181]
Mitigate risks and control costs “We have had to scale back some types of inventory, namely tobacco related farming
products and have added inventory that is not as farming dependent.” [120]
Alter structure, processes and roles “To mitigate the economic impact on [our company], the company sought the advice
of a change agent, who was tasked to evaluate the effectiveness of the company.
After redesigning our business processes, the company was restructured, per change
agent recommendations, to improve its effectiveness.” [96]
Secure employee effort amidst adversity “When our business was gutted by fire at the start of the 2007 Christmas season,
we immediately approached a local bank and set up a fund to aid our staff. We then
offered them all employment if they wanted to join us as part of the crew doing the
renovation/restoration.” [32]
Retain customer consumption in current “As part of the Historic District, [Our company] has enjoyed the exposure of a viable
locale small downtown. Area residents, as well as touring visitors, have supported our
operation.” [103]
Leverage competitors’ expertise and abilities “We have partnered with [Company], a local mechanical services contractor. Our
in business ecosystem companies are very complementary […] we can help each other and our customers
by working together to provide a complete solution for our customers. The
combination of our instrument and electrical services with [Company’s] mechanical
services allows us to provide single point of contact for [customer] maintenance
needs.” [82]
Build a positive community trajectory “[We] became a ‘part of the solution’ – by actively participating in the marketing of
the revitalization of [our town] and spread the word about the comeback of the city
with specific examples of growth.” [16]
Invoke shared schema “The owners and staff […] are local people and we are used to this area. We have
always had to deal with the crooked roads and steep mountains, and we love them.
[We return because of] our affection for this area and its people.” [54]
Engage in collaborative efforts “[We] collaborated with [Company] for the common good of the county, its citizens,
and both firms. Each brings its own strengths to offer the best combined expertise.”
[163]
 Resilience and social exchange 139

Second order themes Representative first-order data

Transfer of resources to the business “We took advantage of all of the resources that our local business incubator provided
[…] including internet, phone, office/ warehouse space, training courses, conference
rooms, etc. allowed us to grow our business while keeping costs down.” [141]
Transfer of constraints to the business “Our primary location suffers due to the lack of rail access and its distance from
interstate 95. This disadvantage is magnified whenever diesel fuel prices rise.” [124]

tions. Additionally, when a geographic area experiences catastrophic disasters (i.e., floods,
hurricanes, and droughts), the adverse effects are broadly experienced (McFarlane and Norris,
2006). Consistent with this rationale, our emergent findings suggested that the experience of
hardship, which precipitated the need for resilience, extended beyond a single organization
and became a collective, social experience with consequences affecting multiple individuals,
organizations and communities.

Managerial Pathways to Resource Regeneration

Hobfoll (2011) argued that it is critical for managers experiencing hardship to build resilience
through quickly identifying pathways that create immediate and new resources to sustain
the business. In our study, managers pursued three primary resource regeneration strategies:
psychological, operational, and stakeholder. Whereas psychological and operational strate-
gies were generally under managerial control and influence, stakeholder strategies typically
extended beyond a manager’s realm of control and the organization’s boundaries to involve
others in the resilience process.

Psychological strategies
Psychological strategies included managers’ efforts to create and maintain optimism amidst
adversity and to instill a focus on a potential positive future. These activities often required
the least amount of structural changes to implement, which explains the frequency and breadth
with which managers initiated these types of responses.

Maintain optimism
This strategy emerged through managers building positive attitudes and emotions in the organ-
ization. This took the form of reframing challenges as opportunities and inspiring employees
within the organization:

[Our] employees begin each workday with a daily inspirational/motivational quote, posted in a con-
spicuous area of the building. While this campaign seemed at first to be a small gesture of encourage-
ment, [our] employees comment frequently on the positive impact these daily words of inspiration
have on employees’ attitude. [96]

We observed how fostering an optimistic mindset required managers to access their own, as
well as their employees’, inner resources for developing resilience.

Focus on a positive future

Utilizing this strategy, managers shifted focus from the difficulties of the present to future pos-
sibilities. Typically, they brought to mind a commitment to the organization’s greater purpose,
140 Research handbook on organizational resilience

a shared identity and drive. Managers sought to mitigate understanding by emphasizing future
initiatives that would develop despite current hardships:

Our dedication and commitment to our purpose is what kept driving us to move forward in spite of
the obstacles. We know that less resilient entrepreneurs would not have been able to stay committed
and focused on the goal through such a challenging situation. [147]

By developing future plans and maintaining a focus on potential future gains, managers
avoided becoming mired in the realities of the present.

Operational strategies
Operational strategies included managerial efforts to mitigate risks and control costs, as well
as alter organizational structures, processes and roles. These types of strategies were less
immediate than psychological strategies yet remained largely within managerial control and
influence.

Mitigate risks and control costs

Managers attempted to reduce future hardships through detection and prevention. For
example, identifying early warning signs in the riskiness of real estate investments allowed
one bank to minimize potential losses and stay ahead of the competition. Moreover, as man-
agers experienced declines in revenue from the loss of a customer, neighboring industries, or
even a disaster, they aimed to protect the business by cutting costs:

We have made a marked effort to lower our costs of doing business. We have put greater controls on
our inventory and we have tightened up on our staff expenses by managing our overtime hours while
still maintaining our full service facility. In other words, we have been managing our dollars more
carefully and have proven that we can and will survive. [142]

This example illustrates the range of activities taken to reduce operational expenses; other
actions included renegotiating financial terms with creditors and suppliers, lowering wages
and overtime, altering inventory management practices, and even laying off workers.

Alter structure, processes, and roles

In response to hardship, managers altered the organization’s design elements such as incentive
systems to promote employee creativity and problem solving. By creating organizational
structures, processes and roles to encourage experimentation, for example, managers opened
the lines of communication throughout the organization and flattened out the organizational
structure to enable greater collaboration:

To encourage innovative behavior, we strive for clear and open communication among all employees
[…] During a group retreat at the beach, we adopted a plastic pool toy and named the duck Spotty, as
our strategic planning session had revealed our communication was spotty. Our former COO’s office
is named after Spotty. Whenever we think we need to improve communication, we call a meeting in
Spotty’s office, where the walls are covered with flip charts and colorful markers for jotting ideas.
[19]

Both psychological and operational strategies functioned to minimize and prevent the threat
of loss provoked by hardship. These strategies, however, faced two critical limitations: they
 Resilience and social exchange 141

primarily existed within the boundaries of the organization, and the organization’s already
constrained resources limited the available options. One strategy managers employed to over-
come these limitations was to look to their stakeholders for additional resources.

Stakeholder strategies
We observed how the process of developing resilience resulted from managers’ stakeholder
relationships within the broader community. As compared to psychological and operational
strategies, stakeholder strategies involved social exchange processes that took longer to imple-
ment given the lack of direct authority or control on the part of managers. Indeed, such strate-
gies involved multi-stakeholder collaboration with potentially conflicting goals. For example,
during an economic crisis, employees generally want to keep their jobs, while an employer
might need to cut jobs to control costs. Competitors might find themselves more aggressively
competing for dwindling market share, while local businesses may find themselves sparring
for diminishing community resources. Additionally, interacting with stakeholders to exchange
different goods and services can be a time-consuming process. Economic exchanges entail
developing detailed contracts that govern the nature of complex exchanges (Gundlach and
Murphy, 1993). Thus, this managerial pathway to resource regeneration is potentially fraught
with serious challenges.
The managers we observed in our study successfully overcame hardship by intentionally
leveraging established social connections tied to their physical surroundings: their “place.”
Place represented a social object of shared importance; it became a conduit through which
organizational and stakeholder goals aligned. At the same time, the implementation of stake-
holder strategies was intimately tied to the activation of stakeholder social exchange relation-
ships. As managers reached out to stakeholders to cope with shared hardship, stakeholders
contributed different resources to the organization, which strengthened their bonds both with
organizational actors and other stakeholders. As Williams and colleagues (2017) argued,
timing is critical after a crisis in that initial resource gains can trigger “gain spirals” that facil-
itate resilience. We describe this gain spiral or iterative loop by first detailing the role of each
stakeholder group in the resilience process (i.e., employee, customer, competitor, community)
and later describing how the social object (i.e., shared passion for place) prompted jointness in
stakeholder responses to hardship.

Secure employee effort and flexibility amidst adversity

Employees are one of the main stakeholder groups for any business; managers in our study
consistently recognized how important employees were to their success. The phrase “we are
like a family” was often used when managers talked about their relationship with employees.
In one business, the connection between employer and employee was so strong that most
employees lived on the farm where they worked thanks to their employer providing them
with a home as a retirement package. Although this example may seem a bit extreme, the
importance of treating employees as family and thereby enacting a service-oriented mindset,
consistently emerged across other organizations that provided above-average wages and
benefits, a flexible work environment, promotions from within, recognition and rewards,
open communication and transparency, as well as a commitment to avoid layoffs whenever
possible. As one manager stated:
142 Research handbook on organizational resilience

Additionally, our company has been committed to not laying off employees and now has the oppor-
tunity to create 64–80 full-time jobs with their business plan and access to capital (another significant
impediment) in the licensed serving area. [35]

Employees reciprocated such managerial treatment with extra effort, loyalty, and a willingness
to share the work. Employee exchange relationships built through fair treatment appeared to
sow the seeds for extra effort from employees during times of hardship. Extra effort from
employees was especially important to a number of managers enduring crisis:

For example, in late 2008, we realized that our revenue stream would soon significantly decrease due
to projects being put on hold, so we made the decision to reduce staff hours. This decision was made
in discussions with our staff to be totally open about our circumstances. We postponed any reductions
until after January of the following year but our staff was aware in advance. We decided to leave all
profits in the business at year-end in light of the coming economic conditions to better deal with that
crisis. [60]

Retain customer consumption in current locale

The managers in our study consistently emphasized the importance of serving their custom-
ers and building enduring relationships. They achieved this through developing excellent
customer service capabilities and by connecting customers to the uniqueness of their place.
Through a focus on place, managers differentiated themselves from competitors and embraced
their passion for their location as a core feature of their business:

By making the store a unique and unusual destination store with “hard-to-find” products, we tend to
gather customers from a wide area who come from up to 2 and 3 hours away to shop here […] [Town]
residents are loyal to locally owned businesses and try to maintain the flavor and sense of place of
its community even while chain stores across the country are putting many family-owned businesses
out of business. [73]

Notice how the manager explicitly references “making the store a unique and unusual desti-
nation” and the how residents “try to maintain the flavor and sense of place.” Business and
place come to be inseparable. Accordingly, customer exchange relationships occurred when
managers faithfully gave unique and personalized customer service to their customers; in
return, managers were able to maintain access to local commerce, commercial town centers,
and received ongoing loyalty from customers and community members alike.
Loyalty with their customers led to repeat business and customer support. For instance,
customers continued to support a restaurant after a fire, vowing to return once it re-opened;
and they consistently stood by local businesses even when lower-cost competitors entered the
market. The ability to cultivate customer loyalty was a hallmark of managers:

Because our institution was founded in a small community with various needs for growth, we have
had the opportunity to build a highly respected reputation and a great deal of trust and loyalty with the
customers we serve. This practice has allowed us to be successful during recent years in spite of the
difficulties and challenges of the economic downturn. [121]

As the above cited manager expresses, the bonds created between businesses and customers
jointly contributed to the welfare of place.
 Resilience and social exchange 143

Leverage competitors’ expertise and abilities in business ecosystem

Competitor social exchange relationships occurred when managers gave capabilities and
resources to competitors and, in return, were able to get long-term collaborative relationships.
The example below illustrates the outcome of one such relationship. The economic and
housing downturn severely impacted one business, limiting their ability to hold a key role on
their staff. Due to this lack of a vital resource, they opted to join forces with a competitor to
fill their respective resource gaps.

The collaboration and willingness to share technical, project, and marketing pursuits was a key
element in steadying our company from free fall caused by the explosion of the housing bubble. The
collaboration was successful and both companies shared resources and weathered a horrific economic
storm with a very unique concept of working together with trust and open communications. Good
people and quality competition can join forces to make effective teammates. [129]

This business collaborated effectively with a competitor to such an extent that this manager
described them as “teammates.” The collaboration leveraged the unique capabilities of com-
petitors to offer resources that would be otherwise unavailable.
Collaborating with competitors thus provided essential value that facilitated organizational
resilience. It provided both greater access to resources and the ability to enhance the value
proposition managers provided to their customers. In a resource constrained environment,
competitors became an important ally in an organization’s fight to gain access to better pricing
and physical resources in times of need. Competitor social exchanges also occurred as man-
agers borrowed slack manufacturing and production capabilities to keep their own operations
running during hardship. Managers partnered with competitors to augment their own capa-
bilities, knowing that this would increase the value to the customer, thereby cultivating the
long-term benefits of increased customer loyalty.

Our company has partnered with a potential competitor. The competitor has a shop that provides high
quality hand-labor assembly work. Our company, however, concentrates on high levels of automa-
tion. By working together, we have supplied the end customer with outstanding service; our company
providing only highly automated surface mount assembly of printed circuit boards. This partnering
represents our largest single customer. [63]

Managers’ narratives revealed that engaging in social exchanges with competitors was a stra-
tegic way to build resources without investments in additional capital or labor. As such, access
to latent resources came as a result of investing in these relationships to bolster resilience.

Build a positive community trajectory

The commitment that managers demonstrated to their community manifests as a moral imper-
ative, not a strategic one. Managers expressed a responsibility for ensuring the livelihood of
the community through investments that created jobs, promoted local businesses, and provided
charitable support:

Our new resilience plan includes the training and hiring of local talent, switching over to mostly
public work, and expanding our geographic area of business. By hiring and promoting local talent,
we also help out the community. [129]
144 Research handbook on organizational resilience

When managers provided stability and progress through their business, the shared success
of the community also benefited the business. This resulted in attracting customers from the
consistent promotion of local shopping and supporting community organizations.

[Our company] and most of [our town’s] retailers have formed a group, which meets periodically to
share problems, concerns, and ideas on how to encourage people to shop locally. [5]

As managers invested economically and socially in their community, the community recipro-
cated by supporting business growth. This occurred by removing regulatory barriers to doing
business, helping with access to financial resources, and providing social support and mentor-
ing. The example below highlights how a community provided social support in the form of
sharing hardships and partnering with local businesses through mentoring activities:

We have also made connections with very successful CEOs of local businesses to serve as mentors
for us. This has helped us tremendously by having a support system that can assist in navigating us in
the right direction during challenging times. [147]

The community bonds that developed through exchange relationships provided an important
strategy for developing a positive community trajectory. Social exchange with the community
provided a sense of stability and progress to managers and community members alike through
a greater ability to attract talent, enrich the collective experience of stakeholders, and maintain
regional economic growth.

Shared Passion for Place

Our analysis revealed that managers’ stakeholder strategies took place with four primary
groups (i.e., employees, customers, competitors, community) who shared a profound passion
for the social connections associated with their physical location. Place was often cited as an
essential contributor to business success, representing the affective ties that bound stakehold-
ers to a common purpose. As such, social exchange relationships were grounded in a shared
schema and prompted collective, multi-stakeholder sacrifice and collaboration.

Invoke shared schema

Invoking a passion for place provided a shared social object that stakeholders could reference
and associate with positive emotions. Place consisted of both the physical geography of the
immediate environment and the strength of the relationships that existed in their locale. When
referring to the physical geography, managers went to great lengths to explain the beauty and
uniqueness of their environment as it related to their business. Place became both a source
of emotional encouragement, as well as the provider of tangible resources without which the
business would not exist. Emotional encouragement came from the physical beauty of the
place and the inspiration it provided:

The images that come to mind are magnificent rugged terrain, awesome stretches of mountains, coal
mines, and wild whitewater rivers. The inhabitants are much the same […] rugged, awesome, and
wildly independent. Shaped by their surroundings and generations of a unique mountain culture, these
citizens […] are entrenched in a way of life that embraces God, family, and music. [163]
 Resilience and social exchange 145

Indeed, place also had a “magical quality,” the indefinable characteristics that met managers’
collective need for belonging:

Located on a beautiful piece of land with rolling hills and significant elevation changes and sur-
rounded on three sides by [our] River, [Our company] has a magical quality that [our customers] from
around the world have come to love. [171]

Place not only inspired and shaped managers’ subjective experiences, it also offered resources
and sustenance. Many businesses depended upon the land in which their businesses had taken
root:

The greatest advantage of our location is that it enables us to make great fruity wines with lots of
complexity that win awards and people love to drink. The micro-climate of the vineyards with the
cool mountain air, low humidity, deep soils with fresh minerals from the mining, and bright sunny fall
days are unbeatable for ripening our grapes. [112]

Place was the source of important intergenerational relationships with family, friends and
customers:

We have a wonderful community full of hard-working men and women, a vibrant local history and
culture, and a lot of local pride. This has helped us to weather the economic storm. [106]

Relationships thus became an asset for the business and an impetus for the work itself:

The location has been an asset because this is home, home for the staff, home for the owner and home
for our clients. We live in the community we serve and we are taking care of our neighbors, in their
homes! The staff grew up with many of our clients; they were our teachers, our friend’s grandparents,
our mentors. It is an honor to care for these seniors who built this community, who taught in our
schools, ran businesses, served on City Council. [71]

The geography and relationships found in place became non-replicable constituents, insepara-
ble from the business itself. Thus, the thought of moving the business to survive hardship was
rarely, if ever, mentioned.

Engage in collaborative efforts

A shared passion for place facilitated collaborative efforts amongst multiple stakeholders. As
the narrative below captures, locality was a central feature facilitating collaboration.

I believe the relationships developed over the past 20 years were a major factor in gaining the support
to make it through tough times. Had the supplier been as stone-faced as some larger companies, we
would have had little chance to survive, but thanks to the locals’ understanding, we made it through.
And do you know who is benefiting now? The guys that supported [the business]. We have made
current on every account we have and are mostly well inside terms. We direct our business to those
that were considerate in our time of need. [79]

Consider the reference in this excerpt on the importance of “locals understanding.” Locals
are members of place, whereas “some larger companies” external to place were depicted
as “stone-faced.” The manager emphasizes the importance of being able to “understand the
strain we were under,” further reinforcing the importance of shared frameworks for navigating
146 Research handbook on organizational resilience

through hardship. Finally, these relationships benefit both sets of stakeholders, the business
that emerged from hardship and those who supported the business. Such mutual benefits
strengthened the gain spiral initiated by managers’ stakeholder strategies. Concurrently, man-
agers’ social exchange relationships with stakeholders – fueled by a shared passion for place
– served as a primary vehicle through which to reframe the experience of hardship.

Reframing of Hardship

In benefiting from social exchange relationships with stakeholders, managers relinquished

some control over the application of resources to the organization. Specifically, our findings
revealed that many resources also created constraints associated with the social connections
and physical surroundings that made the resources possible in the first place. The reframing of
hardship was, therefore, directly influenced by the transfer of resources and constraints from
the organizations’ social context.

Transfer of resources
Stakeholders reframed hardship through the exchange of new and novel resources and through
developing a feeling of togetherness with their stakeholders. Managers continually engaged
with local institutions, communities and businesses to gain access to latent resources. Latent
resources varied from knowledge to concrete physical assets; for instance:

[Company owner], has created many companies in the region in partnership with other local business
leaders that share resources with [Company] and create new jobs and bring local industry to the
locality. [58]

Universities, community incubators and nearby businesses all participated in various

exchanges, bolstering organizational capabilities and filling resource gaps. Furthermore, these
resource exchanges served to bring individuals and organizations together:

Our company has the great ability to pull together as a team and work with community members to
accomplish our goals. We recognize that we do not operate inside a vacuum and have a responsibility
to our customers and the communities in which we operate. [98]

In this example the manager recognized that their business did not exist in a vacuum and
worked together with community members. Working together with others reframed the
experience of hardship from one defined by loss, to a process shared with the broader social
context.

Transfer of constraints
Long-standing relationships and physical surroundings, inherent in place, also acted to con-
strain the type and use of resources exchanged with stakeholders. For example, relational
constraints often developed through a history of positive interpersonal interactions:

The agents at [Company] are paid commission based on a sliding scale. If their production drops in
the current year, their pay split would typically be altered for the coming year. I have not dropped
anyone’s split. We are all in this together. They have been loyal and faithful to the company, so this
has been my reward to them. [177]
 Resilience and social exchange 147

This manager expressed a deep sense of responsibility to reward employee loyalty and faith-
fulness based upon a history of positive exchanges. Subsequently, lower performance did
not result in lower pay; the manager accepted a constraint in their flexibility to manage the
business.
Remaining committed to a place also entailed the need to accept the unique constraints
that specific locations presented to managers. The following example highlights a type of
constraint managers faced:

Our location is difficult: again, we are in a geographically isolated area. We have to travel 1.5 hours
north or 1 hour south and across a high toll bridge to service our customers. [127]

Given these limitations, managers’ and stakeholders’ commitment to place not only made
available latent resources for the organization to use but also, in place-specific ways, imposed
guardrails limiting how the organization could apply such resources. The combination of
transferring resources and constraints to the organization reframed the experience of hardship
from one where managers exercised control and influence, to one in which stakeholders
shaped the collective experience of managers. This reframing influenced how managers used
their new resources to employ both psychological and operational strategies.

CONCEPTUAL MODEL

Building on these findings, we offer a model in Figure 10.2 of responding to hardship through
different managerial pathways of resource regeneration, with the concepts of social exchanges
between stakeholders and reframing of hardship, and the mechanism of shared passion for
place at its center. The model depicts a cycle of responding to hardship through different
managerial strategies (i.e., psychological, operational, and stakeholder), activating latent
resources from social exchanges, and transferring these resources – along with their respective
constraints – to strengthen and shape the organization’s capability for resilience.
When employees experience hardship, they feel a sense of loss, isolation and uncertainty
that threatens the fundamental viability of their business. As managers adopt different strat-
egies in response to hardship, their exchanges with internal and external stakeholders invoke
a jointness that unifies them toward a social object (i.e., their shared passion for place). In
our study, stakeholders experienced a shared sense of fate tied to their social context. Hence,
rather than construing the experience of hardship as an organizational problem, stakeholders
embraced the experience of hardship as the collective’s problem. Their shared understanding
of and emotional connections to “place” generated collaborative, innovative ways to produce
resources for the organization. Based on their unique capabilities, each stakeholder bond
offered the organization both opportunities for survival through resources and distinctive
avenues for growth as determined by their own business constraints. Ultimately, the cycle
of resource depletion and regeneration through the lens of stakeholder exchanges for place
fueled managers’ ability to adopt and instill an optimistic outlook, affirmed a commitment to
experiment with different structures, roles and processes to adjust to unforeseen events, and in
so doing, strengthened their interdependent ties to different stakeholders.
The factor that had the strongest influence on the regeneration of resources was thus the
novel ways in which managers co-created various episodes of resilience with their stakehold-
148 Research handbook on organizational resilience

Conceptual model
Figure 10.2
 Resilience and social exchange 149

ers. Episodes of resilience emerged from the collaborative efforts of stakeholders and organi-
zational actors to develop new or renewed capabilities to overcome the hardship. There were
primarily two kinds of episodes of resilience that at times occurred independently or jointly:
those that involved the relational ecosystem in which the organization resides, and those that
involved the physical surroundings proximate to the organization and its stakeholders.
Similar to the concept of social architecture, which refers to the relational ties that allow
individuals to react collectively (Dutton et al., 2006) through noticing, interpreting, feeling and
responding (Worline and Dutton, 2017), we find that the relational ties between the organiza-
tion and its stakeholders facilitated collective capabilities related to responding to hardship.
Within this relational ecosystem, employees, customers, competitors and community each
played an important role in facilitating organizational resilience. For example, by caring for
employees as family members, managers received stronger, substantive contributions from
employees. Employees willingly provided extra effort and, at times, distributed hardship
across everyone by reducing their hours and compensation. When managers emphasized
serving their customers and delivering as much value as possible, they were able to sustain
the customer loyalty that became essential to surviving hardships. Interestingly, competitors,
who have frequently been defined as secondary stakeholders (Freeman et al., 2007), in our
study became primary and essential partners. Managers frequently collaborated with compet-
itors and viewed them as an asset, not a liability. The willingness to work together allowed
managers and stakeholders to co-create episodes of resilience that brought managers access
to greater resources to expand the products and services they delivered, lower their costs, and
provide access to resources without having to make additional capital or labor investments.
Each unique partnership with and across stakeholder bonds activated distinct resources and
constraints that shaped the organization’s capabilities.
We also found that stakeholders co-created episodes of resilience through their appreciation
and utilization of their physical surroundings. A shared passion for place was akin to feeling
a sense of geographic connectedness, roots, or a feeling of being home; these sentiments
represented an emotional anchor to stakeholders. An appreciation for not only the usefulness
or sustenance that the physical environment provided the business, but also the perceived
splendor and beauty of place strengthened stakeholder bonds with the organization. There was
a deep sense of belonging, coupled with a shared schema for how members of this place work
together to subsist and persist, which encouraged organizational actors to reframe hardship
as another event in the longer history of place. Rather than diminish the importance of the
hardship for the business, this view mitigated the felt loss, isolation and uncertainty from the
experience of hardship. Because of the available and continuous social exchanges with stake-
holders, organizational actors reframed hardship as yet another opportunity to collaboratively
grow and improve place. These co-created episodes of resilience were thus vehicles through
which a shared passion for place was expressed across stakeholders, not just through its rela-
tional ecosystem but also through stakeholder connections to physical surroundings.
It follows that what appeared to make the process of resilience so powerful across organiza-
tions in our sample was the iterative loop, or gain spiral, created through social exchanges with
stakeholders. Previous research has demonstrated that individuals who suffer together develop
stronger bonds (Bastian et al., 2014). The forging of strong bonds through shared suffering
has been widely documented in war and athletic teams. Bastian and colleagues (2014) demon-
strated that sharing pain promoted trust and cooperation. Brickson (2005) showed that organi-
zations with similar relationships with their environment tended to share a sense of values and
150 Research handbook on organizational resilience

obligations to others. Our research demonstrated, for instance, how managers sought to lower
prices to decrease the impact on their customers while others worked to preserve and create
new jobs to increase the benefits to their community. In forging stronger bonds, managers
and stakeholders did not ignore their experience of hardship; instead, their resonance of loss
and felt uncertainty remained constraints within which they sought to operate. Nonetheless,
through the experience of hardship, stakeholder bonds were strengthened, activating a collec-
tive willingness to collaborate across the organization’s relational ecosystem and increasing
a shared obligation to the physical existence of place. This dynamic represented a recursive
dynamic between stakeholder strategies and shared passion for place. At the same time, by
enacting a shared schema based on shared passion for place, social exchanges reframed the
organization’s experience of hardship. Despite the constraints posed by hardship, the activa-
tion of latent resources enabled managers more effectively to employ different strategies for
resource regeneration.
In sum, our conceptual model arose from the key insight that a shared passion for place
facilitated productive social exchanges and enabled the activation of latent resources. In the
absence of co-created episodes of resilience, managerial responses to hardship would be likely
to remain linear and a source of resource depletion rather than recursive and a source of recip-
rocal resource regeneration. All the same, psychological, operational, and stakeholder strate-
gies could be deployed by organizational actors; yet, without a sense of jointness that engages
the collective support and direct involvement of stakeholders, the effectiveness of such efforts
remains fleeting and limited. For instance, without stakeholders’ willingness to share in the
suffering of the business, managerial efforts to focus on the potential positive features of the
business’ future would be unrealistic or insensitive; draconian measures to control costs might
incur more long-term harm than good; and appeals to stakeholders to collaborate and help the
business would be likely to fall on deaf ears. Our emergent theory depicts how organizations
interact with their social context to enact organizational resilience. As managers worked to
support stakeholder needs and activities, they found that during times when the organization
faced hardship, their stakeholders worked to provide economic and socioemotional resources.

IMPLICATIONS AND FUTURE WORK

The importance of social context has been recognized by scholars (Lengnick-Hall et al., 2011)
and empirical evidence has begun to establish the role social context plays in developing resil-
ience (Gittell, 2008; Gittell et al., 2006; Colquitt et al., 2011). Nevertheless, understanding the
processes of multi-stakeholder collaboration and why some organizations are more successful
than others at overcoming hardship remained largely unexplored. Our research explains how
and why a shared passion for place allows the organization and stakeholders to co-create
capabilities to fight adversity, and ultimately to grow and thrive, not despite their challenges
but rather because of them.
Our data underscores the fact that organizations cannot be separated from the contexts in
which they are embedded. Scholars should, therefore, examine resilience at the system level
to better understand its multi-level drivers and outcomes. Managers should extend their inter-
actions across and beyond organizational boundaries by adopting a stewardship approach to
governance (Hernandez, 2012). These other-oriented interactions can range from formal busi-
ness dealings that involve economic exchanges with community-based suppliers, for example,
 Resilience and social exchange 151

to more informal, social interactions with schools, charitable organizations and community
leaders. In so doing, organizations can systematically engage a broad set of stakeholders
through different processes and practices that promote collective, long-term wellbeing.

NOTE
1. It is a pleasure to convey our gratitude to the staff and directors of the Institute for Business in
Society at the Darden School. Their support made this project possible.

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11. Unpacking the critical role of firms in
community resilience
Martina Linnenluecke and Brent McKnight

The effects of climate change are becoming clear, in large part due to the increasing preva-
lence and severity of natural disasters.1 For the first months of 2019 alone, the international
EM-DAT database (Emergency Events Database) lists cyclones in Fiji and Thailand, snow-
storms in Austria, Germany and Switzerland, flooding in Algeria, Argentina, Australia, Brazil,
Burundi, Central Java, Indonesia, Madagascar, Mozambique, Spain, Peru and Tunisia, as well
as severe weather in the US, to name a few.2 The damages from these storms are staggering. In
North America, natural disasters have cost over $300 billion in 2017, with Hurricane Harvey
causing $125 billion in damages alone.
Prior research on how communities respond to natural disasters has largely focused on
the roles of government organizations (GOs) and agencies, non-governmental organizations
(NGOs) such as aid organizations, and emergency management services (e.g., Lein et al.,
2009; Zhang et al., 2009) in leading effective recovery and restoration efforts. While these
are important responders in the time of crisis, recent attention has turned to the critical role
the private sector plays in natural disaster response. The private sector, in North America and
increasingly around the world, operates as much as 85 percent of the critical infrastructure
communities rely upon, including hospitals, roads, electricity, water utilities, telecommunica-
tions and even the provision of essential goods such as food and construction supplies (Stewart
et al., 2009). Government and other public organizations are often unable to backfill the
essential product and service delivery tasks performed by the private sector, mostly because
they lack the sophisticated supply chain and logistical planning capabilities of private sector
companies.
Failures of formal disaster response systems (e.g., evident after the impacts of Hurricane
Katrina) have shown that government disaster response and relief efforts are often ineffective
at reaching affected citizens. This makes involving firms in discussions of community resil-
ience essential. Firms that take an active role with respect to responding to natural disasters
can reap benefits for themselves, but also for the resilience of the communities of which they
are part (Chandra et al., 2016).
Popular interest in the role of firms in natural disaster response and recovery can be traced
in large part to the outsized actions of Walmart in New Orleans in the wake of Hurricane
Katrina in 2005. Walmart succeeded in providing food, water and survival supplies to those in
New Orleans affected by Hurricane Katrina days before the Federal Emergency Management
Agency (FEMA) was able to (Horwitz, 2009; Leonard, 2005). But there are other examples
as well. Waffle House, a restaurant chain operating mainly in the Southern United States,
has extended its “always open” culture to apply in the case of major natural disasters. Waffle
House deploys mobile command centers with generators, adopts a streamlined menu, and
trains employees on what to do in the case of natural disasters to be able to serve customers
even under very adverse circumstances (Ergun et al., 2010). Larger retailers such as Home

153
154 Research handbook on organizational resilience

Depot and Walgreens fill critical disaster functions providing medicine, essential items, and
rebuilding supplies.
Firms are now responding to disasters strategically, as the above firm examples illustrate,
and this has implications for the interconnectedness of organizations, individual citizens, and
communities. In this chapter we discuss the ways in which firms, the term we use to describe
private sector organizations, have contributed to community-level recovery and resilience
attempts in the aftermath of natural disasters. We highlight both the direct, but also the indirect
relationships between firm action and community-level resilience. We do this by building and
elaborating a model of how firm activity influences community resilience.

LITERATURE REVIEW
The relationship between firm activity and community resilience is multi-faceted. While
international frameworks (i.e., the Hyogo Framework) argue for a major role for the private
sector in creating community resilience, the mechanisms by which the private sector can or
should contribute to building community-level resilience are much less clear. Many different
definitions of community resilience exist, reflecting in part the complexities in determining
what factors or circumstances lead an organization or system to recover or “bounce back”
from adversity (Holling, 1973; Cutter et al, 2008). Finding a clear definition of resilience
has been complicated by various attempts to study resilience across diverse fields of research
and in multiple different contexts. For example, resilience research in disciplines such as
architecture, engineering and related fields has focused on finding components, materials and
structural designs that can withstand disruption or change (Woods, 2015). Resilience research
in ecology has documented ecosystem changes over time and has examined the consequences
of both natural and made-made disruptions on these systems. In ecology, the term was first
introduced by Holling (1973), who put forward that “resilience determines the persistence of
relationships within a system and is a measure of the ability of these systems to absorb change
of state variable, driving variables, and parameters, and still persist.” (p. 17).
Researchers have remarked on the challenges involved in finding factors that can be used
to evaluate the resilience of communities. Cutter et al. (2008) propose to define resilience
as “the ability of a social system to respond and recover from disasters and includes those
inherent conditions that allow the system to absorb impacts and cope with an event, as well
as post-event, adaptive processes that facilitate the ability of the social system to re-organize,
change, and learn in response to a threat” (p. 599). Community resilience has also been defined
as “a process linking a set of adaptive capacities to a positive trajectory of functioning and
adaptation after a disturbance” (Norris et al., 2008, p. 130). Others suggest that community
resilience “describes the collective ability of a neighborhood or geographically defined area
to deal with stressors and efficiently resume the rhythms of daily life through cooperation
following shocks.” (Aldrich and Meyer, 2015, p. 255).
Irrespective of a formal definition, it is evident that community resilience is commonly
conceptualized as a process of how communities anticipate, prepare for, react to, and recover
from adversity, and how they continue either on a positive or negative trajectory. Adversity
can result from natural disasters (the primary focus of this chapter) such as hurricanes, torna-
dos, forest fires, extreme rainfall, and floods, but can also be a result of man-made disasters
due to environmental pollution, terrorism or armed conflict. It can range in severity from
 Role of firms in community resilience 155

relatively minor disruptions to daily community life to severe disruptions to the basic needs
of community members, including access to water, food supplies and/or shelter (Miller and
Rivera, 2010). Resilience is thereby not a binary construct; rather, communities can be more or
less resilient depending upon the nature of the threat, the ability of the community to minimize
impacts, and the ability return to “normal” functioning (Tobin, 1999). Compared to a less
resilient community, a more resilient community would be better able to experience adversity
(measured in terms of fewer collapses, less loss of life, less loss of economic viability, etc.).
More resilient communities are “organized to minimize the effects of disasters, and, at the
same time, have the ability to recover quickly by restoring the socio-economic vitality of the
community” (Tobin, 1999, p. 13).
The process definition of community resilience does not imply that community resilience
is the result of a community only experiencing stability (i.e., no disruptions); rather, resilience
refers to the long-term persistence of a community despite its exposure to profound, unex-
pected, and/or continuing perturbations that disrupt stability (Linnenluecke and McKnight,
2017). Research has shown that – while periods of stability are important for community
growth and development – those communities or societies that have only ever experienced sta-
bility may be less able to cope with even small amounts of adversity (Gunderson and Holling,
2002; Holling, 1973). Resilience is also distinct from concepts such as risk reduction or the
mitigation of vulnerability. Risk reduction is an activity typically directed towards reducing
the size or scope of adversity or avoiding the adversity entirely, while the mitigation of vulner-
ability reduces “the propensity or predisposition to be adversely affected” (IPCC, 2012, p. 5).
Such activities are typically undertaken prior to the onset of adversity.

International Efforts at Encouraging Community Resilience

Internationally, there have been a number of efforts to build community resilience, beginning
in the 1990s with the UN-led International Decade for Natural Disaster Reduction (IDNDR)
that was focused on reducing disaster impacts, including the loss of life, destruction of prop-
erty, and the resulting social and economic disruption to communities (Norris et al., 2008).
At the end of this period, the United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNDRR,
formerly UNISDR) was created in 1999, with the intent to implement an International Strategy
for Disaster Reduction. Efforts eventually led to the adoption of the Hyogo Declaration and the
“Hyogo Framework for Action 2005–2015: Building the resilience of nations and communi-
ties to disasters” in 2005. The aim of the Hyogo Framework was “the substantial reduction of
disaster losses, in lives and in the social, economic and environmental assets of communities
and countries” through building community resilience. Specifically, the objectives under
the Hyogo Framework were: (1) an integration of disaster risk reduction into sustainable
development policies; (2) the development of institutions, mechanisms and capacities to build
resilience to hazards; and (3) the incorporation of risk reduction measures in emergency pre-
paredness, response and recovery programs for affected communities.
The Hyogo Framework acknowledged the role of the private sector, particularly in terms
of forming public–private partnerships to achieve the anticipated outcomes. However,
much emphasis, both in terms of policy-making and research, has focused on physical
infrastructure-centered approaches to cope with disasters (Aldrich and Meyer, 2015), and on
the roles of GOs and NGOs such as aid organizations and emergency management services
(e.g., Lein et al., 2009; Zhang et al., 2009). Several authors (e.g., Kapucu and van Wart, 2006)
156 Research handbook on organizational resilience

attribute the focus on the public sector’s involvement in disaster recovery to the significant
expansion of public sector services in the twentieth century, which ultimately led to increasing
expectations regarding the public sector’s responsibility for disaster and risk reduction efforts,
and the provision of emergency management services (see also Mileti, 1999).
The Hyogo Framework was eventually replaced by the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk
Reduction 2015–2030. This current framework outlines a need for action across local, regional
and global levels across four main priority areas: (1) Understanding disaster risk; (2) strength-
ening disaster risk governance to manage disaster risk; (3) investing in disaster risk reduction
for resilience; (4) enhancing disaster preparedness for effective response and to “build back
better” in recovery, rehabilitation and reconstruction. The framework specifically recognized
the role of “[b]usiness, professional associations and private sector financial institutions,
including financial regulators and accounting bodies, as well as philanthropic foundations” as
important stakeholders for achieving the priority areas. The Sendai framework thereby explic-
itly recognizes that a community’s ability to manage resilience resides therefore not just in
its governance systems, institutions and infrastructure, but also in its actors including private
sector firms and other private bodies as well as its citizens (Lebel et al., 2006).

Firm Responses During Disasters

Prior research (reviewed in the sections below) has shown that firms engage in two broad
categories of responses to natural disasters: business continuity and corporate philanthropy.
Business continuity refers to the various ways in which firms diminish the impacts of disas-
ters to maintain business operations during a disaster. It requires substantial preparation and
investments. In contrast, philanthropy concerns donations of cash and cash-like resources to
various local and national organizations to facilitate recovery. We discuss each in turn.

Business continuity
Following disasters, a community’s distribution capabilities are impacted, including critical
infrastructure and supply chains that support local operations (Stewart et al., 2009). These
disruptions are highly influenced by effective business continuity management. Business con-
tinuity refers to “the capability of the organization to continue delivery of products or services
at acceptable levels following a disruptive incident” (ISO, 2012). There is a significant body
of literature on business continuity management (e.g., Herbane, 2010; Herbane et al., 2010),
the key themes of which are to identify the potential for business interruption (e.g., technology
failures, supply shortages, operator errors) and to mitigate these risks (Herbane, 2010; Zsidisin
et al., 2005). Business continuity is essential for firm-level resilience because it helps firms
prepare for external shocks by implementing redundancy and flexibility design principles
(Adamou, 2013; Alesi, 2008; Castillo, 2004; Herbane et al., 2010).
Business continuity management is the basis for risk and disaster management efforts
(Herbane et al., 2010). Critical infrastructure firms (e.g., firms in sectors such as electricity
generation, water, telecommunications, transportation) commonly engage in business con-
tinuity planning surrounding disasters, for example, by building redundancies, flexibilities,
back-up facilities, and rapid response options (Schulman et al., 2004). Opportunities for
improving the resilience of these and other critical firms can be undertaken by specifically
focusing on the intersection of businesses and communities. For example, at the lowest juris-
dictional level, it is critical to identify the key distribution, critical infrastructure, and supply
 Role of firms in community resilience 157

chain assets of a community. These could comprise a local manufacturer within a national
supply chain or a particular supply network serving a community. Understanding the position
and relative importance of the community’s assets within regional and national supply chains
and critical infrastructure networks may provide options to improve the continuity of these
critical infrastructures and assets (Stewart et al., 2009).
A related notion is that of high-risk organizations (HROs). The idea that organizations
(those with high-risk operations such as nuclear power plants) need to have high levels
of resilience (defined as reliability and safety) originated in the 1980s and 1990s. At that
time, several devastating industrial accidents occurred, such as the Chernobyl disaster, the
Challenger space shuttle explosion, and the Exxon Valdez disaster. The Chernobyl disaster
was caused by an uncontrollable increase in performance during a simulation, ultimately
leading to a power failure and a subsequent reactor explosion. The causes of the uncontrolled
increase in performance were identified as serious violations of existing safety protocols and
construction-related properties of the reactor. This incident, as well as the other industrial
accidents, led to the question as to what extent technology-related hazards can be completely
avoided, especially because industrial processes are becoming increasingly complex and dif-
ficult to understand. Researchers started to focus on further examining how organizations can
maintain reliability and safety, resulting in a stream of research on so-called “high reliability”
organizations (i.e., organizations that need to operate without major errors or incidences), such
as airlines, nuclear power plants or hospitals. In these companies even smaller errors can have
serious consequences.
By analyzing such high-reliability organizations, researchers developed principles that are
designed to help companies identify and correct problems before escalation and catastrophe
occur. These principles include: (1) preoccupation with failure (the organization focuses on
correcting mistakes and learning from the situation); (2) reluctance to simplify interpretations
(employees are aware that not all failures can be easily recognized and that solutions to
problems are often based on perspectives and interdisciplinary knowledge); (3) sensitivity to
operations (the organization focuses on detecting anomalies in systems or processes, not just
after the accident, but earlier); (4) a pursuit of flexibility (the organization actively seeks to
identify and solve problems quickly through situational action); and (5) respect for technical
expertise (the organization does not just rely on decision-making structures and corporate
hierarchy, but actively seeks to find the best person to solve a specific problem). Overall, these
streams of research provide valuable insights into how organizations can operate to maintain
the continuity of their operations in the face of adversity.

Corporate philanthropy
The second firm response is donating cash and cash-like resources; typically to non-profit
organizations in affected jurisdictions (Muller and Whiteman, 2009). Unlike other forms
of corporate philanthropy, disaster-related philanthropy tends to be reactive, undertaken
in response to specific events (Foster et al., 2008). In most cases, it is done to improve or
repair corporate reputations (Jia and Zhang, 2015; Madsen and Rodgers, 2015). Firms raise
an extraordinary amount of money in the wake of disasters sometimes directly from a cor-
poration’s charitable foundation but often by drawing on a network of employees, suppliers
and customers. As an example of how widespread philanthropy is surrounding major natural
disasters, more than half of the Global 500 donated to recovery efforts for the 2004 tsunami in
the Philippines (Muller and Whiteman, 2009).
158 Research handbook on organizational resilience

Despite advances in international thinking around community resilience, the recognition

that community resilience is based on private actors is still largely missing from much of the
research on natural disasters and community resilience. In particular, the literature is lacking
insights into (1) the roles that private-sector firms assume within a community during a natural
disaster, and (2) how these responses connect to community resilience and disaster response.
In what follows, we articulate a model relating firm activity to community resilience.

A Model of the Role of Private and Public Sector Actors in Community Resilience

In what follows we build a model that has three broad components. Central to this model is
community resilience itself and its relationship to individual citizens. Literature connecting
community-level resilience to individuals within the community is scarce (Masten and
Obradovic, 2008). Some prior studies have looked at the role of citizen- or community-led
action to help with restoration efforts (e.g., Cretney, 2016; Johannisson and Olaison, 2007;
Lanzara, 1983). However, in recent years, disaster researchers have built up a large body
of evidence about the role of social capital and social ties during and after a catastrophe.
Individuals are critically important in this regard. Disaster scholars have used the concepts of
social capital and social ties to understand the trajectory of individuals within communities in
the aftermath of disasters (based on the resources that these individuals accessed through their
community networks) (Aldrich and Meyer, 2015).
Distinguishing the individual from the community in our model permits us to identify more
nuanced relationships from private and public sector actors. Our model explains the roles that
the private sector and public sector (NGOs and government organizations (GOs)) each play
prior to, during, and following natural disasters.

Figure 11.1 Model of firm involvement in community resilience

 Role of firms in community resilience 159

RESILIENCE

Community Resilience

Communities are the built, natural, social and economic environments that, during and follow-
ing a natural disaster, share geographic boundaries and a common fate (Norris et al., 2008).
We adopt a holistic understanding of communities as the “totality of social system interactions
within a defined geographic space” (Cutter et al., 2008, p. 599). Communities are comprised of
many different individuals. These individuals can be ordinary citizens that live, work and play
in a community or they can be community, political or business leaders. As we argue below,
individuals are a critical component of any model of community resilience.
Our definition of community resilience reflects the work of Cutter and Norris. Following
Norris et al. (2008) we conceptualize resilience as a process through which communities
proceed through stages of preparation, disaster impact and response, and finally recovery
and rebuilding to successfully establish a “positive trajectory of functioning and adaptation
after a disturbance” (Cutter et al., 2008; Norris et al., 2008, p. 130). The temporal aspect of
resilience is important, helping to structure the different “capacities” that communities require
for effective resilience.

Individual Resilience

Resilience at the level of the individual has a strong analogy with community resilience.
Luthans (2002) describes individual resilience in terms of successful coping and the ability to
“bounce back” from adversity. Resilience thus refers to the degree to which individual citi-
zens handle adversity more effectively than others (Luthar et al., 2000; Masten, 2001). More
recently Luthans et al. (2006) have emphasized the concept of psychological capital through
which individuals can better cope with change and adversity.
Figure 11.1 highlights the important reciprocal relationships between community resilience
and individual resilience. These relationships can strengthen one another, but at times they
can also diminish resilience. Below we describe these relationships (A and B in Figure 11.1).

Relationship A: Effect of community resilience on individual resilience

Community resilience can have both positive and negative impacts on the resilience of indi-
viduals within that community. Strong community resilience can reduce the negative impacts
of a disaster on the community, improve responsiveness to natural disasters, and foster
a culture of preparedness among local citizens. However, at times, communities that exhibit
strong resilience can lead citizens to take this resilience for granted.
Strong community resilience can reduce the impacts of a disaster on individuals. This is
accomplished through infrastructures such as dikes, flood management systems and fire breaks
that limit the physical damages facing a community. However, social structures through which
community members develop and practice effective responses to a range of disaster possibil-
ities can aid responsiveness. These social structures ensure that aid is marshaled to the loca-
tions where it is needed and that effective communication is provided to citizens that enable
them to make effective decisions particularly as it relates to evacuation and safety. Finally,
effective community resilience can encourage a citizenry to adopt a culture of preparedness.
This can dramatically improve outcomes for individuals by ensuring that citizens are able to
160 Research handbook on organizational resilience

cope effectively without the intervention of government or other emergency aid organizations.
In these ways, strong community resilience bolsters individual-level resilience.
However, communities that have strong resilience may unwittingly lull individual citizens
into a false sense of confidence. Often this occurs when communities have successfully exhib-
ited resilience to smaller disasters, giving individuals confidence that similar outcomes will
always result. This can create conditions in which individual citizens have reduced individual
resilience, becoming highly dependent on intervention from government and non-governmen-
tal organizations in times of disaster.

Relationship B: Effect of individual resilience on community resilience

Just as community-level resilience can influence individual-level resilience, so too can
individual-level resilience impact community-level resilience. We argue that this is through
two mechanisms. The first is that strongly resilient individuals can have a stabilizing effect
on communities by reducing the stress a community must endure. When individuals exhibit
resilience, they draw on fewer community-level resources, permitting communities to focus
on the individuals that most need assistance. This is one of the key reasons that individual
preparation for natural disasters is so critical, in that it reduces the stressors faced by a com-
munity. Individuals that are better able to handle the adversity of a natural disaster without
the need for intervention from government agencies, mute the impact of a natural disaster by
making it easier for the community to direct resources towards addressing other issues such
as rebuilding.
Second, individuals are called upon to lead communities during and following natural
disasters. Poor individual resilience threatens rebuilding efforts following a natural disas-
ter. Community leaders, particularly in smaller communities, wear multiple hats including
perhaps a councilor or mayor, full-time employee and additional emergency response roles.
The prospect of burnout for individuals unable to cope is very real. The resulting attrition can
dramatically affect the continuity of leadership beyond a disaster. The leadership of both the
community and key non-governmental organizations such as community support organiza-
tions can resign under the stress of disasters, making recovery more challenging.
However, strong individual resilience need not improve community-level resilience. Taken
to the extreme, resilient individuals that can pack up and start over again in another community
can have a detrimental effect on a community’s long-term resilience trajectory. Highly mobile
professionals, including doctors, are among the important constituents who are at a high risk
of moving their practice to other communities.

Firm Responses to Natural Disasters

Private sector firms make meaningful contributions to improve both community-level and
individual-level resilience. Above we described the important responses of both business con-
tinuity and corporate philanthropy. Below we explain how these responses impact resilience
outcomes at both the individual and community levels (relationships C and D in Figure 11.1).

Relationship C: Firm responses on individual resilience

Firms have significant impacts on the resilience of individuals living within a community.
First, strong business continuity practices bolster individual-level resilience by providing the
community with access to goods, supplies and services. The private sector operates much of
 Role of firms in community resilience 161

the critical infrastructure in many parts of the world, particularly in North America. Continuity
of these operations is critical to ensure that individuals within a community can access clean
water, food, communications, banking, and purchase rebuilding supplies and services among
many other goods and services.
Second, businesses that maintain operations during or restart quickly following a natural
disaster play a critical role in community recovery by maintaining much-needed employment.
Unemployment following a disaster has both direct and indirect impacts on a community.
Many, especially smaller, businesses that suffer direct damages in relation to a disaster never
reopen their doors. This lost employment adds to the strain that a community faces and can
lead to emigration and a more generally depressed economy. Lost employment has direct and
indirect effects on the ability of a community to recover.

Relationship D: Firm responses on community resilience

The firm responses of business continuity and corporate philanthropy can improve
community-level resilience; however, much of this influence on community-level resilience
comes indirectly in how it supports individual citizens (Relationship C), government organiza-
tions and non-governmental organizations (Relationship E). When individual citizens are able
to access food, water and reconstruction supplies among other essentials, they put less pressure
on first responders and non-governmental organizations, thereby improving community-level
resilience. Similarly, philanthropic contributions are rarely provided by firms to communities
but rather to non-governmental aid organizations.
However, businesses are interconnected in a myriad of ways and a lack of business conti-
nuity can have far-reaching consequences in a community and along a supply chain. Many
disasters generate elevated demand for specialized services that range from insurance services,
property restoration and building supplies as well as elevated demand for food and water. Few
communities have sufficient capacity to locally address peak needs during or following natural
disasters. Several firms have already investigated strategic options to achieve a temporary
extension of their existing supply and distribution arrangements and achieve this extension
by scaling organizational responses through activating latent structures. Examples include
Walmart: the company anticipates supply shortages and load trailers ready with building sup-
plies for subsequent distribution. The retailer has built several “Disaster Distribution Centers”
that are strategically located across the country to offer rapid response to the communities in
case of a natural disaster. Other examples of this approach involve the practice of electrical
system operators requesting mutual assistance from neighboring utility companies to bolster
the size of their workforce and speed up large-scale restoration efforts.

Relationship E: Firm responses supporting governmental and non-governmental

organizations
Business continuity and corporate philanthropy can also bolster the ability of GOs and NGOs
to improve community resilience (see Figure 11.1, relationship E).
Businesses that maintain continuity can help first responders in their efforts. Waffle House,
a US restaurant chain, works hard to stay open by deploying mobile generators and offering
a reduced menu. First responders often use their restaurants as a base of operations. FEMA
now maintains a “Waffle House Index” in some states that effectively reports on whether
Waffle House restaurants are open; if they are not, the storm is very bad indeed.
162 Research handbook on organizational resilience

Cash donations are critically important for local and national or international aid agencies.
Without these monies, their important work would not be possible. Some firms are engaged
in more hands-on efforts. UPS and FedEx have leveraged their corporate capabilities to help
distribute humanitarian relief rather than donate cash (Johnson et al., 2011). Similarly, Home
Depot organizes their “Team Depot” volunteer force to assist in disaster-affected commu-
nities. These are examples of firm actions that bolster the efforts of other organizations in
providing support to individuals within affected communities.

NGO and GO Responses

NGOs, including aid agencies and organizations that provide social services, as well as GOs
with expertise in emergency management remain at the frontlines of addressing both individ-
ual and community resilience. These organizations bring to bear a range of responses includ-
ing local, state/province, and national emergency services, mobile volunteer organizations
such as the Red Cross and Salvation Army as well as other organizations such as churches or
community groups that take on an outsized and adapted role during a disaster (Dynes, 1970;
Kreps and Bosworth, 1994). Our framework directly models a relationship between GOs and
NGOs to both community-level and individual-level resilience (see Figure 11.1, relationships
F and G).

Relationship F: NGO and GO responses to community-level resilience

Existing literature has well established the positive impacts of a functioning system of GOs
in the aftermath of disasters. For example, Kapucu (2008) reports on a case of four hurricanes
that struck Florida in 2004 (Charley, Frances, Ivan and Jeanne) and suggests that effectiveness
in coordinating community disaster response was driven by effective pre-season planning,
open communication between emergency managers and elected officials, and the use of tech-
nology, which all had a significant impact on community responses.
Some researchers have suggested that public-sector emergency management organizations
should adopt a well-defined incident command structure, extensive training, and provide reli-
able services to the community.3 However, in practice, challenges typically arise, in particular
because response systems have often been put in place without any particular guarantee that
the system will ever be activated. This leads to an erosion of response capabilities. In addition,
much-needed communication points to the public are often missing or not well-rehearsed, and
it is often difficult to get the wider community interested in participating in disaster prepar-
edness (Kapucu, 2008). Studies frequently show that events which occur with unprecedented
severity are often beyond routine emergency management capacities, as they have a much
greater scale and scope compared to what was anticipated (Linnenluecke and Griffiths, 2013).
Given the potential limits inherent in public sector responses and the recognition that
community resilience is dependent on a set of actors, focus in academia and practice has
shifted to other actors, including aid agencies, but also community organizations as well as
churches and faith-based organizations more generally. A key mechanism for community
resilience is that these organizations provide much-needed social capital and social resources
(also termed bonding social capital; see Norris et al., 2002, Aldrich and Meyer, 2015) to
community members. Chamlee-Wright and Storr (2008) report on how the community
surrounding the Mary Queen of Vietnam (MQVN) Catholic Church in New Orleans East
quickly recovered after the impact of Hurricane Katrina. The church provided a successful
 Role of firms in community resilience 163

network between community members that fostered social cooperation and community rede-
velopment in the aftermath of the disaster, which allowed residents to rebuild their distinct
ethnic-religious-language community. The connections that the church provided allowed
community members to overcome many of the coordination difficulties created by Hurricane
Katrina and allowed community members to successfully engage in political action to protect
their community. For example, the church approached energy company Entergy to petition for
power to be restored swiftly and secured a FEMA trailer park close to the church.

Relationship G: NGO and GO responses to individual-level resilience

Kapucu (2008) also reports how emergency managers connected effectively with residents and
worked vigilantly to keep them informed of the seriousness of a situation to counter public
complacency during four hurricanes in six weeks. While this case study offers a successful
example of GO response of a community disaster response and exemplifies the importance
of building social capital through social structures and processes that allowed successful
disaster response, there are many more examples of cases where community responses were
less successful.

DISCUSSION
This chapter models the role of the private sector in responding to natural disasters. We struc-
ture this discussion section to facilitate further exploration and emphasize future directions for
research on the role of the private sector and community resilience.
One of the key insights that we illustrate through our model is that firms often improve
community-level resilience indirectly rather than directly. Firms help individuals directly by
remaining open during and/or following a disaster and they aid NGOs and GOs similarly and
through the provision of corporate philanthropy. In turn, individuals, NGOs and GOs act to
improve community resilience. This is an important pathway of impact. We argue then that
research needs to be conducted to better understand a firm’s direct impacts on individuals,
governmental and non-governmental organizations and then how that resilience translates to
improved community-level resilience.
Future research should look at the intersection of firms and both individuals and govern-
ment or non-governmental organizations. Often firms are called in to engage in activities
such as provisioning supplies or restoring services of various kinds. Research should examine
the challenges and opportunities associated with how firms and these other organizations
work together. This is particularly the case given that firms are not always accustomed to
working with government agencies in this way or with non-profit organizations. What kind of
partnerships and alliances would strengthen these efforts during and following natural disas-
ters? What are some of the pitfalls to be avoided? How to maintain a productive relationship
between natural disasters so that the capacity to respond in tandem is retained?
We also call for more research on the conditions through which firm responses positively
influence individual- and community-level resilience. What are the moderators? We know
from prior research that firms behave differently in anticipation and response to different types
of disasters (McKnight and Linnenluecke, 2019). Firms take more anticipatory actions to
floods and hurricanes and are highly reactive to tornadoes and fires. Clearly the nature of the
disaster plays a key role in firm responses. What other factors moderate either what responses
164 Research handbook on organizational resilience

firms take or, perhaps more interestingly, the impact those responses have on individual and
community resilience? In addition to the nature of the disaster, we expect that considering
geography, frequency of disaster occurrence, key community characteristics including size,
leadership and preparedness will each draw interesting results.
Studying community resilience can be challenging. Isolating the causal factors that influ-
ence resilient or non-resilient outcomes for a community is particularly challenging. It is
difficult to discern whether a community exhibited resilience to a natural disaster because of
the strength of their resilience capacities or the weakness of a natural disaster Comparative
case studies across multiple communities are likely to help. However, we know that disasters
of different types are difficult to compare. We suggest that untangling these determinants is
best undertaken with longitudinal, in-depth engagement with disaster-prone communities over
multiple successive disasters. Only in this way can scholars hope to apply appropriate controls
to isolate antecedents of community resilience.

CONCLUSION
The purpose of this chapter was to structure the supporting role that firms play in responding to
natural disasters and to chart a path for future research. The above model illustrates how firms
contribute to community-level and individual-level resilience. Firms taking an active role with
respect to disasters must make a significant investment – in personnel, training and appropriate
corporate structures. Firms invest in insurance policies, build financial resources, diversify
supply chains, or select alternative locations. For any firm the question arises whether the
focus should invest in building resilience – and prepare for a (possibly unavoidable) disaster
situation. Both firms and communities should be prepared for the fact that investing in resil-
ience only pays off in an emergency. Some investments, such as the creation of alternative
locations, lead to considerable costs in “normal times” and are therefore often not undertaken
by companies, as profit maximization is of primary importance. However, the examples of
Waffle House and Walmart show that companies can establish innovative responses which
do not require a substantive investment. These case studies show a rethinking of corporate
resilience: progressive companies are increasingly investing in resilience measures that are not
only profitable for the company, but that also have a positive impact on the community. This
creates opportunities, in an emergency, to respond to customer needs and actively contribute
to reconstruction.

NOTES
1. The United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNISDR) defines a disaster as a “serious
disruption of the functioning of a community or a society at any scale due to hazardous events
interacting with conditions of exposure, vulnerability and capacity, leading to one or more of the
following: human, material, economic and environmental losses and impacts”; see https://www
.unisdr.org/we/inform/terminology.
2. See https://www.emdat.be/.
3. http://cstl-cla.semo.edu/wmiller/ps691/Ginter%20et%20al.pdf.
 Role of firms in community resilience 165

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12. Enriching our conceptual and practical
understanding of resilience through the
lens of black women at work
Erica M. Johnson, Samantha E. Erskine and
Laura Morgan Roberts

If it doesn’t kill you, it makes you stronger.

(Unknown)

INTRODUCTION

Stress and adversity are inevitable in contemporary workplaces that face increasing demands
and complexities of rapid growth, intense competition, performance and production pressures,
and toxic leadership (Fletcher et al., 2008; Pfeffer, 2018; Sutcliffe and Vogus, 2003; Tepper,
2000). A recent study of nearly 7000 people found that approximately half of the employees
surveyed missed time at work due to work-related stress: 61 percent said that workplace stress
caused them physical, emotional and family distress; and 7 percent reported that they had
been hospitalized as the result of work-related stress (LaBier, 2014). To counter the harmful
effects of workplace stress, organizations have recently started to integrate resilience-building
strategies into their employee relations practices (Britt et al., 2016; Vanhove et al., 2016). In
the current chapter, we examine why and how resilience has been invoked as a core capability
for Black women (and other marginalized workers) to cope with adversity. We caution that, by
heralding resilience as an idealized characteristic, Black women and other vulnerable workers
may become bound to the emotional labor of appearing “strong,” unfazed, and non-threatening
in order to survive.
The current chapter is organized in the following way. First, we consider resilience through
the lens of Black women’s exposure to societal, organizational and interpersonal adversity and
trauma. Second, we consider resilience through the lens of struggle, examining the challenges
of Black women to “bounce back” from performance shortcomings and how they ultimately
grow through failure. Third, we examine how resilience emerges as a core mechanism for
Black women in coping with trauma and adversity. Finally, we explore individual and organ-
izational resilience interventions tailored to enhance the well-being of Black women in the
workplace.

Trauma and Adversity in the Workplace

The American Psychiatric Association (APA, 2013) defines trauma as the exposure to a real or
imagined threat, such as witnessing violence or undergoing abuse, that shapes an individual’s
life trajectory. Immediately after the event, shock and denial are typical. Long-term reactions

167
168 Research handbook on organizational resilience

include unpredictable emotions, flashbacks, strained relationships, and even physical symp-
toms, like headaches or nausea (APA, 2013). Other examples of trauma include experiences
with physical, emotional and sexual abuse, the death of a loved one, mega-threats, home-
lessness, incarceration, genocide, slavery, gun violence, and physical illness – all of which
shape an individual’s life trajectory (Leys et al., 2018). More notably, trauma shatters one’s
worldview and expectations of life (Janoff-Bulman, 1989; Leys et al., 2018).
Slightly different from trauma, adversity refers to daily life stressors that can cause tempo-
rary psychological distress (Leys et al., 2018). We focus on both the traumatic and adverse
impact of racism and sexism as they intersect with other systems of oppression in the work-
place to shape the contextual landscape for Black women at work.

Racism

Sociologist Eduardo Bonilla-Silva (2019, p. 20) describes racism as a system of practices to

reproduce white privilege, which currently operates as the “new racism,” or colorblind racism,
that attempts to deny racial disparities. Similarly, aversive racism is the tendency for people
to view themselves as progressive or colorblind, while manifesting implicit bias, or subtle,
negative attitudes toward members of marginalized groups, often framed as unconscious
(Bonilla-Silva, 2003; Burke, 2017; Dovidio and Gaertner, 2000; Gaertner and Dovidio, 2005;
Kovel, 1970). Implicit bias psychologically and physiologically impacts people of color who
work in White-dominated environments as they continuously endure covert insults surround-
ing their competence and leadership abilities in many of the organizational processes they
encounter, including recruitment, evaluations and promotions (Carter and Phillips, 2017;
Rosette et al., 2008).

BLACK WOMEN’S EXPERIENCES OF DISCRIMINATION,

WORKPLACE ADVERSITY AND TRAUMA

The unique difficulties Black women face in the workplace as a result of the intersection of
race and gender discrimination also mirror their experiences of direct and vicarious social
trauma, such as exposure to mega-threats, which often result in compound work and non-work
stress (Leigh and Melwani, 2019; Perry et al., 2013). Mega-threats are negative, large-scale
events receiving significant social media attention in which marginalized individuals or groups
are attacked due to their social identity (e.g., police violence against Black Americans and
the murder of Black patrons by White supremacists at a Charleston, South Carolina church)
(Bor et al., 2018; Leigh and Melwani, 2019; Opie and Roberts, 2017; McCluney et al., 2017).
In addition to these adverse social threats, Black women face a life trajectory of distressing
stacked disadvantages: from being educated in poorly funded school districts (Jackson et
al., 2015; Ward, 2006) and housed in urban food deserts (Beaulac et al., 2009; Walker et al.,
2010), to being deprived of quality health care (Jha et al., 2003; Nelson, 2002; Prather et al.,
2018) and holding more of the financial responsibility for their households (Anderson, 2016;
Woods-Giscombe, 2010).
Already facing societal marginalization, Black women additionally face higher rates of
racial and sexual harassment in the workplace than their counterparts (Holder et al., 2015)
and endure implicit microaggressions, defined as “daily verbal, behavioral, and environmental
 Black women and resilience 169

slights and indignities directed toward Black Americans” (Sue et al., 2008, p. 329). These
microaggressions tend to evoke feelings of invisibility and psychological distress among
Black women (Bell and Nkomo, 2001; Holder et al., 2015; McCluney and Rabelo, 2019; Sue
et al., 2008) and heighten the impact of workplace stressors (Ong et al., 2006).
Black women are further haunted by intersectional invisibility, which is the oppression of
individuals who hold two marginalized identities, including gender (i.e., being a woman) and
race (i.e., being Black) (Buchanan and Settles, 2018; Creary et al., 2015; Purdie-Vaughns and
Eibach, 2008; Settles et al., 2018; Smith et al., 2019). Specifically, intersectional invisibility
occurs when individuals who fall into more than one underrepresented group are further
marginalized because of non-acceptance as “members of their constituent groups” due to lack
of adherence to societal “normative standards” characterized by the group (Purdie-Vaughns
and Eibach, 2008, p. 381). As such, Dr Moya Bailey (2014) coined the term, misogynoir, to
describe the unique ways in which Black women are pathologized based on a combination of
anti-Blackness and misogyny, the contempt for women. Thus, Black women are “marginal-
ized members within marginalized groups,” which results in a silencing of their voices and
a restriction from certain career opportunities (Purdie-Vaughns and Eibach, 2008, p. 381). For
instance, intersectional invisibility can explain why Black women face more barriers towards
promotion to leadership positions at work than their White female counterparts (Smith et al.,
2019).
Paradoxically, Black women are also hyper-visible in organizations (Bell and Nkomo,
2001; Smith et al., 2019), receiving greater scrutiny, criticism and blame for poor organiza-
tional performance when in positions of power, and are evaluated less favorably than men
and White women in similar roles (Rosette et al., 2008; Rosette and Livingston, 2012). One
corollary of hypervisibility is Black women’s tendency to accept “glass cliff” roles – risky
career changes (Ryan and Haslam, 2005) – after overcoming the “black ceiling” (Erskine et
al., forthcoming), “concrete ceiling” (Catalyst, 1999), and “concrete wall,” (Bell and Nkomo,
2001), as well as the powerful effects of tokenism (Kanter, 1977).
As a result, Black women experience an “emotional tax” (Catalyst, 2016) as they navigate
their careers, which can have deleterious effects on Black women’s health and well-being.
Consumed with heightened experiences of being different from their peers at work as a result
of their race and gender, this “tax” depletes Black women’s sense of well-being, making them
feel as though they have to constantly be on guard (Bell and Nkomo, 1998). The consequences
include disruptions in their sleep patterns, a reduction in their sense of psychological safety,
and their diminished capacity to contribute – let alone thrive – at work.
In sum, exposure to discrimination and racism results in negative mental and physical health
outcomes (Leigh and Li, 2014; Pascoe and Smart Richman, 2009). Though social resources
mitigate such harmful effects, Black women often lack the organizational support to handle
such transgressions (Hobfoll, 2011; Giscombe, 2017). According to the National Institute of
Health, Black women are disproportionately impacted by negative health outcomes compared
to their White counterparts (Leigh and Li, 2014). Black women experience higher rates of
breast cancer, cardiovascular disease, hypertension, and early death than all other women –
and they have increased amounts of untreated and undiagnosed mental health issues (Leigh
and Li, 2014; US Public Health Service, 2001). These multiple stressors add to the stacked
disadvantages against Black women, necessitating greater exertion of resilient coping skills
(Abrams et al., 2014; Beauboeuf-Lafontant, 2007; Woods-Giscombe, 2010).
170 Research handbook on organizational resilience

BLACK WOMEN’S EXPERIENCES OF RESILIENCE AT WORK

Resilience relies on two overarching components – recovery and sustainability – prompting

the need to “defend against harm” and to “move forward” (Zautra et al., 2010, p. 10). Highly
resilient individuals are able to absorb strain and maintain, or even improve, functioning in the
face of setbacks and stressful circumstances (Cooperrider et al., 2003; Lazarus and Folkman,
1984: Sutcliffe and Vogus, 2003). Hobfoll (2011, p. 128) describes resilience as “the ability
to withstand the most negative consequences of stressful challenges, even the traumatic
challenges they face,” along with remaining completely engaged in daily “life tasks” while
under duress. As such, resilience is unique among positive psychological characteristics; it
involves the interplay between strengths and obstacles, hardship and flourishing, and success
and failure (Bonanno, 2004; Janoff-Bulman, 1989; McAdams, 2001; Pals, 2006; Youssef and
Luthans, 2007). Perhaps this is why resilience has long been heralded in both scholarly and
popular texts as a virtuous action in communities, schools, and, more recently, in workplaces
(Berkes and Ross, 2013; Brooks, 2006; King et al., 2016; Youssef and Luthans, 2007).
Within the work context, both researchers and practitioners have concentrated on how
resilience minimizes stress, absenteeism and turnover while improving work performance,
prosocial behaviors, engagement and high quality relationships (Britt et al., 2016; Kossek and
Perrigino, 2016; Vanhove et al., 2016; Stephens et al., 2013; Youssef and Luthans, 2007).
Research on resilience includes both the protective factors that foster adaptive coping strate-
gies as well as the process by which it occurs (Luthar et al., 2000; Masten and Garmezy, 1985;
Wright et al., 2013).
Resilience “plays a role in every success narrative, regardless of a person’s race or gender”
(Roberts et al., 2018, p. 128). Yet research has found that coping skills vary across racial and
ethnic groups and the effects of such variance can be damaging (Hobfoll, 2011; Watson and
Hunter, 2015; Woods-Giscombe, 2010). Additionally, marginalized groups, such as Black
communities, often lack access to “resource caravans” of financial, health and social support,
in addition to weakened power structures (Cose, 2011; Hobfoll, 2011; Roberts et al., 2018).
To strengthen coping resources, Black women seem to rely more heavily than others on the
virtue of resilience as a result of challenges related to their race and gender (Holder et al.,
2015; Woods-Giscombe, 2010).
Although management literature emphasizes resilience and its relation to job concerns, the
manifestation of resilience among marginalized employees facing work stressors is largely
ignored (for exceptions, see the following: McCluney et al., 2017; Hall et al., 2012). Given
the scant amount of research on resilience among marginalized employees, the question
arises: do we truly understand the undercurrents of resilience that require workers to navigate
societal challenges, personal set-backs, and institutional logics? Do our portrayals of resilience
place disproportionate demands on the most vulnerable workers to individually “overcome”
structural obstacles? And have we fully examined the mental and behavioral dimensions of
resilience that enable workers to overcome adversity in diverse organizational settings? The
current chapter now turns to these questions; specifically, we center on the experiences of
Black women workers to enrich our conceptual and practical understanding of resilience.
Resilience is often likened to a rubber band that allows it to be stretched, but not damaged.1
Resilience is highlighted as a key factor in explaining how Black women maneuver various
combinations of aforementioned obstacles by courageously pursuing unconventional, high
risk leadership opportunities to prove their acumen, chart their own course, and pursue their
 Black women and resilience 171

purpose. For example, studies found that in the midst of racism, sexism, isolation, and denied
career development, Black women still made concerted efforts to accept challenging assign-
ments and forge friendships in order to achieve success (Bell and Nkomo, 2001; Hall et al.,
2012; Roberts et al., 2018; Smith et al., 2019). Roberts et al.’s (2018, p. 129) study of Black
women executives illustrates how they exhibited resilience through emotional intelligence,
authenticity and agility with navigating unconventional career moves; they refused to be
“knocked off stride,” held on to “their increasingly well-defined sense of self” and avoided
being trapped by lowered standards or limited opportunities (see also Hall et al., 2012; Ryan
and Haslam, 2005; Smith et al., 2019).
Smith et al.’s (2019) qualitative study of Black women executive leaders revealed a strategy
of “leaning into risk” by taking on highly visible, yet precarious, “glass-cliff” roles in order to
help catapult them into C-suite (i.e., executive) positions (Ryan and Haslam, 2005; Smith et
al., 2019). Despite the threat of backlash and criticism prevalent in such tenuous roles, Black
women in positions of leadership believed it was a necessary means to an end in gaining status
equivalent to that of their White colleagues (Settles et al., 2018; Smith et al., 2019). Notably,
Wooten and James’ (2019) case study analysis of Black male and female CEOs described
a similar “glass cliff” phenomenon, in which they inherited precarious, high-risk positions that
called for savvy crisis leadership. The findings from this work shed light on how even Black
women who are executive leaders face extreme barriers to their rights to be viewed as intellec-
tual equals to their White executive counterparts, yet are not deterred. Resilience is evident in
their success stories in light of such challenges.
Of course, not all Black women face the same paths; some even draw from the resources
of middle class backgrounds and elite educational environments to overcome intersect-
ing forms of trauma and adversity (O’Connor, 2002). Yet, because the representation of
economically-privileged Black women is so sparse, stereotyping and bias (implicit and
intentional) are still pervasive in the workplace (Holder et al., 2015; Roberts, 2005; Sue et al.,
2008). In turn, Black women draw upon personal and collective resilience to bounce back from
structural and environmental adversity.

RESILIENCE AND THE DOUBLE BIND FOR “STRONG BLACK

WOMEN”
Resilience manifests when individuals have adequate resources, such as social, emotional
and material capital so that they can develop competence and self-efficacy as well as build an
active mastery motivation system (Sutcliffe and Vogus, 2003). Black women not only face
structural racial and gender barriers, they must also learn – like all employees – how to recover
from inevitable personal setbacks and failures that are essential for growth and development.
As one Black female senior level executive stated:

We were all told that you had to be smarter or run faster or jump higher or be better than anybody else
around you just to stay in the game. That was a lesson from early, early on – from my parents, teach-
ers, mentors, church. So you come [to your job] with that orientation. (Roberts et al., 2018, p. 128)

Herein lies the irony of Black womanhood, that the internalized expectation of strength and per-
sistence in the face of trauma and adversity may, in fact, impede Black women’s access to the
172 Research handbook on organizational resilience

resources necessary to cultivate resilience. The Superwoman, or Strong Black Woman (SBW)
archetype is one of a myriad of stereotypical roles ascribed to Black women – along with the
Mammy, Jezebel, Angry Black Woman, and Sapphire (Holder et al., 2015; Reynolds-Dobbs
et al., 2008). All of these ascribed roles limit the career advancement of Black women in
organizations and induce workplace stress (Holder et al., 2015; Reynolds-Dobbs et al., 2008).
The SBW schema is particularly tenuous when generating resilience due to its over-promotion
of self-reliance and self-silence so as to appear even stronger despite obstacles (Watson and
Hunter, 2015; Woods-Giscombe, 2010). Similar to critiques of grit, or the perseverance
through difficulties to obtain a long-term goal, an overreliance on resilience can place an
inordinate burden on all workers to withstand work pressure and maintain the meritocratic
ideal (Crede et al., 2017; Dixson et al., 2016; Duckworth and Gross, 2014; Gorski, 2016).
Black women are considered “exceptional,” or “unusually able or competent,” by soldiering
through adverse and traumatic situations without acknowledging their feelings or expressing
their emotions (Laws, 1975, p. 58). Accordingly, Black women who desire to uphold the
SBW schema are more likely to avoid help-seeking behaviors and to suppress painful emo-
tions when under duress (Holder et al., 2015; Woods-Giscombe, 2010). By consequence, the
SBW schema fosters adverse psychological and physical states, such as feelings of empti-
ness, isolation, low self-worth, depression, anxiety and hypertension (Holder et al., 2015;
Woods-Giscombe, 2010).
Despite these negative outcomes, adherence to the SBW framework helped fortify
the Black family structure as women became the pillar of strength (Holder et al., 2015;
Woods-Giscombe, 2010). Watson and Hunter’s (2015) study found that adherence to the SBW
schema was related to greater racial identity salience, such that Black women who felt more
socialized into the Black community and took on leading roles were more likely to experience
anxiety and depressive symptoms, and less likely to seek help. In essence, maintaining a strong
connection to their Black social identity both helped and harmed their sense of well-being.
These multiple roles are steeped in sociocultural history in which Black women had to weather
racial and gender oppression, as well as bear the strain of being their family’s primary bread-
winner due to the disenfranchisement of Black men (Woods-Giscombe, 2010). In short, Black
women’s endurance of generational oppression has facilitated their development of a strong
sense of resilience and survival mindset owing to their felt responsibility and commitment to
their loved ones. However, it creates a double bind given the negative mental, physical and
career outcomes.
It may be the case that Black women are more preoccupied with ways to be resilient in order
to cope, endure, survive and persist in White-dominated organizations – rather than actually
flourishing or thriving. Well-meaning organizational scholars and practitioners often applaud
and commend Black women for their strength and resilience in the face of adversity (Bacchus,
2008; Hall et al., 2012; Woods-Giscombe, 2010). In doing so, they imply that Black women
circumvent the damaging impact of institutional racism, White supremacy, and patriarchy by
simply “being strong”; however, coping with marginalization and oppression is not the same
as overcoming these systemic barriers (hooks, 2015). We cannot analyze employees’ capacity
to flourish or thrive in organizations without simultaneously recognizing the power of dif-
ference in organizational life or how this difference is tied to deep and persistent inequalities
(Bell and Hartmann, 2007; Spreitzer et al., 2005).
 Black women and resilience 173

RECOMMENDATIONS FOR RESILIENCE-BUILDING

INTERVENTIONS

Effective resilience-building workplace interventions incorporate emotion-focused coping

programs, in conjunction with problem-focused protocols, to alleviate negative responses
to stressors and to promote the development of resilience (Britt et al., 2016; Vanhove et al.,
2016). Effective interventions also include cognitive-affective activities to regulate emotions
and manage negative thought patterns after distressing events (Bond and Bunce, 2000; Gardner
et al., 2005; Hodges, 2010). Greater long-term effects (i.e., increased positive emotions and
feelings of self-confidence for more than one month) were evidenced among employees who
received one-on-one coaching, had continual social support, and within programs that focused
on psychosocial needs as opposed to improving work performance (Bond and Bunce, 2000;
Britt et al., 2016; Hodges, 2010; Vanhove et al., 2016). Such programs can also benefit Black
women workers by providing a social network of allies, including organizational leaders and
direct supervisors, concerned about their development and well-being.
Career development activities that recognize and reward the performance of Black women
and incorporate well-being as a competitive advantage may also promote resilience among
Black women employees (McCluney and Rabelo, 2019). Recruitment, retention and promo-
tion of diverse employees also enhance psychological engagement and feelings of well-being
of employees of color (Downey et al., 2015; Hall et al., 2012; Opie and Roberts, 2017; Roberts
et al., 2019). Partnering externally with organizations specializing in the employment of pro-
spective Black job candidates, especially executive leaders, can aid in building the talent pool
(Hall et al., 2012; Opie and Roberts, 2017).
Sister circles also enhance the physical and psychological well-being of Black women
inside and outside of work (Neal-Barnett et al., 2010; 2011). Although sister circles are
slowly becoming popularized within workplace settings, they actually originated “within the
Black church and the Black women’s club movement” with a mission to educate about health
concerns specific to Black women (Neal-Barnett et al., 2010, p. 214). One such sister circle
educates Black women on the prevalence of anxiety and panic attacks as a result of the SBW
schema and the growing struggle for work/life inclusion (Neal-Barnett et al., 2010; 2011).
Sister circles seek to alleviate views expressed by a Black female employee focus group par-
ticipant, yet all too commonly voiced by her peers, that the “qualities that make professional
Black women strong also make them anxious” (Neal-Barnett et al., 2010, p. 217). The success
of a sister circle depends on “confidentiality, a supportive atmosphere, and a positive atmos-
phere” (Neal-Barnett et al., 2010, p. 217).
Black women who are agile, or malleable, are oriented toward seeking out challenges and
opportunities to learn, and thus, potentially more resilient (Dweck and Leggett, 1988; Sutcliffe
and Vogus, 2003). Among groups of sister-friends, these women may be more likely to reg-
ister and handle the complexity of dynamic decision-making environments, and may also be
more motivated to persist in the face of adversities because of their accumulated knowledge.
This dynamic expands a group’s collective knowledge base – in terms of each individual’s
competencies, response repertoires, and capacity to make sense of new situations (Sutcliffe
and Vogus, 2003). These groups of sister-friends may also reduce their stressors, as their
collective efficacy promotes what Sutcliffe and Vogus (2003) term “collective resilience.”
Roberts et al. (2018) interviewed one former Black woman C-suite executive, who
expressed her commitment to fostering resilience among other women in this way:
174 Research handbook on organizational resilience

I’m very happy for all of the lessons and all of the experiences. I’m very happy for the pitfalls and the
triumphs. I’m very happy for the lessons learned and the rounding of edges. And I still believe that
there’s much left to do. And the one other thing I’d say is, it’s so important for me at this stage to be
the example that every young African American person sees and says, “I can be that, plus more.” So,
staying in the fight, staying in the game is as much about all of those, that hopefully I can impact and
influence around me and behind me as it is about me. Because, quite frankly, I’ve had a good run. It’s
been great. I hope I’ll do more. And I hope, as I do more, I can help people along the way. (Roberts
et al., 2018 – dataset)

Sponsorships, mentoring and coaching add value to the organization and the employee by pro-
moting both professional and personal growth (Grant et al., 2009; Holder et al., 2015; Jackson
et al., 2007). Mentoring and coaching build skills to advance within one’s career, while spon-
sorships provide resources and “access to power and influence in organizations” (Grant et al.,
2009; Holder et al., 2015). These forms of relationships promote feelings of self-worth and are
often used to conduct sanity checks to reflect on encounters with microaggressive behaviors
(Holder et al., 2015; Sue et al., 2008). This use of cultural humility, or continuous learning
of another’s background and experiences, within coaching relationships generates a space of
psychological safety and well-being for Black women (Grant et al., 2009; Woods-Giscombe,
2010). In addition, clinical psychological research found that Black women who subscribe to
the SBW schema feel more bodily aches and pains when under emotional distress as opposed
to outward displays of emotions (Woods-Giscombe, 2010). Thus, during coaching or mentor-
ing sessions, it may be more beneficial to emphasize somatic issues, such as feeling tired or
exhausted, when addressing stress-related concerns (Woods-Giscombe, 2010). Rather than
romanticizing Black women’s resilience experiences as triumphant and glorious despite their
obstacles, senior leaders can engage in allyship to help remedy the systemic impact of oppres-
sion within organizations by leveraging one’s power and privilege to bolster their humanity,
well-being and career advancement (Erskine and Bilimoria, 2019).
Womack and Sloan (2017, p. 408) suggest the use of mindfulness-based stress reduction
programs (MBSR) centering on “cultural pride and reinforcement” to “buffer the negative
consequences of stressors for African Americans.” Incorporating mindfulness techniques,
such as those of Kabat-Zinn (1990), helps to promote present-moment living through the
metacognitive practice of observing one’s thoughts, feelings, body sensations, and surround-
ings while espousing “nonjudgment, nonstriving, acceptance, and letting go” (Womack and
Sloan, 2017, p. 413). Currently, some sister circles infuse mindfulness techniques using pro-
gressive muscle relaxation (PMR) to counter the daily stressors of workplace discrimination
(Neal-Barnett et al., 2011). This technique is used, as opposed to guided meditation, so as
to minimize religious conflicts between Eastern teachings of traditional meditation and the
Christian religion, which is highly practiced among Black women (Mattis, 2002; Neal-Barnett
et al., 2011). Additionally, respondents from a study on Black women and stress recommended
PMR above other mindfulness-based practices (Neal-Barnett et al., 2011). Given the somatic
symptoms of Black women who suffer from anxiety, PMR is an ideal therapeutic intervention
to address bodily aches while also helping to regulate negative emotions (Neal-Barnett et al.,
2011). Moreover, adaptive coping strategies, such as mindfulness, encourage greater racial
socialization (Womack and Sloan, 2017) and may therefore help to foster resilience.
 Black women and resilience 175

CONCLUSION

Taken together, resilience pertains to the perception of the intensity of the threat of a stressor,
and the utilization of coping skills (i.e., specific cognitive skills and behaviors) that can help to
mitigate the deleterious effects of these stressors. The inability to demonstrate adaptive coping
skills following trauma may negatively impact physical and psychological well-being. For
instance, past history of trauma, stemming from racism and sexism, may interact with current
workplace discrimination, exacerbating psychological distress. Thus, Black women in the
workplace face a double bind with regard to their use of coping skills in which there are both
positive and negative physical and psychological consequences. Maintaining the SBW schema
may create feelings of isolation, encourage emotional suppression and increase anxiety, while,
at the same time, helping to fortify the family structure. To mitigate these internal conflicts,
a host of organizational and individual practices that directly address racism, sexism, as well
as emotional and behavioral outcomes, can be implemented to cultivate bidirectional growth
of both employer and employee. Though resilience and coping strategies may vary based
on individual skill-sets and situational contexts, Black women continue to make invaluable
contributions to the workplace.

NOTE
1. https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/basics/resilience.

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13. The unfolding process of organizational
resilience in a diversity crisis: a case study of
racial incidents at the University of Missouri
Courtney L. McCluney, Lynn Perry Wooten and
Erika Hayes James

INTRODUCTION
It’s happened again. Just last night, on Traditions Plaza. Hate and racism were alive and well at
Mizzou […] It’s enough. Let’s stop this. Let’s end hatred and racism at Mizzou. We’re part of the
same family. You don’t hate your family. (Then Chancellor R. Bowen Loftin in response to racist
events at the University of Missouri)

The progression of race-related events, student protests and (lack of) responses from institu-
tional leaders at the University of Missouri provide an in-depth view of an unfolding diversity
crisis within an organization. Diversity crises are rare and significant events characterized by
stakeholders alleging discrimination, inequitable actions, or exclusion (James and Wooten,
2006). Organizational crisis generally refers to a low-probability, significant situation that has
the potential to become public and engender negative outcomes for a firm and its stakeholders,
and therefore, requires immediate corrective action (Dutton, 1986; James and Wooten, 2010;
James et al., 2011; Pearson and Clair, 1998). In our increasingly diverse, globalized, digitally
connected and virtual workplace, the presence and spread of diversity crises will likely rise.
As corporate scandals and misconduct regarding racial profiling (e.g., Starbucks) and sexual
harassment (e.g., Uber) continue to surface in organizations, it is clear that companies lack
appropriate competencies, structures, processes and resources to anticipate, cope with, adapt
and learn from diversity crises (Christianson et al., 2009; Wooten and James, 2008).
More specifically, organizations may lack organizational resilience, defined as the capacity
to achieve positive outcomes despite encountering unexpected adversities (Linnenluecke,
2017; Sutcliffe and Vogus, 2003), to address diversity crises. Despite their mutual focus on
effectively responding to organizational adversity, research on and application of crisis man-
agement and resilience in organizations are sparse (Kahn et al., 2013; Sommer et al., 2016;
Williams et al., 2017). We therefore take an inductive approach to analyzing the events that
culminated into a systemic racial diversity crisis and resulted in the dismissal of institutional
leaders on the campus of the University of Missouri (also known as Mizzou) between 2014
and 2016 (Fortunato et al., 2017). Our case study analysis of these key events provides empir-
ical support for organizational resilience as a process, where resilience is a “dynamic capacity
[…] that grows and develops over time” (Gittell et al., 2006, p. 303). This process includes
an ability to anticipate threats, cope effectively with unexpected events, and learn from these
events to produce a dynamic capability that facilitates organizational change (Duchek, 2014;
Duchek et al., 2019). A process-centered perspective of diversity crisis identifies how crisis
occurs in phases extended in space and time (Williams et al., 2017). Using a case study helps

180
 Diversity crisis 181

us develop theory of crisis management and resilience processes from observing the patterns
and driving mechanisms that explain meanings for individuals involved in real time (Langley,
1999). Specifically, the temporal aspects of the diversity crisis at Mizzou coupled with the
organization’s capability to respond effectively before, during and after these racial events
contribute necessary theoretical and practical insight for the type of crisis management and
resilience needed to address diversity-related issues. Collectively, we propose that an organ-
ization’s response to diversity crisis creates an opportunity (e.g., Brockner and James, 2008)
to better understand when and how resilience emerges and serves as a dynamic capability for
organizational learning.
We first briefly describe our methodological approach and a case study of the racial events
that occurred at Mizzou. We then describe our analytic approach and present findings that
enable us to theorize the unfolding process of resilience in the context of diversity crises.
Finally, we conclude with a discussion of resilience in management and offer recommenda-
tions for strengthening organizational capacity to respond effectively to diversity crises.

METHOD
For this chapter, our analysis focuses on organizational resilience and crisis management
before, during and after the triggering events at the University of Missouri. We used a case
study methodology (Eisenhardt and Graebner, 2007; Stake, 2005) to identify key organiza-
tional behaviors that demonstrated or were barriers to resilience during each phase of the
diversity crisis. This case was selected for examining organizational resiliency during a diver-
sity crisis because there is richness in observing a contemporary phenomenon in a real-life
context. Further, this case had multiple crisis events with longitudinal decisions and a complex
web of stakeholders (Yin, 1994). Thus, the University of Missouri case was well suited for
exploring how resilience transforms tacit knowledge into explicit knowledge over time (Stake,
1978).
We, along with a research assistant, collected archival data of the racial events that occurred
at the University of Missouri for our case study. Our primary sources included news articles,
television and radio transcripts, website postings, online publications (i.e., blogs), higher
education publications, journal papers, and research reports. These data represented public
accounts given in the form of written responses, interviews, real-time quotes, analysis, and
reflections on the Mizzou’s diversity crisis from various stakeholders including administra-
tors, faculty, students, alumni, state government leaders, higher education experts, and report-
ers. Collectively, these accounts represent formal documentation for how the organization and
its stakeholders made sense of and responded to the crisis (Forster, 1994). We organized the
archival data by phases of the diversity crisis and stakeholder group chronologically (see Table
13.1). We present contextual information about the crisis in the case below.

UNIVERSITY OF MISSOURI’S DIVERSITY CRISIS: A CASE

STUDY
Sixteen days before 30 000 University of Missouri undergraduates descended on campus to
begin the fall semester of 2014, a police officer shot an unarmed African American teenager
182 Research handbook on organizational resilience

Table 13.1 Chronological order of key events that comprise the diversity crisis at the
University of Missouri (Mizzou)

Date Racial event Primary Phase of crisis

stakeholder
9 August 2014 Shooting death of Michael Brown in Ferguson, MO. External Signal detection
community
Three Mizzou seniors create “MU for Mike Brown.” Students
25 November Grand jury finds insufficient evidence to indict police officer in shooting External
2014 death of Michael Brown. community
15 December Members of the Concerned Student 1950 protest wristbands of a nightclub Students
2014 inscribed with “Hands up, Pants up.”
12 September Student government president Payton Head shared that he was called the Broader university
2015 N-word on campus in a viral Facebook post. community
18 September Chancellor Loftin makes a public statement on Twitter stating “Hate has Preparation/
2015 no place on the Mizzou campus.” prevention
1 October 2015 Racism Lives Here on-campus protest at the Student Center. Demands for Administrators,
the university, including for Chancellor Loftin to publicly state a plan to students
address racism on campus.
4 October 2015 Man allegedly used a racial slur directed towards the League of Black Students
Collegians on campus.
5 October 2015 Chancellor Loftin posts video to Twitter expressing his anger and Broader university
acknowledgement that “racism is alive and well at Mizzou.” community
10 October 2015 Concerned Student of 1950 protest the inaction of university Administrators,
administrators to University of Missouri (UM) System President Tim students
Wolfe during the homecoming parade.
21 October 2015 Concerned Student of 1950 put forth eight demands to the university,
including the resignation of UM President Tim Wolfe.
24 October 2015 Peer advisors discover a swastika drawn using human feces on the wall of Students
a dorm bathroom.
26 October 2015 President Wolfe meets with Concerned Student 1950 representatives, who Administrators, Containment/
left the meeting unsatisfied. students damage control
30 October 2015 The Jewish Student Association announces plan to join the Legion of Students
Black Collegians for a social media campaign #HateLivesHere.
2 November Jonathan Butler begins a hunger strike until President Wolfe is removed
2015 from office or Butler dies.
3 November President Wolfe and Chancellor Loftin meets with student groups. Several Administrators,
2015 faculty members vote no confidence and issue statements in favor of students, faculty
students’ protests.
 Diversity crisis 183

Date Racial event Primary Phase of crisis

stakeholder
6 November President Tim Wolfe issues an apology for his behavior during the Administrators, Business
2015 Homecoming Parade. students recovery
Concerned Student of 1950 protest outside building where Wolfe is
attending a fundraiser.
7 November Butler persuades the Mizzou Tigers football team to join the campaign. Athletics
2015 The team declares to boycott football games and practices until President department
Wolfe resigns or is removed from his position.
8 November Mizzou Tigers football head coach Gary Pinkel supports the football Athletic
2015 players’ decision. department,
President Wolfe distributes a statement stating that administration is administrators,
meeting around the clock to come to a solution. elected officials
Elected officials publicly weigh in on the protests and campaign for
Wolfe’s resignation.
9 November President Tim Wolfe resigns. Broader university Learning
2015 Nine deans send letter calling for the dismissal of Chancellor Loftin. community and
Chancellor Loftin announces he will resign effective 1 January. system
UM Board of Curators announce new leadership (appointment of Michael
A. Middleton as the Interim chair) and new initiatives to ensure campuses
are free of acts of hatred and embody a culture of respect (https://www
.umsystem.edu/ums/news/media_archives/news_110915).
December 2015 Donations to the athletic department down 72% compared to the previous Broader university
year. community
Spring 2016 Race Relations committee formed.
Fall 2016 First year enrollment down 25%, leaving a $32 million funding gap and
closure of four dorms.

named Michael Brown in the small town of Ferguson, Missouri, 117 miles west of Mizzou.
This incident made national headlines and prompted large-scale protests from the Black
Lives Matter (BLM) movement and public statements from business leaders (McCluney et
al., 2017a). The night Brown was killed, Naomi Daugherty, Ashley Bland and Kailynd Beck,
three Mizzou seniors, scanned the flurry of first-hand reports of the shooting on Twitter and
Instagram, deciding then and there that they would establish a protest group called “MU for
Mike Brown.” The aftermath of Brown’s death included a series of protests, over 27 million
tweets of the hashtag #BlackLivesMatter, and chants exclaiming what were believed to be
Michael Brown’s own words, “Hands Up, Don’t Shoot” (Lowery, 2017). On the Tuesday
before Thanksgiving, a grand jury found insufficient evidence to indict Brown’s killer for any
crime. On neither occasion did the University of Missouri administration release a statement,
suggesting that they had not recognized these early warning signs of an impending crisis from
the activity of their students (James and Wooten, 2010).
Following the non-indictment, the MU for Mike Brown group changed their name to
Concerned Student 1950 in acknowledgement of the first year that African Americans were
admitted to Mizzou, which potentially expanded their focus to broader issues affecting stu-
dents on campus. Their first organized protest occurred on 15 December 2014, when members
of the organization descended on Roxy’s nightclub, holding up traffic for more than three
hours, to protest wristbands the establishment had issued inscribed with “Hands Up, Pants
Up,” a slogan similar to “Hands Up, Don’t Shoot.” The students indicated that given the
Michael Brown situation, the wristband and its statement of the nightclub’s dress policy was
184 Research handbook on organizational resilience

insensitive (Stice, 2014). Although the nightclub apologized and explained the wristband as
a joke, students found it problematic that Roxy’s was policing people’s bodies with this lan-
guage. None of these events were detected by other stakeholders at Mizzou beyond members
of the Concerned Student 1950 group, indicating those stakeholders’ failure to recognize and
address race-related issues (Watkins and Bazerman, 2003; Wooten and James, 2004), perhaps
as a result of lacking core competencies of signal detection for diversity crisis (Wooten and
James, 2008). However, Concerned Student 1950 interpreted these two events as an indication
of a widespread racial problem that affected the lives of students, suggesting they have the
ability to anticipate threats and take proactive steps that ensure survival and thriving (Duchek
et al., 2019).
One month into the 2015–16 school year, Student Government President Payton Head
shared in a Facebook post that he was called the “N-word” several times while on campus.
The post went viral; the rapid spread and response created a public discourse on the racial
events happening on or near Mizzou as national media picked up the story. The use of social
media further served to escalate the otherwise smoldering crisis (Caponigro, 2000) into one
that demanded action from the organization (Gruber et al., 2015). Six days later, Chancellor
R. Bowen Loftin made a public statement about Head’s experience, saying he had “heard
from far too many” students who had experienced bias or discrimination. “Hate has no place
on the Mizzou campus,” he posted on Twitter. Addressing the student president’s experiences
showed a form of crisis prevention or preparation (James and Wooten, 2010) on behalf of
university administrators. Further, by using another social media platform, Chancellor Loftin’s
stance and organizational values were spread to internal and external stakeholders of Mizzou.
Chancellor Loftin’s espoused values, however, were countered by demands from a new
student group called Racism Lives Here. Their on-campus protest on 1 October at the Student
Center included demands that the university administration address racism on campus (Foley,
2015), among them that Chancellor Loftin state publicly that the university had a racial
problem and that the administration intended to address it; that the university develop a stra-
tegic diversity plan with an emphasis on the retention of marginalized students and the hiring
of Black faculty; and that there be an introduction of inclusive practices such as the establish-
ment of a social justice center and the enhancement of counseling resources. Taking action on
these demands could have served to mitigate future protests against the university. However,
before the administration could address these demands, another racial incident occurred on
campus; a man reportedly used a racial slur during a Legion of Black Collegians rehearsal for
a Homecoming performance. Chancellor Loftin posted a video response to this incident on
Twitter. “It’s happened again. Just last night, on Traditions Plaza. Hate and racism were alive
and well at Mizzou […] It’s enough. Let’s stop this. Let’s end hatred and racism at Mizzou.
We’re part of the same family. You don’t hate your family.” (McDowell, 2015).
Unlike in his previous Twitter post, Chancellor Loftin explicitly acknowledged the presence
of racism on campus, and further emphasized the “family” values of the university. His action
served as an attempt to prevent a diversity crisis and enact “damage control” on behalf of the
student groups that first brought these racial incidents to his attention. Yet these steps did not
quell the students’ actions, indicating that the university administrators lacked the ability to
cope with adversity, or develop and implement situation-specific solutions to problems as they
manifested (Williams et al., 2017).
Concerned Student 1950 protested the inaction of university administration during the
school’s Homecoming Parade on 10 October. They directed their grievances to the University
 Diversity crisis 185

of Missouri System President Tim Wolfe, linking arms and surrounding his red convertible
for several minutes. One member of the student group, Jonathan Butler, expressed the group’s
sentiments to Slate:

We’ve sent emails, we’ve sent tweets, we’ve messaged, but we’ve gotten no response back from the
upper officials at Mizzou to really make a change on this campus, so we directed it to him personally.
That we are here. We want to make our presence known. That we are here, and we deserve respect,
we deserve humanity. (Landsbaum and Weber, 2015).

Holding a public protest against the university during Homecoming extended the crisis to
other stakeholders of Mizzou including alumni, donors and the broader university system.
The students were met with no response; Wolfe did not reach out to the group in the days that
followed, nor did he return a phone call to undergraduate council chair Payton Head. Thus, the
Concerned Student of 1950 put forth eight demands on 21 October 2015. Among them were
for Wolfe’s official resignation and a handwritten apology.
Three days later, peer advisors discovered a swastika drawn using human feces on the wall
of a dorm bathroom (Teoh and Wynn, 2015). The Residence Halls Association President
issued a statement describing the vandalism as “an act of hate.” The University of Missouri
police department started an investigation right away, which students felt was an appropriate
response to the incident. Student leaders of several Jewish groups on campus expressed
disdain at the lack of broader attention from Mizzou and national media. Jordan Kodner, an
executive of Chabad, hoped that the incident would amplify the awareness of anti-Semitism on
campus and incorporate it into a larger discourse on racism with other minority groups. Thalia
Sass, President of the Jewish Student Association, sought to increase public awareness of the
event. One action included joining with the Legion of Black Collegians for a social media
campaign using the hashtag #HateLivesHere to further encourage the Mizzou administrators
to address racial issues on campus.
Tim Wolfe agreed to meet with Concerned Student 1950 representatives and participated
in other meetings to engage multiple voices on issues affecting all the UM System campuses.
Following their meeting on 26 October, Concerned Student 1950 issued a statement saying
Wolfe “did not mention any plan of action to address the demands or help us work together to
create a more safe and inclusive campus” (Kovacs, 2015). Part of Wolfe’s inability to develop
solutions to the rampant discrimination occurring on campus stemmed from his lack of aware-
ness of systemic racism, sexism and patriarchy on campus – a lack that, according to members
of Concerned Student 1950, “render[ed] him incapable of effectively performing his core
duties” (Kovacs, 2015). Namely, these duties were to promote student safety, address cultural
misunderstanding, and address the lack of administrative leadership to address racial issues.
One of the tipping points in this diversity crisis was Jonathan Butler, a master’s student
and member of Concerned Student 1950, declaring a hunger strike to protest “a slew of racist,
sexist, homophobic, etc., incidents that have dynamically disrupted the learning experience”
at MU. Butler stated, “During this hunger strike, I will not consume any food or nutritional
sustenance at the expense of my health until either Tim Wolfe is removed from office or my
internal organs fail and my life is lost.” At this phase, Butler perceived that the university
lacked the capacity to cope effectively with the crisis on campus. His unprecedented act gen-
erated rapid response from students, faculty and the administration. Several students camped
on the quad in support of Butler as he began the strike on 2 November. Chancellor Loftin and
President Wolfe met with Concerned Student 1950 and the Forum on Graduate Rights the
186 Research handbook on organizational resilience

following day. President Wolfe also addressed the broader student body, stating, “I want to
talk, I want to understand this, I want to come up with a way that we can get progress made
on these particular issues” (Landsbaum and Weber, 2015). It seemed, however, that talking
about the issues was an inappropriate response to the demands of the students. Several faculty
groups also demonstrated their support of Concerned Student 1950. The same day, the uni-
versity’s English department issued a vote of no confidence in Chancellor Loftin. Earlier, the
Black studies, classics and health professions departments had issued statements in favor of
the student activists’ positions.
The next six days involved all of Mizzou’s stakeholders, further demonstrating intercon-
nectedness of multiple levels within an organizational crisis. First, the Concerned Student
1950 student group held an on-campus demonstration on 5 November. They shouted “Join
us in the revolution!” to fellow students prior to a football game against Ole Miss (University
of Mississippi). This protest was met with several derogatory messages from fellow Mizzou
students that Peyton Head shared on Twitter, including, “How do you starve a Black guy? You
hide his food stamps under his work boots,” and “Nig [sic] fest at speakers circle. I fucking
hate Mizzou. Time to transfer.”
President Wolfe issued a delayed apology for his behavior during the Homecoming Parade
32 days earlier via the University of Missouri System website. “I regret my reaction at the
MU homecoming parade when the Concerned Student 1950 group approached my car,” the
statement read.

I am sorry, and my apology is long overdue. My behavior seemed like I did not care. That was not my
intention. I was caught off guard in that moment. Nonetheless, had I gotten out of the car to acknowl-
edge the students [blocking the car] and talk with them, perhaps we wouldn’t be where we are today.

His apology signaled the cascading effects of the smoldering crisis, and reflected an attempt
to contain the crisis through this face-saving account (Goffman, 1959; Hearit, 2006). He also
acknowledged that racism existed at the university and sought to unify stakeholders to address
the crises that unfolded. “Together we must rise to the challenge of combating racism, injus-
tice, and intolerance,” he wrote.
Student representatives from Concerned Student 1950 confronted President Wolfe that
evening to question Wolfe’s understanding of the diversity crisis. They traveled to Kansas
City, Missouri, where Wolfe was attending an arts fundraiser, linked arms and chanted in
front of the building until Wolfe came outside. We accessed a video showing the exchange
between the students and President Wolfe. One student asked, “Tim Wolfe, what do you think
systematic oppression is?” to which Wolfe responded, “It’s – systematic oppression is because
you don’t believe that you have the equal opportunity for success – .” In response, a member
of the crowd exclaims loudly, “Did you just blame us for systematic oppression, Tim Wolfe?
Did you just blame Black students […] ?” before the video cuts off. Wolfe’s lack of knowledge
about systemic oppression revealed a lack of knowledge, skills and ability of the administra-
tion to address racial incidents occurring on or near campus.
The next day, a large gathering of the Mizzou Tigers football players sat in silence as Butler,
five days into his hunger strike, spoke weakly of the many racist acts he had witnessed or heard
about on campus. These include the N-word inscribed on the door of his dorm and a sea of
cotton balls spread across the grass in front of the Black culture center. The Mizzou Tigers
football team publicly shared their decision to boycott football games and scheduled practices
 Diversity crisis 187

“until President Tim Wolfe resigns or is removed due to his negligence toward marginalized
students’ experiences” on the Legion of Black Collegians Twitter page. They were motivated
to boycott by team members meeting with Butler and being moved by a vision of reducing
racism on campus, negligence of marginalized students, and provision of better mental health
and academic services for students (Merrill, 2015). The following day, Head football Coach
Gary Pinkel tweeted: “The Mizzou Family stands as one. We are united. We are behind our
players.” Thus, the unification of the campus that Wolfe referred to earlier was taking place;
the campus was united in their calls for his removal from the helm of the UM system. The
inclusion of the football team, and the threat to participation in collegiate sports, served as an
additional tipping point in this unfolding crisis.
In response to this call for Wolfe’s resignation, the administration was “meeting round
the clock,” according to a statement distributed by President Wolfe. “Clearly, we are open
to listening to all sides, and are confident that we can come together to improve the student
experience on our campuses.” The statement concluded with promises to share next steps as
they were confirmed. Their desire to come to a viable solution for everyone involved indi-
cated the beginning of the business recovery phase of the crisis. UM’s revenue stream (i.e.,
athletics) and reputation were in jeopardy at this stage, which required the university to get
back to business as usual, creating a learning environment for students. One core competency
identified as necessary to recover is the ability to be resilient and promote resiliency in the
organization (James and Wooten, 2010; Wooten and James, 2008). This may include interpret-
ing tasks and relationships experienced during adversity to prepare for future crises (Williams
et al., 2017), in this case, possibly assessing disconnects between student experiences and the
administration’s responsibility to address social issues. Senator Claire McCaskill seemed to
tap into this conceptualizing of resiliency by calling the Board of Curators – a governing body
appointed by the governor to oversee the UM System – to “send a clear message” to students
that the school was committed to ending racism on its campus. Other elected officials also
weighed in on the crises. Two Republican state representatives called for Wolfe’s resignation,
but Lieutenant Governor Peter Kinder perceived that the protest tactics of Concerned Student
1950 were inappropriate. He publicly stated, “Our universities cannot be run by individuals
making demands or using extreme actions.” Although they had differing opinions, all these
officials were expressing criticism of the leadership functioning within Mizzou and the
broader UM System. Additional stakeholders also expressed their concerns with the university
leadership. The University of Missouri Black Alumni Association issued a statement of “deep
concern,” delineating the many racist incidents that had occurred that year (Landsbaum and
Weber, 2015). The Missouri Students Association pointed directly at Wolfe: “This leadership
has undeniably failed us and the students we represent. He has not only enabled a culture of
racism since the start of his tenure in 2012, but blatantly ignored and disrespected the con-
cerns of students” (Landsbaum and Weber, 2015). More stories of racist incidents prior to the
catalyzing event we discuss in this case were shared, prompting the university to take action.
The culmination of the student campaign occurred on 9 November 2015. Tim Wolfe
resigned as the University of Missouri System President, and Chancellor Loftin announced his
resignation several hours later. During a press conference announcing his resignation, Wolfe
said, “My decision to resign comes out of love, not hate. Please, please use this resignation to
heal, not to hate” (Mathis-Lilley, 2015), a message that was reflected in Governor Jay Nixon’s
statement on Wolfe’s resignation as a “necessary step toward healing and reconciliation on the
University of Missouri campus” (Eligon and Pérez-Peña, 2015). Healing and reconciliation
188 Research handbook on organizational resilience

are hallmarks of restorative justice, a framework focused on repairing relationships harmed

by wrongdoing, which has recently been discussed as an approach to addressing racial issues
in organizations (Opie and Roberts, 2017). Previous research on ameliorating the damaging
effects of diversity crises include compensation to the recipients of harassment through liti-
gation or the inclusion of change efforts. As seen in our case, the UM System and Mizzou
campus developed and implemented several key organizational capabilities that would enable
restoration of organizational functionality (Duchek et al., 2019), allow the organization to pro-
actively adapt to new situations as they arise (Wooten et al., 2013) and facilitate anticipation
of and responses to future triggering of race-related events (Williams et al., 2017).
The development of these organizational capabilities characterizes the learning phase of
a diversity crisis (James and Wooten, 2010) in which the university acquired, interpreted,
acted on and disseminated new information based on its experiences. Some of its learning is
evident through the appointment of former deputy chancellor of the University of Missouri
System Michael A. Middleton as its interim president. A former civil rights lawyer, Middleton
graduated from the University of Missouri law school and was among its first Black graduates,
indicating that he possessed some knowledge of the inner workings of the institution and skills
from his profession on addressing social justice issues. Middleton was tasked with implement-
ing new initiatives set forth by the Board of Curators to address the racial climate on the UM
campuses. These included appointing a Chief Diversity, Inclusion and Equity officer for the
UM System, completing a full review of policies as they relate to staff and student conduct,
and providing additional support for members of the UM System who have experienced
discrimination in addition to hiring and retaining diversity within the faculty and staff ranks.
Additionally, the Faculty Council at Mizzou created a Race Relations Committee, composed
of students, faculty and Middleton to respond to student complaints “complaining about
microaggressions and marginalization, and isolation in the classroom, in the lecture halls, and
on campus” (Brown, 2016).
Despite the gains to the university structure from this diversity crisis, Mizzou also faced
drawbacks for adhering to student demands. According to the National Review (French, 2016),
“one month after the [November 2015] protests, donations to the athletic department were
a mere $191,000 – down 72% over the same period a year earlier,” indicating that several
members of the Mizzou ecosystem were able to mobilize their opinion through withholding
financial support. Internally, faculty members held differing views, with some stating that
“this race thing was not real” (French, 2016). Months into the newly formed Race Relations
Committee, Middleton observed that what had been “polar positions” on ways to address the
campus racial climate had moved toward the middle, but cautioned that these efforts would
not produce large-scale change: “Unfortunately, we don’t have the numbers of people who are
willing to go through that to make a real impact on the entire faculty” (French, 2016). The fol-
lowing academic year, first-year enrollment at Mizzou was “down 25%, leaving a $32 million
funding gap and forcing the closure of four dorms” (McShane, 2016). Ultimately, the crisis
that unfolded at Mizzou forced the organization to critically evaluate its ability to address
racial events that affect their various stakeholders.
 Diversity crisis 189

ANALYTIC PROCESS

Williams and colleagues (2017) integrate research on resilience and crisis, which guides our
analysis of Mizzou’s resilience to diversity crisis. Specifically, we adopt their view of crisis as
a process, which enables us to identify how the crisis was produced and developed over time
(Roux-Dufort, 2007; 2016). We analyzed the public accounts and archival data using an eth-
nographic content analytic (ECA) approach (Altheide, 1987; Altheide and Schneider, 2013).
ECA is a reflexive analysis of public documents (Plummer, 2001) that enables us to develop
theoretical connections by documenting and understanding the communication of meaning
and behaviors. This analytic approach is well suited for understanding unfolding crises and
the formation of theoretical relationships (Altheide, 2018; Wooten and James, 2008). Further,
ECA requires conceptualizing and detecting patterns, which helped us craft a processual
narrative of how and why Mizzou’s organizational actions evolve over time (Langley, 1999).
We used a narrative strategy to construct a broader story of how the crisis was managed over
time. This recursive process included reading and coding each article (Miles and Huberman,
1994) focusing on the phases and management of the diversity crises and categorizing actions
and communications of stakeholder groups. An emerging phenomenon from our analysis
included identifying barriers or enablers of organizational resilience at Mizzou. Further, we
uncovered a variety of ways that stakeholders framed the issues, prioritized behaviors, and
formed alliances (Parent and Deephouse, 2007). We present a summary of our findings in the
following section.

THE UNFOLDING PROCESS OF ORGANIZATIONAL RESILIENCE

AT MIZZOU
Our analysis of the University of Missouri’s diversity crisis integrates learning at the organ-
izational and system (i.e., ecological) level of higher education. In looking at how Mizzou
managed its diversity crisis, we became curious about resilience in action. In particular,
we were interested in the previous behaviors and context that influenced the organization’s
resilience trajectory, leading us to pose the following questions to our data: “How did
Mizzou absorb strain during the crisis?” “What organizational improvements occurred after
the crisis?” To explore these questions, we employed an ethnographic content analysis of
our case study. Our findings (1) revealed how the “surprise” element of the diversity crisis
demonstrates the lack of knowledge among leaders for how to respond; (2) pointed out the
role of social media in escalating crises to a tipping point; (3) suggested that organizations
can be resilient in the face of a diversity crises through understanding and enacting collective
leadership; and (4) emphasized that organizations need to be prepared for disasters through
learning from previous crises.

Lack of Knowledge and Leadership to Address Diversity Crises

Although diversity crises are rare, these events are of deep significance to organizations and
their stakeholders. In this case, the diversity crisis at Mizzou illustrated the unpredictable
nature of racial incidents, the lack of institutional leaders’ capacity to address such incidents,
and the resistance to diversity embedded within the organization. First, the shooting death of
190 Research handbook on organizational resilience

Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, and the use of the protest phrase on wristbands for the
Roxy nightclub were interpreted as discrete, observable events that were uncharacteristic of
normal experiences (Morgeson et al., 2015) for Black students at the University of Missouri.
Such events have the capacity to disrupt routines within organizations, especially if they
create psychological distress for particular members (McCluney et al., 2017b). As shown in
the case, the racial tensions that emerged at these locales affected students at Mizzou and had
a significant impact on the vitality of students’ long-term well-being on the campus. Further,
both moments originated external to the university but were able to enter this organization
through the public protests of Mizzou students. As further illustrated in the case, this diversity
crisis strengthened over time despite the unpredictable, yet increasingly common, shootings
of unarmed Black people in the US (Leigh and Melwani, 2019). Members of the University of
Missouri community could not anticipate the proximity of the shooting death to their campus
or the anti-Semitism displayed in the dorms. More telling, however, is the administration’s
inability to address the issue brought to them by the Concerned Student 1950 student group.
Specifically, we find that Mizzou’s leadership was caught off guard by the diversity issues
that emerged near their campus. The nonresponse to these two events from Mizzou adminis-
trators reflects their inability to anticipate potential threats, risks, or signals of impending crisis
(Somers, 2009) as it pertains to issues of diversity, equity, inclusion and justice. Members
of Concerned Student 1950 demonstrated that the then UM Systems president Tim Wolfe
lacked sufficient understanding of systemic oppression and its complex relation to university
life, which is increasingly common among universities (Harold and Nelson, 2018). The lack
of leadership competencies to address diversity crisis were further revealed as more racial-
ized incidents emerged on campus. Some of the earlier meetings and brief replies to student
demands indicate that administrators may not have understood or made sense of the crisis
situation well enough to act (Duchek et al., 2019; Weick, 1993). The administration was also
caught off guard by one of their largest revenue-generating components of the university –
the football team – boycotting participation in scheduled practices and games. It also was
surprising that their head coach supported the players in their strike, an act that the then UM
Systems President Wolfe believed was a signal that the coach and athletic director did not have
the university’s best interest in mind. Wolfe further described the football team’s action as the
equivalent of throwing gasoline on a small fire, stating that their coach missed an opportunity
to teach players a valuable lesson. As evident in our analysis of the case, the administration’s
ability to problem-solve and “improve the student experience on [their] campuses,” required
broad knowledge, the interaction of different people, and making use of resources that are
available (Duchek et al., 2019; Weick, 1993).
This broad knowledge could have been obtained if the university did not actively resist
learnings from diversity crises. Diversity resistance refers to “a range of practices and behav-
iors within and by organizations that interfere, intentionally or unintentionally, with the use
of diversity as an opportunity for learning and effectiveness” (Thomas and Plaut, 2008, p. 5),
and, in this case, to build organizational capacity for resilience. Resistance to diversity sug-
gests that organizations are insensitive to disturbances and would rather maintain homeostasis.
This resistance is exemplified in the treatment of Michael Middleton who, in his former role
as deputy chancellor, had become known as the senior African American administrator on
campus responsible for helping the campus avoid embarrassing moments that highlight racial
injustices rather than addressing racial issues (Kovacs, 2015). Yet when the protests occurred,
Chancellor Loftin had phased Middleton into retirement and eliminated his position, suggest-
 Diversity crisis 191

ing reluctance to change. Additionally, we found that overt forms of diversity resistance in our
case included racial epithets directed toward Black students, swastikas made of human feces in
a dormitory, and the spreading of cotton balls in the grass in front of the Black culture center.
Although the university did not demonstrate overt forms of resistance, there was evidence of
covert resistance to the diversity tensions emerging on the campus. This form of resistance
included a culture of silence or nonresponse to student demands and failing a plan to create
a more safe and inclusive campus, which could be construed as a position that diversity was
a non-issue or too complex to resolve.
To learn from and persevere through a diversity crisis effectively, organizations must
work against resistance and embrace resilience throughout the crisis. In contrast to diversity
resistance, diversity resilience can be considered as an indicator of the rate of recovery after
a disturbance that drives community stability. This includes recognizing how dominant organ-
izational routines – which promote societal values such as colorblind, meritocratic beliefs at
the expense of diversity and inclusion – inhibit reflective learning and promote defensiveness
against learning from diversity crises (Wooten and James, 2004). In the case of Mizzou, this
includes being mindful of the various forms of diversity crisis and the organizational resources
needed to address them effectively.

Social Media and Escalating Crises to a Tipping Point

Our case also pointed to the role of communication channels in diversity crises. Specifically,
we identified the central role of social media throughout the life cycle of the crisis, and as
a medium for organizations to convey their values. First, we found that social media helped to
escalate the crisis to a tipping point. Communication through social media, or anywhere on the
internet used by individuals for sharing and discussing information (Dykeman, 2008), spreads
information, true or false, into a national or international channel with great speed. Technology
is useful in leading through crisis, but only if it is used at a similarly fast pace (James et al.,
2013). Complementing contextual knowledge of diversity crises and racial events requires
that the administration develop a grasp on the role of communication through social media.
During this diversity crisis, Mizzou’s administration was slow to respond, if it responded at
all, to student demands. Meanwhile, student stakeholders used social media to organize groups
and protests seemingly within minutes, gaining national attention and external support for
their movement. This dichotomy only reinforced the impression that the university must have
known but simply did not care what was transpiring on its campus.
In the Mizzou diversity crisis, social media played a large role in each phase of its lifecycle
by serving as a communication platform for the various stakeholders. During the crisis, the
university learned that information can be misrepresented on social media, such as linking
videos and photos from the Ferguson protests to the University of Missouri protests, suggest-
ing that the campus protests were not being managed (Kezar et al., 2019). Similarly, several
social media postings falsely showed that White supremacists were on campus attacking
students, which added to the sense of chaos and fear. Interestingly, while many stakeholder
groups were using social media, this was not the case for campus leadership. Their strategy
was inconsistent, limited, and lacked clarity. As a consequence, the public could not make
sense of the accuracy of social media coverage, and the university missed the opportunity to
use social media to contain and manage the crisis. Communication is a dominant mechanism
that an organization’s leader can use to message its crisis management and recovery strategy.
192 Research handbook on organizational resilience

Chancellor Loftin posted his opinion on racial incidents on Twitter, but the administration as
a whole lacked a coherent communication strategy (Gruber et al., 2015).
Communication is also an act of relationship building, caring for the organization’s repu-
tation and expressing its values (James and Wooten, 2010). After the resignation of the uni-
versity’s chancellor and president, effort was devoted to taking ownership of the situation and
communicating corrective actions. For example, the university created a website to reinforce
that the campus was safe and outline the school’s recovery plan. Also, the university hired
a public relations firm, Edelman, to create a comprehensive communications plan, monitor
social, local and national media, coach senior leaders in public relations, and identify positive
stories to be shared (McKinley, 2017). Thus, our analysis of the Mizzou diversity crisis sug-
gests that social media can be both a liability and asset in managing crises.

Capacity for Organizational Resilience in Diversity Crises

Although Mizzou stumbled, it did not fall. It instead demonstrated organizational resilience
in the face of extreme adversity. We uncovered evidence of organizational resilience during
the crisis among the students, and organizational resilience after the crisis among the broader
UM System. Higher education institutions are a complex system of networks and stakehold-
ers, which allowed us to observe resilience at multiple levels. Within the context of diversity
crises, we found students engaging in collective leadership because they were motivated by
a system inequity they believed needed to be changed or fixed (Jones and Reddick, 2017).
Collective leadership describes the process of people working together for change by jointly
envisioning a future state of their world; finding their voice to express their rationale for this
future state, and strategizing actions and decisions to achieve their desired results (Ospina and
Foldy, 2015; NYU Wagner, 2019). Members of Concerned Student 1950 envisioned a campus
with mechanisms in place to address racism, such as establishing a hate crime policy. The
pathway for alleviating the system inequity entails a form of leadership that acknowledges the
issue is a shared power problem, and solving this problem will require multiple stakeholders
because of the various structural and normative relationships within a wider institutional
setting (Selsky and Smith, 1994). Thus, “collective” leadership of Concerned Member 1950
included joining other student groups to advocate for a myriad of issues present at Mizzou and
petitioning members of the football team to exercise their right to protest injustices on campus.
The expansion of support for Concerned Student 1950 emphasized that resilience-associated
collective leadership can be a dynamic process in which a constellation of individuals merge
as leaders contributing knowledge, skills, resources and social capital (Raelin, 2018). Hence,
collective leadership provides a group with the strategic capacity to obtain resources from
multiple sources, access more networks, and create systems of mutual accountability that ener-
gizes and enables sustained functioning while confronting adversity (Ganz, 2010; Williams et
al., 2017).
The continuing collective actions of African American students in the beginning of the
fall semester indicated the group’s resiliency, which was fueled by its members’ alternately
learning to lead and follow while advancing their agenda (Brookfield and Preskill, 2009). This
entailed collaborative problem-setting and problem-solving, with the group functioning as the
leader and members doing selfless work in the name of the group because the goals the group
is trying to achieve are so important to each member and the aggregate. During the crisis, this
was evident when Jonathan Butler, graduate student and Concerned Student 1950, decided to
 Diversity crisis 193

go on a hunger strike to protest against the racist, sexist, homophobic culture that was disrupt-
ing the University of Missouri learning environment. The situation at Missouri was consuming
Butler’s thoughts and energy, and he had reached a breaking point; he believed there was
a need for him to be heard and respected. He was inspired by the hunger strikes staged by
Cesar Chavez and Dick Gregory that effected positive change (Merrill, 2015; Shapiro, 2015).
Collective leadership works when there are changes to the individualistic paradigm of
leadership to a recognition of the power of group-level leadership practices that are both inter-
nally and externally motivated and intentionally use the unique talents, resources and skills of
group members (O’Neill and Brinkerhoff, 2017). Other members of Concerned Student 1950
pitched a tent and camped at Carnahan Quadrangle to support Butler’s hunger strike as an act
to draw media attention and inconvenience the everyday functioning of the campus. As time
progressed in the beginning of November 2015, the camp grew, with more students gathering
and nightly prayer vigils held. During this encampment period, a student expressed how the
group’s faith sustained them in the midst of the struggle:

One of the biggest things I learned this week is to have faith […] Just to have faith and believe that
whatever you believe in will come to fruition. We kept working, but we had those moments where we
were like, “You know what? Let me go cry, and then I’m going to go back and start working again.”
I prayed more this week than I probably prayed this entire semester.

This exhibited resilience in the form of collective hope, which, as described by a member of
Concerned Student 1950, is not about holding illusions about how difficult a struggle is, but
instead is about immersing oneself with others in the daily work of making a community better
(Brookfield and Preskill, 2009). This immersive process of keeping hope alive places people
in a space for acknowledging limits while persevering for progress.
Complementing this constellation of leaders are structures and processes that distribute
participation and build coalitions to form a common ground through dialogue, relationship
investments and respect for diverse viewpoints. This was the case for Concerned Student
1950. As new leaders joined the movement, the collective was able to solidify and enact their
public narrative, with the motivational content of values expressed by a constituency’s call for
the pursuit of urgent actions (Ganz and Lin, 2012). For Concerned Student 1950, co-creating
and articulating the public narrative with the Jewish Student Association, football team,
faculty and other students at the University of Missouri was a mechanism for learning how to
express and exercise agency while confronting uncertainty. The public narrative framed why
they were protesting, what mattered, and what actions they sought to achieve (Ganz, 2010).
Moreover, the co-creation of public narrative reinforced that their work was purposeful and
not in vain by turning fear into hope, and doubt into a belief that the group could make a dif-
ference. Consequently, collective hope shattered the assumption that victory was impossible
by rousing the mobilization of resources into action.
After the resignation of the president and chancellor, the university immediately commu-
nicated that it was safe and that it was in the business of educating students, as evident by
the continuation of classes, events and activities during the protest (Pojmann, 2015). But the
university’s administration realized that getting back to business as usual after the crisis was
not going to be enough. Instead, it was an opportunity to demonstrate how a university can
turn a crisis into an opportunity for dealing with diversity issues (Hartocollis, 2017). Seizing
this opportunity demanded that leadership develop a frame for confronting the underlying
cause of the crisis, provide a perspective for resolving the crisis, and be resilient as the organ-
194 Research handbook on organizational resilience

ization builds the capacity to thrive in its new context (Wooten et al., 2013). Frames serve as
a foundation for organization to learn by filtering knowledge, encouraging reflective dialogue,
and creating pathways for decision making. The frames organizations use to resolve crises are
powerful mental models that provide a viewpoint for organizing thoughts and actions (Senge,
1992). Considered through the dual lens of crisis management and resilience, the University of
Missouri’s diversity crisis demonstrated that not only is a return to full function possible, but
an organization can emerge stronger on the other side. In this way, a crisis is an opportunity
that, although not welcomed, can ultimately provide lasting value in the lessons learned and
adjustments made.

Preparing Before, During and After an Organizational Disaster

Our analysis of Mizzou’s diversity crisis also emphasized that unless an organization is pre-
pared before, during and after a crisis hits, it will necessarily falter. Learning from the crisis
by framing involved understanding the contextual dimensions that shaped the crisis and would
influence the university’s recovery (Kezar et al., 2019). Through interviews and a historical
analysis, the university identified a long-term pattern of failing to address racial incidents on
campus. Thus, they concluded that the diversity crisis at Mizzou was not only the result of
current events outlined in our case, but also the outcome of pent-up frustrations of African
Americans who felt unwelcome and unsafe on campus. Interestingly, White faculty and staff
also expressed feeling unsafe on campus given these unaddressed racial tensions. In addition
to understanding the campus context, knowledge of the local, university system, state and
national contexts was also important. This contextual knowledge was a key aspect in designing
policies and practices for an inclusive campus because it allowed leaders to identify partner-
ships and collaborate beyond the university. Further, it encouraged Mizzou to be cognizant
of the social, political and economic conditions of the United States and Missouri that would
affect their campus climate.
Preparation during the crisis included recognizing the crisis as smoldering, that is, noticing
small, internal problems within the organization that become public to stakeholders and
escalate to crisis status as a result of inattention by institutional leaders (James and Wooten,
2010). The lack of response to racial tensions expressed by Black members of the Mizzou
community resulted in more extreme actions taken by members of Concerned Student 1950.
Black students on campus were frustrated by the administration silence and felt that the
administration left them stranded during their cry for help (PBS News Hour transcript, 2015).
Further, members of Concerned Student 1950 recognized the lack of formal, institutional
mechanisms (e.g., a hate crime policy) as necessary for the university to effectively address
the racial incidents that had previously and would likely continue to occur. Ironically, the
university’s inability to engage in collective leadership during the crisis was cited as one of
the reasons for its escalation and the institution’s lack of capacity to manage the crisis (Kezar
et al., 2019). Administrative leaders had isolated themselves from other campus leaders.
For instance, Chancellor Loftin was disliked by several deans on campus because he joked
about his authority to fire deans and described them as middle managers. During the time the
students were protesting, the deans were in a revolt against the chancellor. They had written
a letter requesting his dismissal because of his autocratic, vindictive and secretive leadership
style (Stripling, 2015). Adding to the deficit for collective leadership was the dislike between
the then UM System President Wolfe and Loftin. When Loftin discovered his job was in jeop-
 Diversity crisis 195

ardy, Wolfe perceived that Loftin directed Concern Student 1950 to blame him for the problem
(Stripling, 2015). Also, Wolfe did not have faith in Loftin based on how he had managed other
aspects of the university, including Greek life on campus, graduate student health insurance,
and relationships with deans. Further, Wolfe criticized Michael Middleton for not stopping the
protest as it was happening. Adding to this climate of divisiveness was the perception that the
university’s governing board did not support the chancellor and leaked confidential informa-
tion to the media and politicians.
The recovery phase after the crises revealed positive and negative sides of resilience. In
the aftermath of the resignations, alumni withdrew financial support and parents considered
pulling their children out of school. Students themselves considered leaving – some because
of the evident racism that seemed to be going unchecked because of an impotent administra-
tion, and others because they saw the university as capitulating and the entire student body as
compromised by the protest climate. The university suffered large financial losses because of
reduced alumni donations and a drop in first-year enrollments in the following year. Although
the creation of a University of Missouri System Chief Diversity and Inclusion Officer and the
university-level Vice Chancellor for Inclusion and Diversity and Equity signaled enhanced
reliability and learning in preparation for future diversity crises, some of the stakeholders were
resistant to change.

Positive Adaptation and Growth: the Aftermath of the Diversity Crisis at Mizzou

Although we concluded our case study analysis at the close of the 2015–16 academic year,
there are three notable events that occurred thereafter that further illustrate the positive
trajectories of Mizzou following the crises. To sustain the initial changes brought about by
Middleton, the Board of Curators appointed Mun Y. Choi as president of the UM System in
November 2016. Choi helped create different cognitive capabilities for the university by intro-
ducing “a new collective vision” for the UM System. Part of this vision is the recognition that
to “[build] a strong sense of belonging among campus constituencies [and] to meaningfully
connecting D&I efforts to all areas of organizational functioning, leaders must be willing to
weave diversity and inclusion into our institutional fabric” (Kezar et al., 2019). Alexander
Cartwright was selected at the new University Chancellor at Mizzou, and Kevin McDonald
serves as the University of Missouri System’s Chief Diversity and Inclusion Officer and also
the university’s Vice Chancellor for Inclusion Diversity and Equity. Their new appointments
and visioning reflect the adaptation phase of resilience, in which new capabilities are created
that allow the organization to actively adapt to new circumstances (Lengnick-Hall et al., 2011;
Vogus and Sutcliffe, 2007). The UM System also commissioned a report from the American
Council on Education on ways that universities can confront challenges of a campus racial
climate. The report begins with a “Letter from the University of Missouri” by Choi, Cartwright
and McDonald. In it, they share their vision for adapting into a new higher education insti-
tution, stating, “From building a strong sense of belonging among campus constituencies to
meaningfully connecting D&I efforts to all areas of organizational functioning, leaders must
be willing to weave diversity and inclusion into our institutional fabric […] We know our
journey is not a sprint” (Kezar et al., 2019).
Just as important as effective communication for the University of Missouri was learning
how to build the capacity for healing and aligning rhetoric with actions (Jones, 2018). The
mechanisms for this aspect of learning to generate resilience are empathy, interventions, col-
196 Research handbook on organizational resilience

lective effort, and leadership (Powley, 2012). Leaders in learning organizations during a crisis
demonstrate empathy by being sensitive to the needs of stakeholders, repairing relationships
and showing concern (McGill et al., 1992). The interventions display a long-term commitment
to the continuous learning of bettering the human condition beyond the day-to-day problem
solving while being in repair mode to resolve breakdowns, losses of confidence and dissolu-
tion of relationships. Ideally, these interventions are inward- and outward-facing because they
rebuild social connections and create a network of external resources that can contribute to the
organization’s learning (Kahn, 2011; Christianson et al., 2009). The supporting foundations
for these interventions are collective effort and virtuous leadership for both managing the
undoing of the behavior that caused the crisis and designing the desired future organization
(Powell, 2012). Collective efforts through high-quality connections and cross-boundary
relationships produce learning by rekindling relationships and the co-creation of organiza-
tional change (Cameron and Plews, 2012). Similarly, virtuous leadership is committed to
a model of ethical stewardship that optimizes the long-term health of the organization through
a value-centric vision of excellence, service to others and empowerment (Cameron, 2011;
Caldwell et al., 2015).
The University of Missouri was very intentional in creating learning systems to face the
trauma associated with the crisis by creating space for the community to process its feelings
of anger, distrust, fear and fatigue (Kezar et al., 2019). The university community was angered
by the administration’s complacent behavior and lack of vision for the racial climate, and there
was already a climate of distrusting leadership to be effective and transparent. Furthermore,
a climate of fear existed because university members believe their actions would be penalized
or unsupported, and in some instances, this yielded a culture of silence. This fear was coupled
with fatigue from the emotional and physical energy of dealing with the crisis and its after-
math. To alleviate the trauma, the university not only engaged in active listening by building
multiple communication channels, but also paid attention to silence as signal detection for
problems and worked to build trust and respect across stakeholder groups.
Beyond learning how to manage the trauma, it was essential for the University of Missouri
to acquire relevant knowledge and implement behavioral changes for an inclusive climate
(Wooten and James, 2008; Brockner and James, 2008). For Mizzou, this work was learning
how to be intentional about inclusion and viewing the work as a moral imperative. To anchor
this learning, the university adopted the Inclusive Excellence framework (Williams and
Wade-Golden, 2005). The university’s commitment to Inclusive Excellence affirmed it:

To be a learning community defined by excellence through the affirmation of differences in the

composition of its leadership, faculty, staff, and students; the configuration of its policies, procedures,
organizational structures, curricula, and co-curricular programs; and the fabric of its interpersonal
relationships.1

The university’s blueprint for inclusive excellence consisted of a diversity plan, mission
statement, and guiding values with assessment metrics and feedback loops. Also, they com-
mitted to disrupting oppressive practices and providing more support for marginalized groups.
Collectively, their efforts illustrate a positive resilience trajectory from adversity.
 Diversity crisis 197

CONCLUSION

What began as recognition of the life of an unarmed Black teenager killed at the hands of law
enforcement nearby, escalated into a series of racial harassment incidents, protests, a hunger
strike, and boycotts of a flagship university in St Louis, Missouri. As diversity crises become
less rare, they become normative system shocks to organizations. As illustrated in our case
study, racially traumatic events in society influence the lives and functioning of those within
an organization (McCluney et al., 2017b; Nkomo et al., 2019), particularly if and when one’s
identity group is targeted with these threats (Leigh and Melwani, 2019). Diversity is rarely
studied within the realm of organizational resilience, despite overcoming hardship, barriers
and adversity being integral to the daily lives of workers from marginalized groups (Johnson,
Erskine and Roberts, Chapter 12, this volume; Roberts et al., 2018). Centering a diversity
crisis within a resilience framework introduces novel, iterative components to the organiza-
tional resilience as a process model. Resilience is more than just recovering from a crisis and
returning the organization to its pre-crisis state (Wooten and James, 2008). Our case study
analysis unearthed the need for multilevel structures in organizations to detect, prevent and
contain crises effectively. Further, we illustrate how the development of these structures
indicates a positive adaptation to a crisis despite the generation of additional organizational
challenges (e.g., decreased enrollment). As current and future leaders of higher education
institutions, we consider this chapter an important case study for teaching university adminis-
trations and student activists how to develop the capacity to recover and learn from diversity
crises through building organizational resilience.
Resilience to adverse events is not the avoidance of them, but the development of resources
that can be activated as challenges arise. From a process perspective, we can consider resil-
ience to diversity crisis – and the entrenched resistance associated with diversity values and
beliefs – as a developmental adaptability that does not “imply continual perfection or constant
invulnerability […] but recognizes the possibility of fallibility and the probability of success-
ful coping” (Sutcliffe and Vogus, 2003, p. 97). Organizational resilience thus can develop in
terms of competence and growth regarding issues of diversity, equity, inclusion and justice.
Previous studies indicate that adverse conditions assess organizations’ ability to learn from
mistakes through how quickly and flexibly they respond to situations as they arise (Sutcliffe
and Vogus, 2003). This entails using the crisis as a catalyst for thinking and behaving differ-
ently so that the organization is improved once it is over. Thus, resiliency is the capability of
envisioning and executing a vision and set of actions that move the organization beyond the
past, resolve the issues in the present, and plan for a thriving future.

NOTE
1. University of Missouri, https://diversity.missouri.edu/our-work/inclusive-excellence-framework/.

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 PART IV

RESILIENCE ANTECEDENTS
AND OUTCOMES
14. Learning routines that build organizational
resilience
D. Christopher Kayes and Jeewhan Yoon

INTRODUCTION: INDIVIDUAL LEARNING AS AN ANTECEDENT

TO ORGANIZATIONAL RESILIENCE
This chapter explores the intersection of individual learning and organizational resilience. It
has two primary objectives. First, the chapter continues a conversation that embeds individual
learning in the context of organizational resilience (Kayes, 2015). Second, the chapter pro-
poses specific individual learning routines that contribute to positive organizational resilience.
The underlying premise of the chapter is that resilience is enhanced when organizations build
routines that facilitate learning. We outline the theoretical basis of routines in organizations
and connect routines to research and theory on learning and resilience.
The chapter considers the positive aspects of organizational resilience and learning, rather
than resilience as primarily a response to crisis. Positive aspects of resilience promote organ-
izational resilience during normal operations as well as during crisis. While individual-level
factors have been identified as antecedents to organizational resilience, much of the research
has been under the general proposition of learning (see Vogus et al., 2010). This chapter pro-
poses six specific constructs that support learning and resilience.
The chapter is organized as follows. First, we embed our approach to resilience in the liter-
ature on disaster, crisis and organizational breakdown (Smith and Elliott, 2006), but describe
organizational resilience as a positive organizational process, not simply a response. We argue
that positive organizational resilience is consistent with pragmatic and experience-based
approaches to learning in organizations. We describe how learning routines can serve as
building blocks of resilience and propose three learning stages and six learning routines.
These stages include: (1) Readiness to learn, which includes openness to new experience and
learning identity; (2) Social support, which is demonstrated by team learning; (3) Learning
strategies and behaviors including flexibility, focused action, and continuous improvement.
These routines serve as the basis for a process model of individual learning routines that
support organizational resilience.

MOVING BEYOND DISASTER AND CRISIS: A POSITIVE

APPROACH TO STUDYING ORGANIZATIONAL RESILIENCE
Resilience is often an after-thought in the face of organizational failure (Gephart, 1993),
errors (Reason, 1990), human malfunction (Rasmussen, 1982), or disasters (Perrow, 1999).
Resilience is commonly seen as a response mechanism to challenges that an organization may
face and the term resilience is used to describe the ways organizations respond in the face of
these challenges. In short, resilience is largely seen as a form of damage control (see Roberts,

203
204 Research handbook on organizational resilience

1990, p. 160). To be more specific, resilience is associated with the crisis and recovery stages
that emerge during and in the aftermath of crisis, disaster or rapid change. For example,
Turner’s (1976) ubiquitous model outlines six stages of organizational disaster. This includes
four stages of normalization and emergence: normal starting point, incubation, precipitating
events, and onset. In addition there are two stages of adjustment: rescue/recovery and full
cultural adjustment. Resilience is most associated with these final two stages.
This type of thinking, where resilience is seen as an afterthought, has limited our under-
standing of organizational resilience because it often frames resilience as a response to crisis,
breakdown or disaster. Even efforts to integrate research on crisis and resilience focus on
responses to adversity (e.g., Williams et al., 2017) rather than building resilience itself as an
organizational goal. In contrast, positive organizational resilience considers resilience as pro-
cesses of ongoing organizational routines. Crisis, disaster and change offer vivid contexts and
offer to highlight elements of resilience. Yet the over-emphasis on crisis may have resulted in
an over-emphasis on the contextual factors (e.g., Hannah and Parry, 2014) that lead to failure.
By further developing the underlying theory related to resilient routines in the next section
of this chapter, we propose refocusing the agenda that lends to identifying antecedents to
resilience rather than antecedents to breakdown. From a research perspective, this compels
the study of crisis, disaster and breakdown to consider a different dependent variable, moving
from disaster as the dependent variable to resilience.
To better understand how positive organizational resilience can be employed, several
notable examples exist. Roberts (1990) was among the first to identify the need to understand
the characteristics of resilience. At the time, few systematic studies of disaster had taken place
and the idea of high reliability organizations (HROs) was just beginning to be introduced.
Rather than focus on the factors that erode or break down, HRO research focused on the
factors that support and maintain operations, even when systems are complex and stressful.
Weick and Roberts (1993) provides an important articulation of characteristics of resilience.
A more explicit and detailed consideration comes from Weick and Sutcliff (2007), Cameron
and Lavine (2006), and Powley (2009).
The approach to positive organizational resilience that is put forth in the remainder of this
chapter is consistent with these approaches as it seeks out antecedents to resilience. Resilience,
in other words, is not just about avoiding or bouncing back from negative consequences.
Rather, resilience is about taking steps as an organization to introduce positive behaviors
that promote resilience itself. Turner’s model provides important insights into the stages of
crisis, but it can also be seen as a model that supports resilience. Each stage of Turner’s model
requires attention to resilience. Resilience may become even more important in the stages that
precipitate a crisis because adjusting prior to a crisis may serve to prevent or mitigate the crisis
before it escalates. Therefore, thinking about resilience as a process that precedes crisis lies as
a central consideration for positive organizational resilience.

An Experiential Learning-Based Approach to Positive Organizational Resilience

Underlying our positive approach to organizational resilience is that experience, and its trans-
formation through learning, are the underlying processes that lead to resilience. The central
role that experience plays in learning has been proposed by a number of theorists, but few
have been as influential as philosopher John Dewey (1938). Dewey developed a comprehen-
sive philosophy of learning from experience under the tradition of pragmatism. Pragmatism
 Learning routines and resilience 205

was founded on the idea that the best way to understand how social systems function was to
consider the consequences and outcomes that result from behavior. In this way, pragmatism
focuses less on the underlying assumptions of various philosophical traditions, and focuses
more on the application of knowledge itself. This placed the emphasis on practical implica-
tions of knowledge over idealized or normative philosophical ideas.
Pragmatism offers an important connection between learning and resilience through the
concept of habits. Dewey believed that there were two types of habits. For the sake of clarity,
we will distinguish these two types of habits as “mindless” or “mindful” habits. Mindful habits
offered the possibility of learning. When individuals took a mindful approach to habits, they
moved through their day engaged in constant reflection and analysis of those habits. Thus,
learning could occur, even when individuals engaged in repeating existing routines, as long
as those habits were mindful. In contract, mindless habits occurred when individuals failed to
learn from their everyday behaviors. For this perspective then, resilience is based on the fact
that individuals within the organization take a stance of mindful habits. A more contemporary
reading comes from Verplanken et al. (2005), who suggest that habits, like the notion of rou-
tines that we will discuss next, vary within and between people.
The underlying assumptions of mindful habits can be seen in Kolb’s (2014) description of
individual learning, which he described as the process of transforming knowledge through
experience. Learning involves four interrelated processes: experience, reflection, observa-
tion/abstraction, and active experimentation. Taken together, these four processes constitute
the experiential learning cycle. Kayes (2015) adapted the learning cycle to conceive of
a learning-based approach to organizational resilience. He explained how individual learning
manifests itself in organizations through four organizational learning routines: encouraging
openness to new experience; reflecting on successes and failures; updating perspectives based
on new information; and taking calculated risks. When organizations adopt these processes,
they are more likely to learn from experience, be open to the possibility that the organization
can update its perspective, change or adjust its course of action, and discover and take advan-
tage of opportunities for continuous improvement. Learning, according to Yoon and Kayes
(2016), is expected to broaden the perspectives of organizational members (Perry-Smith,
2006; Shalley and Perry-Smith, 2001), enable organizational members to have a better under-
standing of the situation, and develop coping mechanisms to resolve problems that they will
experience in organizations (Edmondson, 1999; 2002).
A positive approach to organizational resilience builds on this premise, that experience
serves as the basis for learning and that learning can serve as the basis for positive organiza-
tional processes. Roberts’ (1990) original suggestion – that in highly reliable organizations,
organizational goals are turned into operational goals (p. 172) – is a connecting point between
positive organizational resilience and experience in the organization. She argues that a better
understanding of resilience (e.g., high reliability organizations) requires an understanding
of how organizational goals in the abstract are translated into the experiences of individual
operators.
An example of how individual experience is linked to organizational goals can be seen in
how safety goals on an aircraft carrier are carried out by individual operators who make deci-
sions about take-off and landing on the aircraft carrier (Weick and Roberts, 1993). An example
of how learning from experience can inform research on resilience can be found in a study by
Burke et al. (2011). Their meta-analysis of safety training outcomes found that when training
was conducted in a way that was highly engaging from an experiential standpoint, the training
206 Research handbook on organizational resilience

had a more statistically significant effect than did less engaged methods. The study supports
our underlying approach that subjective experience can be measured and serves as the basis for
more systematic consideration of the role of learning from experience.
To summarize, this section has explained links between experience, learning and resilience.
By considering a shift in dependent variables associated with crisis and disaster research,
we suggest learning routines provide a fruitful direction for further study in organizational
resilience. In the next section, we further develop the notion of learning routines which are
described as the means to translate individual learning into organizational resilience.

LEARNING ROUTINES AND ORGANIZATIONAL RESILIENCE

This section develops the idea of learning routines and how they serve as the mechanism for
transforming individual learning processes into positive organizational resilience. Routines
serve as mechanisms to understand how individual activities translate into organizational
phenomena. The notion of routines has existed in the organizational literature (Cohen, 1991),
and more recently it has gained currency among those interested in organizational learning.
Routines are interactions, behaviors and underlying beliefs and attitudes that are embedded
in an organizational context and contribute to or are influenced by the organization’s culture.
There is some conceptual disagreement about where routines “sit” in an organization. For
example, HROs focus on the interaction or overlap of routines among and between individ-
uals. This can largely be traced to the social psychology roots of HROs in concepts such
as group mind (Wenger and Wenger, 1995). Group mind describes how various cognitive
processes, for example memory, are shared across individuals. Memory is not held within an
individual, but is prompted through the interaction of individuals. Thus, memory is considered
a shared concept. In contrast, Edmondson has largely embedded the understanding of routines
in the group/team level beliefs and behaviors.
The concept of routines may be a surprising way to talk about learning and resilience
because routines may seem to imply a lack of learning, or in Dewey’s term, mindless habits.
Routines may seem to reinforce the status quo (as opposed to facilitate innovations), replicate
current behaviors (as opposed to developing new behaviors), and serve as barriers to change
(because they are ingrained in behavior and appear to lack the flexibility essential for learning)
(see Edmondson et al., 2001 for details). Thus, routines, may appear to be the opposite of
learning. Where learning requires flexibility, development of new behaviors, and innovation,
routines reinforce existing habits. Based on this seemingly “mindless” nature of routines, it
makes sense to spend some time considering some of the properties of routines.
First, routines represent relatively stable patterns, but they are not unalterable patterns. Here
is where Dewey’s philosophy of habit can help us understand the difference between certain
types of routines. When routines are mindful they form the basis for learning. Routines can be
actions and beliefs that lead to learning. When routines are mindless, they indeed contribute to
unalterable patterns of behavior and thoughts and are likely to fail to contribute to resilience.
Edmondson et al. (2001) describe how new routines developed hospitals that implemented
a new technology for open heart surgery. Learning routines emerged from four actions: (1)
deliberate selection of leaders who took responsibility for the success of the implementation;
(2) bringing all parties to the table to discuss the process, which simulated new routines (e.g.,
dry runs of the new technology) with the intact teams; (3) implementing new forms of com-
 Learning routines and resilience 207

munication; and (4) active after-action reviews (involving a retroactive team review of each
procedure). Also, an important element was introducing new routines. This included a new
interaction pattern between hierarchies in the organization, including knowledge sharing
among nurses, surgeons and anesthesiologists.
Second, routines may originate from outside the specific operation of the routine. Culture,
procedures or policies might impact the development of a routine. As such, routines are often
beyond the direct control or awareness of individuals. For example, routines between doctors
and nurses might arise because the professional cultures lead to different considerations
around patient care. Routines may also come about because of specific roles associated with
patient care that have been outlined by the hospital or work environment. For example, rou-
tines associated with diagnosis and recovery after surgery are likely to be placed in the care of
the doctor, while routines associated with carrying out a treatment plan are performed by the
nurse. Similarly, beyond individual habits and organizational culture, routines may also arise
from institutional sources, further suggesting that certain roles may precede organizational
routines. This might be the case when HR managers legislate regarding certain routines about
what protocols might be followed during hiring practices based on legal or ethical rules.
Third, routines may become more rigid in situations when time to learn new routines is
short, and stress inhibits the learning process. This consideration is particularly important for
organizational resilience because time pressure and stress are often factors that moderate or
mediate resilience and learning routines. For example, when cockpit crews are under time
pressure to diagnosis and resolve equipment failures, they may be less likely to pursue alterna-
tive actions (see Becker et al., 2017). Kayes et al. (2017) have shown that military officers may
experience pressures and stress in military battle differently from when they are in training.
The result is that military officers may experience cognitive and emotional factors, such as that
of “dépaysement,” or situational shock, where they become disengaged with their immediate
tasks and environments.
Future studies (e.g., Berenholtz et al., 2004) could explore the processes by which routines
can be changed. For example, new protocols for maintaining central line catheters in medical
situations can lead to improved accuracy in administering medication. These new routines can
decrease infection rates. Administration of central line catheters shows the promise of how
learning routines can form the basis of organizational resilience (see also, Brown and Starkey,
2000).
In summary, routines themselves are not unalterable. Resilience routines are those that are
adaptable – the routine itself needs to modify and change with changing demands. Also, the
routine itself should facilitate mindful learning, challenging organizational members to pay
attention to new behaviors and insights. In the next section, we propose six routines, organized
into three resilience processes, which serve as the basis for organizational resilience routines.

INDIVIDUAL LEARNING ROUTINES THAT FACILITATE

ORGANIZATIONAL RESILIENCE

In the prior sections, we introduced learning as the basis for organizational resilience routines
and explained how learning routines support organizational resilience. This section draws on
learning theory and research to propose six specific individual learning routines that serve as
antecedents to organizational resilience. A review of research and theory on individual learn-
208 Research handbook on organizational resilience

ing in the context of teams and organizations serves as the basis for this taxonomy. Special
attention was given to examples of individual learning in the context of crisis, stress or high
consequence situations. The taxonomy is organized into four processes. Figure 14.1 summa-
rizes three stages of learning and the associated routines: Stage 1: Readiness, comprised of
openness to experience and learning identity; Stage 2: Social support, which here is expressed
through team learning; and Stage 3: Learning strategies and behaviors, which includes flexi-
bility, focused action, and continuous improvement. Each of these factors is discussed in turn.

Figure 14.1 Individual routines as antecedents to building organizational resilience

Stage 1: Readiness

Readiness routines provide a foundation for organizational resilience. Readiness includes two
routines: openness to experience and learning identity. Readiness routines serve as founda-
tional to resilience.

Openness to experience
Openness to experience is an element of personality and a factor in learning. A significant
amount of research links openness to experience with learning and adaptation. Tsay (2012;
2014) found that openness to experience is one of the strongest predictors of learning and
adaptation in an academic context and predicts certain aspects of learning. Organizations
demonstrate routines associated with openness to experience when they encourage members
of the organization to try new things, find ways to keep their work interesting, identify new
tasks and outlets for creativity, and continue to seek ways to make tasks more complex.
Openness to experience facilitates resilience as employees become more curious and are open
to developing new ways of looking at work.

Learning identity
A second readiness routine is learning identity. Learning identity routines facilitate an interest
in trying out new ways of doing things, seeking out new ways to improve, and focusing on
getting better. Whereas openness to experience implies a general attitude towards learn-
ing, learning identity is more closely tied to the belief, even mindset, that one can learn.
Elements of learning identity can be seen in Dweck’s (2006) developmental mindset. Dweck
distinguishes between two mindsets: a developmental mindset and a performance mindset.
When people demonstrate a developmental mindset, their interests lie in improvement. The
developmental mindset leads to taking more chances, and experiencing the consequences
of failure as less consequential. In the long run, the learning mindset improves outcomes in
 Learning routines and resilience 209

individual-based tasks. When people demonstrate a performance mindset, they tend towards
making safe decisions and not taking chances. Ultimately, this is likely to lead to stagnation.
This logic of a dual, performance-learning mindset can be applied to organizational rou-
tines. When routines center on a performance mindset, routines are about demonstrating com-
petency and seeking success, while trying to avoid failure. Performance-based routines often
imply playing it safe, not moving beyond current abilities and aptitudes and an unwillingness
to take risks, lest these actions reveal individual or organizational vulnerabilities and limita-
tions. In contrast, the developmental mindset, the individual basis of learning identity routines,
leads to improvements that translate in organizational change and recognition of vulnerabil-
ities and potential problems. Learning identity shares characteristics with the developmental
mindset in that both concepts help the learner to take a positive stance towards their own
learning. Learning identity is equated with the statement, “I am a learner and can learn” (see
Kolb, 2014). Learning identity can facilitate organizational resilience because preparing for,
responding to, and recovering from crisis is largely a process of learning and the ability and
confidence to learn sets a foundation for each of the learning phases associated with resilience.

Stage 2: Supports

A second set of learning routines is associated with social supports. Social support is a resource
that helps individuals deal with and overcome stress, setbacks and other challenges associated
with adapting to a new situation. In a summary review, Cohen and Wills (1985) suggested
four types of social support: self-esteem, informational, companionship, and instrumental
or technical (see Tsay, 2012 for a review). As a full review of the social support research is
beyond the scope of this chapter, we focus on a type of social support that has been studied
in the context of errors and high consequence situations and the related concept of individual
learning in a team-level context.
Research has emphasized the importance of individual learning within a team context and
its effects for organizations (e.g., Edmondson et al., 2007; Lewin, 1936). Edmondson (1999;
2002) suggested that employees’ learning in a team improves how organizations gain the
necessary knowledge and experience that ultimately leads to changing the range of behaviors
that support organizational goals. Specifically, team learning encourages employees to gain
skills through experience and to reflect on the unexpected outcomes of behaviors that benefit
not only individuals, but also the organization as a whole. This leads the team to better adapt to
changing environments, reflect on organizational rules and regulations, and develop new com-
petencies (Kayes et al., 2005; Hackman and Wageman, 2005; O’Leary et al., 2011; Kayes and
Yoon, 2016; Kozlowski et al., 2010). In short, teams that learn to improve the effectiveness of
both the members themselves and their organizations (Kozlowski et al., 2010; Van der Vegt et
al., 2010) will support organizational resilience.
Team learning refers to a variety of activities associated with seeking feedback and infor-
mation, speaking up, and reflecting on assumptions, as well as taking a critical look at organ-
izational processes. Team learning behaviors and routines enable the team to have a better
understanding of organizational routines themselves and develop better coping mechanisms
when confronted with crisis, problems or challenges in general (Edmondson, 1999; 2002).
Teams that engage in a frequent reflection on why and how things are carried out are likely to
cultivate better responses to emergent issues (Bommer et al., 2003). Team learning is devel-
oped as employees observe other members’ frequent behaviors, and this observation provides
210 Research handbook on organizational resilience

support for those who engage in their own learning process to gain necessary skills to perform
the organizational task (James et al., 1978).
The team learning is related to two of the three characteristics of what Powley (2009) called
resilience activation. Resilience activation includes relational redundancy, which describes
how organizations can create opportunities to build social networks. Social networks create
social and emotional support mechanisms. Second, organizations can create compassionate
witnessing, a culture of compassion for other members of the organization. Team learning can
be extended to encompass other mechanisms of support outlined by Cohen and Willis (1985)
such as companionship, technical and informational support.

Stage 3: Behaviors and Strategies

In addition to readiness and social support, we offer flexibility, focused action, and continuous
improvement as three strategic and behavioral routines that support resilience.

Flexibility
Flexibility describes the process whereby individuals adopt multiple strategies to solve organ-
izational problems. We refer to a tradition of learning flexibility associated with experiential
learning that describes how individuals shift their mode of learning based on the particular
context or demands of the learning situation. For example, an individual might adopt a stance
of reflection in one situation and move to a stance such as active experimentation in another
situation. The notion of flexibility reinforces the idea that routines are not fixed, but can adapt.
Flexibility, then, becomes associated with an organization’s resilience because learners are
both able to adapt to changes in the environment, but more importantly able to anticipate
needed changes in the organization. This facilitates positive resilience by learning in different
ways, and across different organizational goals. In contrast, learners who demonstrate less
flexibility become rigid in their thinking and their actions generate routines that are less adapt-
able and routines become fixed.

Focused action
Focused action describes how routines can lead to focusing attention on specific tasks. Focus
is often linked to individual activity such as executive brain functioning; however, there are
several links between focus at the individual level and organizational resilience. One link is
that focused action is an important element in the research on deliberate practice (Ericsson and
Lehmann, 1996) and shows up in the need to focus attention on specific tasks for extended
periods of time. Kolb built on this and introduced the concept of deliberate learning. What
is important here is that during deliberate learning, the individual learner is able to focus
on relevant areas, tasks or skills associated with learning. Importantly, focus also requires
the individual learner to avoid or forgo distractions. A second link was noted by Chan et
al. (2018) in their description of the importance of executive functioning for understanding
leadership and organizations. We draw on their characterization of executive function as
a proxy for focus. Although focus is related to brain functioning, each brain function also has
a behavioral component. Focused attention is particularly important in situations that require
(1) “time-limited, novel, and ambiguous situations,” and (2) “where individuals must decide,
direct, or derive solutions in uncertain, novel, or ambiguous circumstances.” Both of these
criteria are associated with situations requiring resilience, as mentioned earlier in this chapter.
 Learning routines and resilience 211

A third link is the connection between organizational resilience and activities such as decision
making, planning, and problem solving.
Turning once again to the literature on disaster and crisis, routines of focused action can
be seen in three activities associated with recovery of a plane from a mechanical failure (see
Kayes, 2015). First, focus is related to how a team shifts between different tasks (for example,
restoring the plane to flight versus landing the plane). Second, landing a plane requires
drawing on working memory (landing the plane in a non-conventional way requires problem
solving and drawing on past knowledge). Third, the team must direct their working memory
so as to focus long enough under stress to carry out the task, thus not falling prey to stress or
panic, which may lead to decrements in performance (Beilock and Carr, 2001).

Continuous improvement
Finally, a routine that is well-established in the quality literature, continuous improvement, is
another routine that can improve organizational resilience. Continuous improvement is linked
to the literature on resilience by the recent study of medical teams by Christianson (2019). He
described how teams build resilience through: (1) constant monitoring of processes: in the
case of medical teams this meant monitoring patients in a simulated medical environment;
(2) noticing changes in cues: this meant seeing changes in the situation, in either a positive
or negative direction; and (3) watching the result of interventions to see if situations changed.
Importantly, continuous improvement activities, like all the individual learning routines
described here, are embedded in the work, not something done before or after the work, as
might take place in an after-action review.

CONCLUSION

In this chapter, we provide a taxonomy of positive, individual learning routines that foster
resilience. The taxonomy of six organizational resilience routines emerges from a review of
learning, especially in the context of disaster, crisis and breakdown. We outlined the basis
for positive organizational resilience routines and how learning serves as the basis for such
routines. The literature on crisis and disaster often serves as a starting point for studying
organizational resilience, yet resilience is often characterized as an after-the-fact consideration
of crisis and disaster. In this chapter, we have suggested that resilience can be found in a set of
learning routines that prevent or limit the occurrence and impact of crisis and disaster.

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15. Lost person behavior as an antecedent
to resilience
Lisa Jones Christensen, Scott C. Hammond and
Merilee Larsen

INTRODUCTION

Individuals face more frequent and intense changes in work and personal spheres, and the
boundary between work and personal life continues to blur. Thus, organizations need employ-
ees who can positively respond to the changes, difficulties and even traumas that increasingly
occur – for example top-down changes, bullying and harassment, illness, bereavement
or divorce (Frost, 2003; Maitlis, 2012). Previous research establishes that employees can
react to such changes by becoming psychologically “lost” at work (Hammond, 2013; Jones
Christensen and Hammond, 2015). Scholarship on psychological lostness as a response to
change draws upon the literature from wilderness search and rescue efforts. It describes psy-
chological lostness as a five-stage process associated with breakdowns in sensemaking and
organizational performance. Psychological lostness is also associated with the opportunity
for subsequent growth and resilience (or wayfinding and the option to reunify and become
“found”). This chapter discusses lostness as an antecedent to resilience by exploring how it
relates to the need for resilience (NR). Further, we connect the positive resolution to lostness
(wayfinding) to a reduced need for resilience. In so doing, we outline key stages that illustrate
how some people move from a high need for resilience to a lower and more resilient state.
The chapter unfolds as follows: first, we share our working definition of resilience and
related concepts. Then, we introduce the five-stage model of psychological lostness (Jones
Christensen and Hammond, 2015). Next, we propose connections between stages of lostness
and the need for resilience (NR) and illustrate the nature of these connections with case studies
and data from field settings.1 We close the chapter with implications for those who want to
help formerly lost individuals successfully return to a more resilient state in life and work.

214
 Lost person behavior 215

BOX 15.1 SAMPLE OF DEFINITIONS OF RESILIENCE FROM

MANAGEMENT, PSYCHOLOGY AND HEALTH
LITERATURE
“A set of behaviors that helps people get through periods of abnormal difficulty or pain.”
(American Psychological Association (APA), 2020)
“The ability to bounce back from setbacks” (Sutcliffe and Vogus, 2003)
“Resilience is a combination of keeping errors small and of improvising workarounds that allow
the system to keep functioning. Both of these demand deep knowledge of the technology, the
system, one’s coworkers, and particularly oneself.” (Weick and Sutcliffe, 2007)
“A dynamic process encompassing positive adaptation within the context of significant adversity”
(Luthar et al., 2000, p. 543)
“A class of phenomena characterized by good outcomes in spite of serious threats to adaptation or
development” (Masten, 2001, p. 228)
“The personal qualities that enable one to thrive in the face of adversity” (Connor and Davidson,
2003, p. 76)
“The ability of adults in otherwise normal circumstances who are exposed to an isolated
and potentially highly disruptive event such as the death of a close relation or a violent or
life-threatening situation to maintain relatively stable, healthy levels of psychological and physical
functioning, as well as the capacity for generative experiences and positive emotions” (Bonanno,
2004, pp. 20–21)
“Complex repertoire of behavioral tendencies” (Agaibi and Wilson, 2005, p. 197)
“Positive adaptation or the ability to maintain or regain mental health, despite experiencing adver-
sity” (Wald et al., 2006).
“The capacity of individuals to cope successfully with significant change, adversity or risk” (Lee
and Cranford, 2008, p. 213)
“An individual’s stability or quick recovery (or even growth) under significant adverse condi-
tions” (Leipold and Greve, 2009, p. 41)
“A reintegration of self that includes a conscious effort to move forward in an insightful integrated
positive manner as a result of lessons learned from an adverse experience” (Southwick et al., 2014)
“The process of adapting well in the face of adversity, trauma, tragedy, threats, or even significant
sources of stress.” (The American Psychological Association, 2019)

KEY DEFINITIONS

Connecting Resilience and Organizational Lostness

To begin, we recognize that many definitions of resilience exist (see Box 15.1 for sample of
definitions from management, psychology and health literature). Given our focus on individ-
uals at work, we focus on the situation of individuals functioning within complex organiza-
tional systems. Accordingly, we consider resilience as a set of behaviors that helps people get
through periods of abnormal difficulty or pain (American Psychological Association (APA),
2020). More specifically, resilience represents the ability to bounce back from setbacks
(Sutcliffe and Vogus, 2003). The American Psychological Association defines it as “the
process of adapting well in the face of adversity, trauma, tragedy, threats and even significant
sources of stress—such as family and relationship problems, serious health problems, or work-
place and financial stresses” (APA, 2020). We take each of these elements into account and
favor the definition provided by Weick and Sutcliffe (2007): “Resilience is a combination of
keeping errors small and of improvising workarounds that allow the system to keep function-
216 Research handbook on organizational resilience

ing. Both of these demand deep knowledge of the technology, the system, one’s coworkers,
and particularly oneself.”
By favoring this definition, we focus on a maintenance of and return to functioning as a key
feature of resilient people; secondarily this definition highlights the value of improvisation
and workarounds. This emphasis on functioning, either alone or within a wider system, corre-
sponds to extant work on psychological lostness and liminality (van Gennep, 1960; Hammond,
2013; Jones Christensen and Hammond, 2015; Powley, 2009), as we explore in subsequent
sections. Psychological lostness remains closely related to (and sometimes synonymous with)
low resilience and reduced or truncated functioning and a loss of resilience (Jones Christensen
and Hammond, 2015). In contrast, as we explain, high resilience represents the antithesis of
lostness.
In order to support this claim, we first describe the psychological state of lostness, drawn
from interviews with former subjects of search and rescue efforts as well as from our com-
bined decades of experience in organizational change consulting, post-disaster aid work, and
first responder duties (Hammond, 2013; Jones Christensen and Hammond, 2015). To begin,
we draw on lost person behavior from the search and rescue (SAR) literature (Hill, 1992; 2013;
Koester, 2008; Montello, 1998; Syrotuck, 1977), as well as on primary data collected from
individual interviews (Jones Christensen and Hammond, 2015). We argue that just as becom-
ing lost in the wilderness triggers specific emotional reactions and predictable behavioral pat-
terns on the part of the lost “subjects” of a search, becoming lost at work triggers predictable
patterns in employees. First, we describe how these patterns unfold in wilderness settings.

A Geographic Perspective on Lostness

The most common definitions of lostness suggest a physical separation between where
someone is situated and where they want to be. In defining the condition of being geographi-
cally lost, research by Hill (1998a) focuses on wilderness situations. Hill describes the hunter
who becomes disoriented in a storm and who wanders miles in the wrong direction from his
base; he is “unable to find the way.” Hill (1998b) defines a lost person as: “unable to identify
or orient his present location with respect to known locations, and for some period has no
effective means or method for reorienting himself” (emphasis added). This two-part definition
involves being confused about position as well as being unable to reacquire orientation to
lessen the confusion. This definition also has both physical and psychological elements.
Importantly, the two-part nature of the definition implies that it is possible (and perhaps
common) for someone to have little accurate knowledge of one’s location and still not be
“lost.” This fact enables the comparison to organizational life. For example, a hunter pursuing
game may lose her orientation, but still have a plan for orienting and finding the way home,
by following a compass or using the “track back” function on a GPS. If the hunter loses her
compass or GPS system, only then would she be lost according to the definition (Hill, 1998a).
At that point, she is both disoriented and without a method to reorient herself. Thus, in terms
of establishing the concept in literal outdoor settings, being lost is a two-fold phenomenon that
involves disorientation and an inability to reorient. It further implies an element of surprise
and a sense that one is in an unanticipated and somewhat unique situation (Hammond, 2013).
Data from people who have been lost and then found in wilderness settings suggest that
lost people exhibit predictable behavior patterns (Hill, 1992; 1998a; 2013; Hill et al., 1993;
Syrotuck, 1977). For example, children are more likely to wander in circles or hide in caves
 Lost person behavior 217

and crevices. Older hunters are less likely to become lost than younger ones (Hill, 2013).
Search practitioners have made use of data from lost person search databases in order to (1)
refine the understanding of predictable patterns; (2) improve search protocols; and (3) increase
the ability to locate individuals and help them rejoin society. Data reveal consistent reactions
to being lost as reported by researchers, rescuers and subjects; these consistencies occur
regardless of individual differences. While we acknowledge that each lost person incident is
unique, we posit that these incidents have consistencies and organizational analogs that, once
understood, enable leaders and co-workers to improve “search” protocols for lost co-workers
and to increase their ability to locate lost individuals to help them rejoin society. Accordingly,
we extend the discussion of lostness to the organizational environment.

An Organizational Perspective on Lostness

In order to transfer the definition of lostness from geographic and spatial thinking to organiza-
tional and psychological territory, we suggest the following adaptations: “An employee is lost
when he is unable to orient himself within the work unit, the organization, or larger society
and for some period of time he is unable to effectively reorient himself.” While this definition
remains agnostic to the cause of becoming lost, we recognize that individual experiences with
change (Janoff-Bulman and Berger, 2000) can trigger two important components of lostness.
First, it can trigger disorientation (which may be geographical or sociological), and second,
it can trigger an inability to reorient. Myriad individual case studies of both geographic and
psychological/organizational lostness (Gonzales, 2003; 2012; Griffith, 2006; Hammond,
2013; Racina, 2005; Sherwood, 2009) offer sufficient information about the reactions, emo-
tions and communication patterns of the organizationally lost to begin to analyze what occurs
psychologically as a result of becoming lost and experiencing lostness. The data suggest that
disorientation triggers a set of emotions and behavioral reactions that follow predictable pat-
terns in both geographically and organizationally lost individuals.
In order to orient readers before discussing these patterns, we present two brief real-life
cases (one of geographic and one of organizational lostness) to explain what we mean by being
“lost” at work. Consider the following two experiences (taken from author interviews): (1) an
avid hiker wanders off the trail at dusk and loses his way. He wanders in the dark, discarding
items from his pack that he thinks he no longer needs in an attempt to lighten his load. As he
moves, he grows more disoriented. Finally, he chooses to stay in the open and he attempts to
start a fire. He runs out of food after one day, and alternates between bouts of fear and fits
of anger. Within three days, he is spotted and rescued by a search team in a helicopter. He is
reunited with his loved ones but requires several months to recover physically. Next, consider
(2) an experienced IT professional joins a prominent firm with several friends. He grows close
to the entire workgroup, as he and his colleagues socialize and problem-solve daily over lunch.
Within a short time, members from the original work team move on to new positions or move
out of the company entirely. Now, he feels alone and abandoned (separated and isolated). His
technical skills and knowledge wane (deviation from norm), as the lunchtime exchanges and
problem-solving sessions no longer provide valuable informal training (deprivation compared
to earlier state). He feels foolish at not having seen the situation develop, ashamed at not
having navigated his own career trajectory better, and he experiences bouts of fear and anger
(realization of the situation). Less and less sure about his options, his viability at work and
his own identity as an IT professional, he lives through his days unsure about what to do next
218 Research handbook on organizational resilience

or where to start fixing the problem – his performance suffers until he loses his job (negative
resolution and full “lostness”).
The above examples introduce the psychological parallels between geographic and organ-
izational lostness. In both cases, the environment changed, the options were many and com-
peting (i.e. walk, stay put, retrace steps for the first person; or get more IT education, attempt
new connections, apply for new jobs for the second) and the way forward was confusing and
unclear – at least to the actor in question. Both subjects reported emotional reactions that
included feeling shame, fear, anger and a lack of clarity about next steps. Neither could operate
at top capacity, and neither felt equipped to overcome the challenge – at least for some period
of time. Both demonstrated sub-optimal performance as the situations unfolded. The cases
begin to indicate how stages of lostness can permeate the work environment, and they illus-
trate how someone could be lost in plain sight: the person can seem (sometimes intermittently)
physically present, but psychologically he or she is moving through one or more of the stages
of lostness. Leaders and managers can watch for these behaviors and identify them, but only
when leaders are aware of the possibility that employees can become lost at work. Figure 15.1
depicts the stages of lostness, and the following sections explain more about the stages.

Source: Adapted from Jones Christensen and Hammond (2015).

Figure 15.1 Connecting the five stages of psychological lostness with need for resilience
 Lost person behavior 219

FIVE STAGES OF LOSTNESS

Earlier we asserted that analysis of data on wilderness lost person behaviors suggests that
every lost person incident has unique elements; it also reveals that subjects experience consist-
ent cognitive and emotional states that transfer across incidents (Hammond, 2013; Hill, 1992;
2013; Koester, 2008; Montello, 1998; Syrotuck, 1977). We categorize these consistencies in
phases that apply to people lost both geographically and organizationally.2

Stage 1: Separation and the “Point Last Seen”

In the wilderness setting, the first stage of lostness is literal and physical. For one to become
lost, there is a requisite physical separation from camp, other hikers, human society, and
general sustenance and association. In organizations, this first stage can be physical, psycho-
logical, or both. The lost person (or the about-to-be-lost person) at work may accidentally or
purposefully move into a different physical space from the rest of the team, work unit, or other
organizational members. In organizations, this may manifest in the form of general absences,
a chosen or mandated relocation, and/or purposefully-created significant gaps in training or
information sharing. This point of separation is key in wilderness searches because would-be
rescuers strive to establish the “PLS” or point last seen (Heth and Cornell, 2007; Koester,
2008). As with a lost object, the PLS serves as the starting point from where to begin any
search. Thus, the point of separation helps demarcate the first stage of lostness. In organi-
zations, the PLS might be referenced as the last time the subject physically participated in
organizational functioning or the last time performance led to expected and desired outcomes.
The term “separation,” when used by psychologists, most often refers to tenets of attach-
ment theory (Bowlby, 1969) where it describes an infant’s (usually painful) detachment
and distance from the primary caregiver (sometimes because of abandonment, sometimes
a developmental necessity). The logic from attachment theory holds here, as this stage is also
about a detachment and distance from the primary organizational caregiving/life-giving units.
In adapting the term from attachment theory, we suggest that people lost at work experience
a state of separation from others, demarcated by a physical and/or psychological distance.

Stage 2: Isolation

In the second stage, the subject is no longer in a social or a psychological state to participate
in work, community and social events. Isolation is different from separation because it is
social and psychological. This isolation, which may or may not be intentional, cuts the subject
off from vital information and creates a sense of aloneness – even when others surround the
subject. Social isolation often causes reality distortion and damages self-esteem (Edwards and
Weary, 1993). For example, the hiker discussed earlier described becoming extremely angry
with his family due to a distorted sense of reality. He stated “I was sure that they just didn’t
care that I was out in the middle of nowhere” (Hammond, personal correspondence, 2010).
After the incident, he learned that at the time of his anger fit his family did not even know
he was lost; he had distorted reality in reaction to his physical separation and his sense of
isolation.
Isolation typically accompanies separation, but the two do not necessarily occur in
sequence. For example, one could plan and execute a retreat in the woods (a separation from
220 Research handbook on organizational resilience

society) without triggering feelings of isolation, just as one could self-select to work remotely
(separation) without triggering feelings of isolation from the rest of the work group. Relatedly,
one could become socially isolated without actually experiencing the physical relocation
inherent in the separation stage – recall the case of the IT professional who became isolated
from his former and current workgroup, even though he presented to the office daily. Thus,
isolation, even more than separation, figures prominently in the experience of lostness. We
suggest that people lost at work experience a state of isolation from others, demarcated by
truncated access to people/information and/or by distorted accounts of reality. These examples
illustrate that there are people known to be lost and others that seem lost to outsiders (but not
yet to themselves) or who feel lost and experience some of the stages without it being obvious
to outsiders. That said, as people move through the stages, lostness becomes more apparent
and notable to more parties.

Stage 3: Deviation

The state of deviation is denoted by the subject developing and acting upon an empirically
unrealistic/incomplete view of the situation. In situations of geographic lostness, deviation
can include literal hallucinations that distort reality and build the unrealistic and incomplete
view. As an example, consider the case of the 58-year-old woman who was lost for four days
in the desert. She reported battling for coherence throughout her ordeal: “I would see things
that I knew were not right or true but I hoped they were. My hallucinations were vivid and
contradictory, so when rescuers came and it was real, I was not sure it was real. It was not until
he touched me that I knew” (Hammond, personal correspondence, 2011).
Certainly, one can develop an incomplete or unrealistic view because the data are contra-
dictory, overwhelming, and/or fraught with multiple meanings. Of course, one can develop an
incomplete view by not taking in data (threat rigidity responses) (Staw et al., 1981). Cognitive
psychology suggests that lost people form mental models or scripts about survival and about
being (or not being) found (Porathe, 2006). These mental models can take over and guide
behaviors that seem illogical to outsiders and searchers. Physiological responses to separation
may also include a narrowing of focus due to high arousal states. This narrow focus serves
to cause the subject to feel and think that the choices she makes and enacts in this stage are
logical, realistic and productive (Porathe, 2006).
The tendency to react in seemingly illogical or at least counterproductive ways is so consist-
ent that in the SAR world, searchers and search animals are trained to find “articles” (or the
jettisoned belongings of lost persons). A lost hiker whose mental models tell her that she will
be in her warm bed by nightfall often sheds such items as her coat and her temporary shelter in
order to move more quickly on her chosen path (Griffith, 2006), a somewhat typical example
of illogical and counterproductive behaviors. Deviation thus describes the period where the
subject’s values differ dramatically from the values of others in the team, workgroup or the
non-lost world (in this case, the hiker fails to value items that empirically have the potential to
increase comfort and survival).
The organizational counterpart to these examples relates to the confusing-to-onlookers
behaviors people adopt when they are lost in organizational settings. Co-workers, family and
friends may see the lost person jettison career opportunities, relationships or moral values
because the subject feels they are not needed in the moment or that they appear to be contrib-
uting to the problem. As stated earlier, cognitive psychology and physiology both suggest that
 Lost person behavior 221

narrow thinking and threat rigidity explain why the mental models selected in this stage may
run counter to productive thinking, particularly what seems realistic and productive to outside
observers. Further, when the autonomic nervous system is aroused in the process of becoming
lost, the autonomic activity can consume cognitive capacity such that attention is taken from
the task at hand and diverted to the interrupting event or to the autonomic activation itself
(Bazerman et al., 1998).

Stage 4: Deprivation

Stage 4 represents a period attainable only if the subject stops embracing unrealistic or incom-
plete views of the situation. Deprivation describes the case where the subject fully realizes the
resource differences between himself or herself and the rest of the non-lost world. Because of
this understanding, subjects typically become emotionally charged and many report temporar-
ily or permanently losing hope and feeling ashamed (Gonzales, 2003; 2012). In the organiza-
tional case of an associate professor we interviewed who was denied tenure, he claimed “I felt
like I would never get another job; I was afraid I would never work again – anywhere.”
This stage may be one with the highest emotional arousal and most extreme emotional reac-
tions. Deprivation therefore represents the period where emotions may cause the language, talk
and communication (as well as other tools of organizational construction and survival) associ-
ated with sensemaking to either no longer work or become impossible to perform. Weick and
colleagues (2005) clarify that “efforts at sensemaking tend to occur when the current state of
the world is perceived to be different from the expected state of the world, or when there is no
obvious way to engage the world” (2005, p. 409). However, the emotional reactions of shame,
hopelessness and fear may truncate or delay expected attempts at sensemaking. In other words,
efforts at sensemaking require communication and connection to others; yet the realization
of the extent of the lostness and the emotional arousal that accompanies the realization may
temporarily halt or delay sensemaking efforts.

Stage 5: Realization

Realization describes the point at which the lost person achieves acceptance of and a greater
understanding of the situation – and therefore his or her ability to take meaningful action and
engage in mutual and successful sensemaking becomes somewhat fully restored. While we
prefer to describe such positive aspects of this phase, we note that “realization” can be negative
too. Some lost people (whether geographic or organizational) realize the severity of the situ-
ation and become so demoralized they do not pass through this stage; they become paralyzed
(D’Aveni, 1989) and do nothing to enable or improve chances at rescue and return (and if
they are found it is often despite themselves) (Hammond, 2013). However, many lost people
do achieve an ability to move forward in this “realization” stage. Wilderness rescue research
shows that victims who eventually find their way and/or achieve rescue pass through a period
of realization where they take a different, and proactive, stance on their situation because of
this acceptance and concomitant new perspective.
When productive, this period marks a distinct behavioral choice to focus on progress rather
than the problem(s) and deprivation. This choice to progress motivates planning, action and
a resurgence of concentration and cognitive effort (Gonzales, 2003). This type of thinking and
the behaviors and emotions that correspond to it suggest a “turning point” for most lost people.
222 Research handbook on organizational resilience

Further, this stage marks the near-end of being lost, because the subject is once again “making
sense” of the environment and making and enacting meaning amidst equivocality. According
to the earlier definition, the person may still be disoriented, but renewed sensemaking and
renewed effort enable re-orientation to begin.
Former subjects of searches report that they were only able to behaviorally and psycho-
logically rebound from the deprivation and fear after they fully accepted, or “owned,” the
experience (Gonzales, 2003; Griffith, 2006; Racina, 2005; Sherwood, 2009). The literature
on sensemaking once again supports the centrality of internalization and ownership in recov-
ery from being lost. Specifically, recovery from being lost means rejoining a collective or
organization. As such, it is a social process and involves sensemaking. Weick and colleagues
(2005) suggest that in organizations this means jumping into a streaming of experience and
asking “what is the story?” We suggest that only when one can place oneself firmly in one’s
own narrative can one then place oneself into the ongoing narrative in the new organizational
reality. Weick and colleagues (2005) argue that after answering the question about the nature
of the story one almost immediately asks: “now what do I do?” The organizational member
who has internalized consequences of previous actions (including the act of getting lost) can
more honestly engage the follow-up question of what to do next. As Weick et al. (2005, p. 410)
explain:

When people ask the “now what should I do” this added question has the force of bringing meaning
into existence; meaning that they hope is stable enough for them to act into the future, continue to act,
and to have the sense that they remain in touch with the continuing flow of experience.

This statement implies that the person who has internalized the positive and the negative fea-
tures in his or her story of lostness can co-weave meanings and actions that will lead toward
new and different experiences.
In wilderness search and rescue research, the realization period denotes the time when
many subjects reinstate cognitive control over emotional reactions and begin to make and act
on specific plans. Also, in search and rescue contexts, this phase is the one in which people
report taking action or “moving.” Work on sensemaking in organizations suggests that taking
action generates new opportunities and new data that allow for useful adaptation (Sutcliffe,
2000). Thus, this is the final stage related to the condition of being lost, in large part because
it is in this stage that sensemaking capabilities are (re)engaged and (re)enacted. Once actively
(re)engaged in sensemaking activities, the lost person is co-creating his or her own tools for
orientation. At this point, the definition of being lost no longer applies, and the process of
reunion and reunification begins to occur.
The organizational counterpart follows the same logic, namely that in the realization stage
the organizational member accepts the reality of his or her lostness, and he or she makes
a commitment to recover. The person begins to make plans and choices related to survival and
progress in the work context (consider again the associate professor described earlier – he was
able to move into this new stage and make plans for a job search). Research on felt emotions,
particularly the positive ones that accompany decisions to live, to progress, and to be hopeful,
have the ability to broaden a person’s scope of attention (Weick, 1988) and can build capacity
(Bandura et al., 2003), increasing resilience and coping abilities (Fredrickson, 2001).
 Lost person behavior 223

Not Lost Any More: Reunification, Rebuilding and Resilience

A discussion of lost person behavior would be incomplete without describing reunifica-

tion – an ideal end to lostness – and the positive outcomes that can occur after being lost.3
Reunification describes the situation where the lost person returns to some or all of the asso-
ciations, patterns and physical locations they had prior to becoming lost. Reunifying implies
(re)integration with the team/work unit/organization and/or society. According to our earlier
definition, it also implies a state of increased resilience. Specifically, the end of psychological
lostness at work involves recovering the ability to orient oneself; the sensemaking literature
suggests this happens when one can enact identity work and sensemaking exchanges with
others (Weick et al., 2005). Such sensemaking takes one towards the successful functioning
and improvisation that constitutes resilience. Reunification, then, marks the period when the
subject is no longer lost.

Lostness and Liminality: Key Connections

The stages and the phenomenon of being lost directly relate to the concept of liminality.
Essentially, lostness describes an in-between state, or a liminal space between the previous
(non-lost) and a hoped-for (post-lost) life. In 1909, anthropologist Arnold van Gennep
(1960) introduced the concepts of liminality as a space between two different social statuses,
where separation from one has occurred but full acceptance into the next state is incomplete.
Turner (1974) expanded this concept, suggesting that “[…] in liminality […] former rights
and obligations are suspended, (and) the social order may seem to have been turned upside
down” (p. 59). The disorientation experienced in liminality is further explained by Powley
(2009), who expands the concept to crisis and suggests that people are “in crisis” when they
are suspended from routine, status and structure, and their role is disrupted. According to
Powley, liminality is a prerequisite to resilience. He argues that resilience activation occurs
at an individual and organizational level when a significant disruption in routine and role
occurs (Powley, 2009, p. 1290). His account of organizational adaptation after a mass shooting
details resilience activation steps similar to our views on individual lostness and our claims
about sensemaking being key to increased resilience and reunification. His research shows
how to trigger resilience and how to instigate post-crisis healing. He suggests that healing
(or wayfinding in our lexicon) begins when organizations (1) enter liminal suspension; (2)
practice compassionate witnessing (interacting in supportive and helpful ways); and (3) create
relational redundancy (reemergence of social structures, roles, etc.) (Powley, 2009). Our work
suggests a type of resilience activation at an individual rather than organizational level. The
metaphor of healing introduced by Powley and the concept of liminality (van Gennep, 1960;
Powley, 2009; Turner, 1974) connect the concept of “lostness” (or more appropriately, the end
of lostness) with resilience. Accordingly, we directly address the subject of resilience and offer
propositions about connections between lostness and resilience.

LOSTNESS AND NEED FOR RESILIENCE

Given the above information about psychological lostness and the working definition of resil-
ience with which we opened this chapter, we now integrate the two. To do so, we introduce the
224 Research handbook on organizational resilience

concept of the need for resilience (NR). Low need for resilience describes a person’s ability
to “keep errors small and improvise workarounds that keep systems functioning” (Weick and
Sutcliffe, 2007). Need for resilience can range from low to high and the term refers to physical,
conceptual or emotional reserves. When NR is low, then, a person can improvise workarounds
in response to setbacks. A low need for resilience refers to the ability of individuals exposed
to a highly disruptive event “to maintain relatively stable, healthy levels of psychological and
physical functioning, as well as the capacity for generative experiences and positive emotions”
(Weick and Sutcliffe, 2007, pp. 20–21). Essentially, if you are already accessing resilient
responses, then your need for (more) resilience is low. To describe the concept in reductionist
terms: if you have it (resilience), you are in a saturated state in terms of need – or at least in
a condition of low need. The ideal state then, is low need for resilience.
Our fundamental premise: when employees operate in a stable and steady state, the need
for resilience (NR) is minimal or even nonexistent. Most organizational or social psycho-
logical models of resilience are based on the idea that resilient individuals are doing better
than expected given an understanding of their situation. But stable and steady states rarely
persist at work or in life. As instability in work (or the wilderness) increases, people may
become disoriented and may begin to descend into lostness. This occurs as individuals are not
meeting work goals or expectations, and have no means of knowing how to meet goals and
expectations (Hall, 1991). In fact, we posit that the need for resilience increases as individuals
descend through the phases of psychological lostness and become separated, isolated, devi-
ated, deprived and then realize and take action in the situation. We further argue that resolving
lostness, or ascending the steps of lostness, reduces or eliminates the need for resilience.
Certainly, we recognize that the need for resilience, like lost person situations, remains
situationally-dependent. It does not represent a fixed individual difference, although we accept
that people may start with different baseline levels of resilience. Such baselines can affect
whether a person is even triggered as well as a person’s subsequent need for resilience, their
coping mechanisms, and whether or not they feel tempted to dwell on negatives or construe
the situation negatively (Masten, 1994). That said, our primary proposition is that, regardless
of baseline levels, people have a greater need for resilience as they move through the stages
of lostness.
We spend the rest of this chapter illustrating how individuals with lower NR have better
physical, conceptual or emotional responses to a lostness situation; these responses allow them
to incrementally obtain more resilience and recovery (Powley, 2009). Accordingly, we state
our propositions below, which suggest that the need for resilience (NR) increases as people
become increasingly more lost. With each stage of lostness, the need for resilience increases.

Proposition 1: As individuals progress through the stages of lostness, the need for resilience
(NR) increases; the need for resilience can build and accrue over time.

By extension, it holds that:

Proposition 2: Need for resilience can decrease (or be eliminated) when lostness is reduced
or eliminated.

The mechanisms behind the propositions can be seen in two case studies we offer below. In
the first, the subject is a person who was literally lost in the wilderness. After she was found,
 Lost person behavior 225

researchers, including the authors, conducted extensive interviews, including returning with
the subject to the location where she survived for four days and was eventually found. The
second case features organizational lostness. The subject offered his “life story” in a graduate
school essay. His identity has been kept private. Both cases show a positive relationship
between the stages of lostness and the need for resilience, and both represent a larger set
of interviews with SAR subjects and organizational actors undergoing a corporate change
(Jones Christensen and Hammond, 2015). Both cases explore what behaviors and actions
become triggered by the stages of lostness: separation, isolation, deviation, deprivation and
realization. They also hint at an important outstanding research question regarding whether
people can have or create reserves of resilience, as proposed by many, including the American
Psychological Association. The APA offers the “Road to Resilience” article (2019), which
suggests ten ways to build resilience.

Case Study No. 1: Victoria Grover and Grand Staircase Escalante Search

Victoria Grover never planned to be lost in the familiar Escalante wilderness. “Don’t panic,”
she told herself after she realized she was lost. Calmly she found a rock heated by the sun.
She found firewood, lit a fire with a single match, conserving the rest for another time. In the
morning she planned to head back to the stream, and then back to the trail. She was sure the
searchers would come quickly, and she wanted to intercept them. Before leaving her hotel in
the morning, she took snacks, water and a plastic poncho; all of which helped her feel com-
fortable enough to fall asleep by the fire. Awakened by the morning sun, she hurried back to
the trail to meet the searchers she expected. Her water was gone but she had bits of trail mix
and a banana. She was beginning to feel the first effects of dehydration. Yet water was 300 feet
away in a stream below partially blocked by rocks. She estimated a short 12-inch drop down
to the stream. She turned around and rolled along the rock and dropped into the sand. As her
feet met the sand, there was a snapping sound and pain. She knew immediately that she had
fallen into a hole and broken her leg. Her bones were just below the surface of the skin. It was
almost a compound fracture. She had a walking stick and a few scraps of cloth to make a splint.
Once she fixed the splint, she assessed her situation. She could not go up and she could not
get to the water, and she was dehydrating fast in the heat. After ten hours in the hole, Victoria
realized she was alone and isolated. No one was coming. She also knew that she had to be the
one to get out of the hole and to the water. Without water she would die. After two hours of
trial and error she figured out how to climb a rock with a broken leg. She planned and studied
her ascent, carefully choreographing every move. It took Victoria time, but she made it up and
over a rock to the stream. As she crawled to the water, over dust and downed trees, she col-
lected every loose stick and piece of grass using her poncho. Then she drank. Her next concern
was fire. She built a fire and dug a small trench in the sand. Covering the coals with sand, she
rolled onto the warming sand and slept.
The stages of separation and isolation are easy to see in Victoria’s situation. The nature of
deviation was less obvious. Victoria later admitted that she should never have gone solo hiking
in the wilderness. She was also self-critical about not carrying enough water, food and a jacket.
For a medical professional (she is a Physician’s Assistant) these “deviations” had a big impact
while she waited for rescue. “I thought searchers would be mad,” she said. “I thought when
they found me, they would tell me how much trouble I had caused.” She reports that she even
thought she might lose her medical license.4
226 Research handbook on organizational resilience

Deprivation is a paralyzing stage in that its psychological elements are not based in objec-
tive reality. It starts when a subject sees that they are living in a new and different reality. They
can positively adapt or they can give in to fear of having less, perhaps insufficient for survival.
For Victoria, the sense of deprivation was a battle of the mind. “I heard voices. Rescuers! Over
here! I need a blanket! Come on! You’re ignoring me! I would never treat one of my patients
that way!” She reports that there was another voice in her mind, a rational voice telling her that
what she was seeing was not real. It told her the hallucinations were a result of the chemical
imbalance in her body. The rational voice said “Drink. Hydrate. Stay real.” So she drank
a water bottle every two hours, charting her fluid intake as if she were in a hospital.
In the afternoon of the third day she woke to the sound of a bird. She saw a vulture in the
trees high above her. “I’m not dead yet!” she thought. But when the bird left she felt again
the pain of isolation. At this point, she reported her will to live dominated her thinking. When
Victoria failed to check out of her room four days after she started her hike, the hotel notified
the sheriff, who began a search. The deputies called in a helicopter, but they assumed the
worst. Searching for a body, they flew over Sand Creek. When they saw her, to their surprise,
she sat up and waved. They landed nearby. She reports: “They were so nice. There were no
lectures. The pilot thanked me for being alive.”

Case No. 2: Mark is Lost and Found at Work

Looking back, I can see where I went wrong. It was gradual. But I didn’t see it until my family fell
apart. Then it hit me in the face. “You screwed up” and you’re going to have a hell of a time getting
it back together.

Mark (pseudonym) left college before graduation when he was hired to sell financial products
on commission. After five years of financial success he was invited into salaried management,
but the loss of commissions made him decline the offer. “I did not want to give up a good
thing,” he said. “I had good clients coming in and almost none going out.” Over the next five
years his commissions continually declined until he was having difficulty making his high
mortgage payment. “We just didn’t think this would end, so we bought a big house and all the
cool things that go with it.”
When he began losing clients he tried motivational programs and working harder, but they
still had no positive results. At the ten-year point in his career his company adopted a “certified
financial planner” model that eliminated sales commissions. Mark said,

At first I thought I had been pushed off a cliff in the dark. Then looking back I could see that I knew
this was coming. I had a harder time getting and keeping clients. My colleagues were retraining or
leaving the industry. I just figured if I worked harder I could get back to the good old days. But the
company decided they didn’t need a sales guy like me.

Mark was forced out of his firm. He sought other employment but was not qualified. “I had no
technical skills, and no college degree ... and the financial industry had passed me by. My kind
of person was a dime a dozen.” His family lost their house. Eventually he took a 30-hour per
week job in security while he went back to school to finish his degree.
Mark separated from his firm and the shock sent him into a deep sense of isolation – both of
which (as with Victoria) are easy to observe from the outside. The stages have internal impli-
cations too. Mark stated: “I felt like a failure, so I didn’t want to be around anyone, especially
 Lost person behavior 227

my family.” Eventually the separation extended to his family. “At first they were there for me.
They wanted to help and I wouldn’t let them. Eventually they got tired of having a dad who
was always down. Mark’s resilience strategy was to take a job, any job, and get some income.
Even if it was close to minimum wage. But that was also humiliating. “I am working security
and I run into my old neighbor while I was getting coffee and he says ‘things must be bad for
you.’ That makes me feel like I had a contagious disease.”
As a result, he had deep feelings of isolation, and he continued along the stages of lostness
– with the concomitant rise in need for resilience. “I think the thing I miss most are my work
buddies. We used to get together and talk about our jobs, about selling and about sports and
stuff. I don’t get that now.” To compensate, Mark tried to reconnect with his former col-
leagues, but few had time to meet him for lunch or social activities. Eventually he started doing
community service at the food and shelter coalition “just so I could have a person to talk to.”
Mark felt a sense of deprivation. “I would drive by the house we used to live in, in the neigh-
borhood we loved and see the nice cars in the driveway and the happy kids playing basketball
in the driveway. I would think about our stinky little two-bedroom apartment and my lousy
job and my worn-out wife and unhappy kids and I would feel terrible. Every time they looked
at me, they would make it worse.” Mark then deviated. His values of personal discipline gave
way to indulgences and substance abuse that ultimately cost him his marriage and time with
his children. When he realized that his lost person behavior had overwhelmed his resilience,
his losses and regrets were many. His story illustrates that not all lost person behavior stories
end in rescue or being found. That said, when his need for resilience was highest, he took
steps to cultivate and build resilience and eventually earned his college degree. He rebuilt his
relationship with his children. He obtained a professional management job.
The two cases illustrate the process of lostness in physical and psychological settings,
respectively. We purposely presented the (actual) cases in such a way as to indicate how
the need for resilience accompanied each stage of lostness and compounded as lostness pro-
gressed. We have identified these consistent behavioral and psychological patterns in over 100
searches and in two decades of doing post-disaster relief and counseling work (Hammond,
2013; Jones Christensen and Hammond, 2015).
Our goal in identifying and naming these behavioral and psychological consistencies is to
enable faster “rescue” in both literal and figurative terms. Our thesis revolves around the idea
that if managers, friends, leaders and lost people can name and identify the stages of lostness
and the status of the need for resilience, then these same actors can take agentic steps to culti-
vate and obtain more resilience. Essentially, by understanding and dissecting the antecedents
to resilience, our work can complement the work of colleagues who can offer diagnosis and
advice about myriad forms of resilience – including coping and post-traumatic growth and
thriving.

IMPLICATIONS AND CONCLUSION

The cases herein illustrate key patterns of behavior triggered when we are lost. As stated,
lostness and any concomitant rise in the need for resilience that accompanies the stages of
lostness, remains idiosyncratic and is felt and reported differently by every individual. In order
to understand the relationship between lostness and resilience, scholars can rely on the deep
reflections of individuals who are continually engaged in sensemaking about the lostness and
228 Research handbook on organizational resilience

the need for resilience that accompanied each stage. As Victoria Grover said, “when you are
lost you feel like it is just you. You are the only one in the world separated from the tribe of
humanity. You are the only one in the world who will have this experience.” Similarly, Mark
reported, “I looked around and saw my high school friends and neighbors and figured I was
the only person who had screwed up.”
However, common experience and myriad data suggest that with the increased rate of
change and with increased crises at individual and collective levels, the number of lost people
(with high need for resilience) is likely rising, not falling (Hammond, 2013). Thus, we argue
that naming the mechanisms behind lost person behaviors and the need for resilience (or lack
thereof) can help scholars and practitioners hasten the rescue and recovery cycle – and thus
increase the number of people who are “found.”
One of the first implications of this work stems from an observation regarding elements
that connect the two cases. In both cases, lostness and the need for resilience did not always
have obvious physical manifestations. The implication of this observation is that this fact
makes lostness and the need for resilience harder to diagnose without data from the subject or
from context clues. We look forward to investigating the diagnostic pathways that this work
suggests, and think it leads naturally to asking questions about how to anticipate a descent into
psychological lostness and increased need for resilience.

Implications for Organizational Life and Organizational Resilience

If we understand the need for resilience and how it rises or falls in response to psychological
lostness, can we anticipate the need for resilience and put something in place to help people
quickly? Our thoughts on this question are to remind ourselves that the steps of lostness are
not necessarily ordinal. Also, the presence of any single phase does not necessarily lead to
catastrophic lostness. Yet each phase is also clearly related. As we establish in other work,
separation is generally a prerequisite for isolation. Isolation often leads to feelings of depri-
vation. Deviation can also lead to isolation and deviation consistently follows deprivation.
Said differently: we believe that knowing more about what kinds of events trigger the need
for resilience can help us anticipate lostness and avoid catastrophic events. As Mark said,
“I wonder what would have happened if I had stayed in school. We would have been paying
off student debt instead of going on cruises, but we might still be together as a family.” He
puts in dramatic terms one implication of this work: better anticipation may help individuals
avoid or mitigate lostness. Alternatively, activating resilience might stave off or delay further
descent into lostness.
Another implication of this work is less obvious from the cases, so we draw explicit atten-
tion to it here. Essentially, lost person experiences are powerful and potentially very positive
(Gonzales, 2003; 2012; Griffith, 2006; Hammond, 2013; Jones Christensen and Hammond,
2015; Maitlis, 2012; Racina, 2005; Sherwood, 2009). Lostness teaches that encounters and
experiences with resilience can bring confidence and a greater capacity to deal with subse-
quent difficulty. As Victoria said:

I’m working on integrating all the parts of the experience into a meaningful and truthful whole that
I can use as I return to the real world. I can see myself as a way finder, using what I’ve learned to
help others find their way. I still feel overwhelmed, but I can imagine myself reaching back to help
someone else move forward.
 Lost person behavior 229

A final implication of this work integrates Victoria’s statement into a wider research agenda:
we need more research on the possibility and determinants of positive outcomes after people
dealing with lostness become resilient or obtain more resilience.
We recognize the second half of this volume addresses this very topic, and we look forward
to following such scholarship. We also look forward to linking wayfinding and the reduced
need for resilience to positive outcomes such as thriving. We hope this work encourages
scholars and managers to consider how people might be “lost in plain sight” and that people
can be “rescued” – particularly if people know more about the linkages between lostness
and resilience such as those discussed here. Further, less lostness at work (or faster recovery
from increased resilience) means more potential for maximally resilient individuals and
organizations.

NOTES
1. Data for this chapter come from employee interviews as well as 41 interviews and 11 document
reviews related to 35 different search incidents that occurred between 1998 and 2014.
2. The stages are not necessarily ordinal; in many staged models individuals may not proceed through
the stages in the order described. As with crisis decision theory (Sweeney, 2008) people may get
“stuck” at a particular stage (by getting overwhelmed or by giving up) and people may return to
earlier stages after proceeding through later ones. Despite this potential for stalling or regressive
loops, we suggest that the defining phases of lost person psychology occur in the order presented
below for the majority of people who experience them (see Figure 15.1; see Jones Christensen and
Hammond, 2015 for an extensive list of case studies and features of each stage).
3. In considering the five stages in Figure 15.1, it bears repeating that every incidence of lostness
corresponds to different combinations of the five stages of separation, isolation, deviation, depri-
vation and realization. While allowing for and expecting this variety, we reiterate that lost people
experience some degree of all five stages. What happens afterward, when positive, is reunification.
4. It is not uncommon, especially for lost children, for subjects to feel as if they will be punished or
in trouble when they are found. Koester (2008) suggests that some children will even hide to avoid
being found.

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16. What makes work teams resilient? An
overview of resilience processes and
cross-level antecedents
Sebastian Raetze

Teams in organizations operate in highly complex environments and are frequently confronted
with unexpected and adverse situations. While the ability to respond to these changes is often
considered as implicitly inherent in team dynamics, recent research has found evidence that
adversity and critical events can weigh heavily on working teams, as they can disturb critical
task- and team-related processes (e.g., Barton and Kahn, 2019; Driskell et al., 1999). Thus,
there is an urgent need to understand how (work) teams successfully deal with adversity.
To address this need, the topic of team resilience has gained popularity over the last decade.
Resilience generally indicates how well a system resists threats and how quickly it returns to
its initial state after a disturbance (Bhamra et al., 2011). Besides the high practical and theoret-
ical relevance of work teams, organization-related resilience research has primarily focused at
individual and organizational levels of analysis (Linnenluecke, 2017). Evolving as a construct
of interest at both levels of analysis during the mid-1990s, almost 15 more years passed before
team resilience became recognized as a distinct construct. Yet, in truth, team resilience has
been influenced by research on resilience at the two other levels of analysis. Moreover, recent
results have originated from several diverse settings (e.g., conventional work teams, extreme
teams, sports teams) and fields, including resilience and adaptation, high-reliability organiz-
ing, stress, and extreme context research. This has resulted in the development of a substantial
body of knowledge that remains to be fully integrated. Given these developments, the purpose
of this chapter is to review this diverse literature to integrate it in a multilevel framework on
work team resilience to help us unify this field and develop new insights for future research.

A MULTILEVEL FRAMEWORK OF WORK TEAM RESILIENCE

In line with research on the individual and organizational level of analysis, the team level
offers a wide set of heterogeneous, partly overlapping definitions and conceptualizations
regarding team resilience, while none of them ought to become commonly accepted (see
Chapman et al., 2020 for a recent review). More precisely, there is an ongoing debate as to
whether team resilience is a predefined capacity or ability that helps teams withstand and
overcome critical situations or stressors (e.g., Vera et al., 2017), a dynamic process in which
the team recovers through the use of its individual and combined resources (e.g., Morgan et al.,
2013), or the outcome of a process in the form of a shared belief (emergent state) among team
members (e.g., Kennedy et al., 2016). Recently, Williams et al. (2017) argue that resilience
includes all of these elements. While different resources and capabilities lay the foundation for
withstanding adverse events, their enactment – the process of resilience – leads to some form

232
 Resilient teams 233

of positive outcomes (see also Olekalns et al., 2020). Building on this argument for a holistic
understanding, I define work team resilience as an emergent, interactive and recursive process
through which work teams build and use their individual and collective resources and interact
with their environment to positively adjust and maintain functioning before, during and after
adverse events (based on Williams et al., 2017).
Utilizing this core understanding, I leverage the input–mediator–outcome–input (IMOI)
framework (Ilgen et al., 2005) to structure existing knowledge on work team resilience.
The IMOI heuristic is common in team research and has proven to be a robust approach for
organizing extensive multilevel literature (e.g., Mathieu et al., 2008). It argues that teams use
interactive processes (mediators) to transfer inputs (team starting conditions) into outcomes
(task and non-task consequences of team functioning). Moreover, the heuristic captures the
dynamic nature of teamwork, as it depicts how team outputs at one point can function as inputs
that shape future team emergent states and processes (i.e., feedback loops). Figure 16.1 shows
a multilevel framework of work team resilience, distinguishing between the definitory compo-
nents of this construct and summarizing central findings of previous team resilience research:
team resilience itself is seen as a multiphasic and recursive process, which unfolds around
a specific trigger across time and levels. An adverse event, once detected, gives rise to transi-
tion, action and interpersonal processes utilized to achieve a pre-adversity trajectory. Yet these
processes during an adverse event can be improved by applying preparation and adjustment
processes before the triggering event and after bouncing back to a pre-adversity trajectory.
Moreover, the emergence of episodic resilience processes relies on underlying team capabil-
ities, which in turn depend on intertwined individual, team and organizational resources that
give rise to a team’s capacity of acting resilient. By focusing on resilience episodes, the model
also takes time into account by depicting feedback and learning processes connected to an
adverse event as well as the general development of team qualities as they mature over time.

TRIGGER AND OUTCOMES

Nearly all conceptualizations of team resilience include the existence of crises, stressors,
setbacks, challenges or adversity and thus argue that the manifestation of team resilience
is triggered by disturbances (Chapman et al., 2020). Yet recent conceptual work is vague
regarding what such disturbances really are. With few exceptions (simulations of incidents
in the emergency field, e.g., Gomes et al., 2014), even empirical studies do not address the
trigger that leads to the need for resilience. Recently, Stoverink et al. (2020) offered a more
narrowed view by arguing that resilience is only needed when a setback – defined as a loss or
breakdown in interdependent action processes – occurs that negatively affects goal attainment.
Such a breakdown is related to a concrete event but can occur in various ways. Alliger et al.
(2015) argue that a broad range of challenges exists that require work team resilience differen-
tiating between chronic stressors (i.e., longstanding, cumulative) such as difficult assignments,
time pressure, and insufficient resources, which can escalate to fatal errors and acute shocks
(i.e., sudden, often highly intensive) such as sudden loss of resources, radical increase in
workload, or external crisis events. Furthermore, adverse events have been clustered regarding
their origin. For example, Schulte and Kauffeld (2017) offer a list of exemplary team crises
differentiating between internal and external causes. Focusing on the results, Kennedy et al.
(2016) differ between task-based (e.g., missing tools) and team-based (e.g., conflict) triggers.
 234 Research handbook on organizational resilience

Figure 16.1 Multilevel framework of work team resilience

 Resilient teams 235

While adverse events surrounding conventional work teams may combine a broad range of
stressors, compared to extreme teams their emergence and potential negative impact (missed
goal achievement vs. traumatic, life-or-death situations) may be less severe.
Similar to the triggering events, team resilience research on outcomes also offers incon-
sistent viewpoints. While in cross-sectional studies team resilience (measured as coping or
adaptation capabilities/behaviors) is found to be significantly related to positive team-level
outcomes such as general team performance (Meneghel et al., 2016; West et al., 2009), there
is an ongoing debate on the relevant outcomes of event-driven team resilience processes.
As work teams exist to perform organizationally relevant tasks, recently scholars argue that
performance trajectories are sufficient to define resilient team outcomes related to an adverse
event. For example, Stoverink et al. (2020) focus on the bounce-back trajectory by arguing
that resilience is displayed when teams return to their pre-adversity performance trajectory
quickly. Gucciardi et al. (2018) propose three broad possible trajectories: (1) resistance trajec-
tory – team functioning remains relatively unaffected; (2) bounce-back trajectory – character-
ized by initial negative effects followed by a quick recovery; (3) recovery trajectory – return
to competent functioning gradually over time. Yet, other researchers argue that resilient
outcomes include a broader set of factors, such as well-being, or the maintenance of team
cohesion and team viability (e.g., Alliger et al., 2015; Meneghel et al., 2016).

TEAM RESILIENCE PROCESSES

Across all levels of analysis, there is a trend to focus on discrete resilience processes that
unfold to overcome an adverse event successfully (e.g., Britt et al., 2016; Duchek, 2020).
While coping or adaptation as reactive processes have dominated this area, more nuanced
models have been developed, including relevant processes to proactively prepare for, reac-
tively deal with, and learn out of an adverse event. Stoverink et al. (2020) have transferred this
idea to the team level of analysis by integrating Alliger et al.’s (2015) process taxonomy of
resilient team behaviors with the well-known team process taxonomy developed by Marks et
al. (2001). Based on my previous research, I share this perspective and thus leverage the model
of Stoverink et al. (2020) to cluster current research on team resilience processes.

Before an Adverse Event

Previous research suggests that adverse events are often foreshadowed by small discrepancies
or anomalies (e.g., Weick and Sutcliffe, 2007). Accordingly, work teams can invest resources
and vigilantly engage with their environment to increase the speed and accuracy of adversity
detection to avoid challenges or decrease the impact of unavoidable events (Alliger et al.,
2015; Stoverink et al., 2020). This includes voicing concern of potential problems early,
openly discussing them without simplifying them into familiar categories, and reflecting on
various possibilities. Central to early error detection are communication behaviors focused
on sharing critical concerns (Barton and Kahn, 2019) and improvement-oriented speaking up
(Edmondson and Lei, 2014).
Furthermore, teams can plan and prepare in advance to be better equipped and able to act
quickly if adverse events occur. Marks et al. (2001) argue that teams not only have to develop
strategies for standard operations but should also formulate and transmit alternative plans and
236 Research handbook on organizational resilience

strategy adjustments to potential changes. Based on their experience and the ongoing analysis
of prior challenges, teams can identify likely events as well as high-risk challenges (Alliger
et al., 2015). Gucciardi et al. (2018) argue that teams can develop action and coping plans for
such events to ensure that resources most salient for the respective trigger can be utilized when
needed. Teams can actively develop relevant resources and monitor resource availability to
be prepared. For example, Alliger et al. (2015) argue that resilient teams develop tools and
procedures (e.g., fixed standards, checklists, debriefs) to guide action when adversity has
manifested. Stoverink et al. (2020) add that resilient teams also engage in active practicing for
foreseeable challenges. Here, simulation-based training to improve adversity-related behav-
iors exists (e.g., Van der Beek and Schraagen, 2015) as well as inventions to develop resilience
capabilities and resources (e.g., Rankin et al., 2013).

During an Adverse Event

Once the manifestation of an adverse event is recognized within the team, it must deal with
corresponding setbacks in real time. Unexpected adverse events for which no pre-prepared
strategies exist imply uncertainty, novelty and ambiguity. Thus, for such events, the cognitive
process of collective sensemaking – understood as a process through which teams attempt
to interpret novel and ambiguous situations (Weick, 1993) – is of central importance before
any goal-oriented action can occur. By gathering additional information, sharing essential
information and comparing it to existing knowledge structures, teams can assign meaning
to an event and thus achieve a shared situational awareness of the current situation (Burke et
al., 2006). Barton and Sutcliffe (2017) identified meaning-making (creating a path forward
through or with adversity) as a central resilience practice of expedition racing teams. Such
processes can lead team action in threatening situations, as they allow the team to look at the
problem in a broader context.
Based on sensemaking processes, resilient teams develop strategic options to solve the
problem. As adverse events usually mean a certain time pressure and uncertainty, developing
adequate strategies as reaction to adverse events depends on both creativity and improvisation
as well as existing routines (Beck and Lengnick-Hall, 2009). Creativity and improvisation help
teams using their (limited) resources on hand to act in new ways appropriate to the threatening
situation (Rankin et al., 2013), while routines are required to start these processes and, in par-
allel, maintain basic functions to avoid negative chain reactions (Alliger et al., 2015; Beck and
Lengnick-Hall, 2009). Finally, developed solutions must be weighted, and a strategy must be
chosen based on its potential to solve the problem. For this decision, resilient teams consider
available resources by assessing the individual strengths of team members and the collective
strengths as a team (First et al., 2018). The final decision can be a change in course (i.e., adapt-
ing), staying the course (i.e., persisting), or a combination of both (Stoverink et al., 2020).
Once a strategy is chosen, teams must switch from transition to action processes in order to
implement their solution and accomplish their (revised) goals. During this phase, members of
resilient teams engage in often single but interrelated task actions (Marks et al., 2001). They
must invest individual resources to implement the solution collectively and with high team
engagement (Stoverink et al., 2020). First et al. (2018) found that resilient teams set a series
of action steps and process them in order. A fair and appropriate distribution of tasks is impor-
tant (Furniss et al., 2011). Furthermore, coordination is needed to orchestrate the sequence
and timing of interdependent team member cognitions and actions (Salas et al., 2008). Yet,
 Resilient teams 237

research showed that teams usually need to change their coordination mechanisms when faced
with adversity (Burke et al., 2006). While teams mainly build on explicit team coordination
practice to manage stable and predictable aspects of work, adversity calls for dynamic and
implicit forms of coordination (Rico et al., 2008). Team resilience involves a reciprocal
relationship between action and context, as actors engage with extreme conditions to both
respond and shape them (Barton and Sutcliffe, 2017). Thus, implementing a potential solution
can modify contextual conditions and lead to failure of planning. Accordingly, resilient teams
must monitor progress toward goals, the wider system, team resources and member states,
and help each other when needed (Alliger et al., 2015; Stoverink et al., 2020). Both team
decision-making and task execution under adversity are usually cyclical and reciprocal rather
than linear processes.
Finally, in addition to planning and executing goal-oriented behavior, resilient teams must
engage in interpersonal processes during adverse events. Marks et al. (2001) argue that such
processes are important at any time, as they build the foundation for the effectiveness of
transition and action processes. However, when considering team resilience, they seem to be
especially important when adverse events strike, as this can lead to anxiety, negative emo-
tions, and conflicts resulting in relational dysfunctions, which in turn can reduce the available
resources and variety of response (De Dreu and Weingart, 2003). Thus, the ongoing sharing
of team members’ status (e.g., workload, emotions, and moods) is seen as a team resilience
factor to update collective mental models and avoid negative consequences (Stephens et al.,
2013). Based on this information, resilient teams can engage in collective emotion regulation,
mutual motivation, and conflict management during adverse events. Barton and Kahn (2019)
identify a team’s ability to engage in “relational pauses,” a deliberate shift from a task to
a relational focus every time negative team relational processes occur, as a central quality of
resilient teams. Teams should use these pauses to heal upcoming relationship damages, and
subsequently switch back to more powerful task processes.

After an Adverse Event

In general, it is argued that different team emergent states are automatically revised through
adaptive cycles when team processes unfold. For example, Kozlowski and Bell state that
“teams who experience performance success and master difficult challenges should experi-
ence higher levels of efficacy” (2008, p. 27). Yet, when focusing on team resilience, scholars
highlight that teams can apply different transition processes to become better prepared for
future challenges (Alliger et al., 2015; Gucciardi et al., 2018; Stoverink et al., 2020). Team
resilience literature especially highlights the role of after-action reviews or collective debrief-
ings, formats which have long been found to lead to better subsequent team processes, states
and performance (Ellis and Davidi, 2005). By collectively reflecting on what happened,
exploring alternative perspectives and evaluating performance, teams can withdraw from
crisis mode, expand their knowledge base, learn from the experience, and, when needed, show
long-term adaptation to the new situation.
238 Research handbook on organizational resilience

ANTECEDENTS OF TEAM RESILIENCE

As highlighted above, teams engage in different resilience processes to deal with adversity.
Yet the effectiveness of these processes depends on different input factors. Within this section,
I present key antecedents most salient for team resilience. To date, most studies have focused
on team-level antecedents. Accordingly, I will start with presenting results at this level of
analysis, followed by inputs at additional levels of analysis.

Team-Level Factors

Different team characteristics have been linked to a resilient team reaction to adversity.
Sutcliffe and Vogus (2003) argue that team diversity may enhance team resilience by expand-
ing the groups’ ability to sense, acknowledge, and regulate complexity or unexpected changes.
Based on a qualitative study on the resilience of small crisis response teams, Gomes et al.
(2014) support this argument. Within their sample, diverse teams could build upon a broader
knowledge and experience base, which helped them achieve appropriate solutions during
a crisis simulation. A diverse knowledge base allows teams to recognize a broader set of cues
and builds the foundation for appropriate decision-making. Furthermore, some studies found
a negative relationship between team size and team resilience (Dimas et al., 2018; Giannoccaro
et al., 2018). Large teams allow members less sharing of ideas and opinions, which could lead
to relational loss, disengagement and finally to minimized individual investment of resources
for dealing with adversity at the team level. Not surprisingly, previous research showed that
team tenure/maturity is positively related to team resilience (e.g., West et al., 2009) as newly
formed teams need a certain time to develop collective resilience capacities and important
emergent states. Furthermore, task and structural factors such as high task interdependency,
which offers space for developing a mutual understanding in teams (McCray et al., 2016),
have been identified as being positively related to work team resilience.
Also, a broad range of team emergent states have been identified as sources of team resil-
ience. An often-mentioned example of a cognitive state is a positive team culture. Teams
that are oriented toward learning new skills, mastering new situations, voicing concerns, and
improving competence are argued to be more likely to reset the team focus to alleviate pres-
sure, maintain positive team feedback, and positively adjust to challenging conditions (e.g.,
McCray et al., 2016; Sutcliffe and Vogus, 2003). Recently, Stoverink et al. (2020) highlighted
team psychological safety – a shared belief that a team is safe to take interpersonal risks – as
an important antecedent of team resilience. They argue that a climate of safety allows team
members to voice their thoughts and trust each other, which helps teams engage in collective
sensemaking, understand the current predicament, develop more response alternatives, and
honestly discuss during the whole team resilience process. Furthermore, group norms (cogni-
tive representations of shared patterns and characterizing regularities for the behavior of team
members) have been identified as salient for team resilience. For example, Blatt (2009) found
that contracting practices (the ongoing development and updating of consensual guidelines
and agreements) are positively related to team resilience behaviors mediated by trust and
creativity. Gucciardi et al. (2018) argue that group norms are a key mechanism through which
individual team member resources are converted into behavioral, cognitive and affective
coordination during the emergence of team resilience. They offer unique and important infor-
mation to guide team members on how to approach and react to adverse events experienced
 Resilient teams 239

collectively. Moreover, several empirical studies have shown the importance of shared mental
models for recognizing abnormalities and maintaining team performance under stress (Stout
et al., 1999). Similarly, Gucciardi et al. (2018) claim that shared and adaptive mental models
shape team resilience, as they moderate the effects of human capital resources on coordination
efforts. Stoverink et al. (2020) propose that the degrees of accuracy and sharedness of a team’s
mental model of teamwork are positively related to work team resilience, by supporting the
development of a virtual role system (Weick, 1993), enhancing a team’s capacity to coordi-
nate interdependent actions during difficulties, and thus shape a team’s collective expertise to
facilitate interdependent decision-making during a crisis.
Team cohesion, an attitudinal or motivational state that shapes the degree to which team
members value being on the team as well as their commitment to remaining on the team, is
also associated with team resilience. Morgan et al. (2013) identified cohesion as a central
resilience resource of sports teams, helping them sticking to their task in difficult moments,
working together during setbacks, sustaining team morale, and developing a fighting spirit in
challenging situations. Bowers et al. (2017) argue that team cohesion may positively influence
team performance under periods of high stress by offering mutual trust and supporting the
acceptance of and adherence to group norms. Vera et al. (2017) found evidence that a team’s
shared belief in its capacity to be effective or perform all relevant tasks is associated with team
resilience, referred to as collective efficacy or team potency. This is not surprising, as (collec-
tive) self-efficacy has been identified as a significant source of individual resilience (Fisk and
Dionisi, 2010) as well as team performance (Gully et al., 2002). It is argued that collective
efficacy raises efforts that team members are willing to expend as well as the degree of frustra-
tion they are willing to tolerate to achieve team goals, in stable times as well as times of high
stress (Bowers et al., 2017). Moreover, collective efficacy offers teams confronted with adver-
sity a sense of confidence, and thus the motivational fuel for boosting their problem-solving
capacity (Stoverink et al., 2020).
Furthermore, a positive relationship quality has also been linked to team resilience. While
many terms are used, they all highlight the role human relationships play in fostering team
resilience. Carmeli et al. (2013) found evidence that connectivity between top management
team (TMT) members (a relational construct that characterizes the structural ties between
members and that is manifested in openness and generativity) is positively related to both, the
TMT’s resilience-efficacious beliefs and resilience-adaptive capacity; fully mediated by TMT
strategic decision comprehensiveness. Similarly, Blatt (2009) found evidence that communal
relational schemas (caring about one another’s needs) among team members are directly and
indirectly (mediated by creativity) related to team resilience. Interactive, relational processes
among team members can facilitate the sharing of information, learning processes, and the
development of adaptive solutions to problems (Stephens et al., 2013; Vera et al., 2017).
Finally, many scholars argue that team leadership is linked to work team resilience. For
example, Edson (2012) investigated the resilience of project teams and found that project
leadership plays an essential role in shifting group norms and processes to promote a team’s
adaptive capacity. Leaders can act as enablers of team resilience by proactively developing
adversity-related team resources (Alliger et al., 2015), supporting acceptance, and setting
the course for positive adjustment (Sutcliffe and Vogus, 2003), or initiating relational pauses
(Barton and Kahn, 2019) during adverse events. Finally, specific leadership styles have been
linked to team resilience. Studies found a significant positive relation between transforma-
tional leadership and team resilience (Dimas et al., 2018; Vera et al., 2017) and argue this is
240 Research handbook on organizational resilience

because of the positive effects transformational leadership has on self-efficacy, empowerment

and team culture. Based on an experimental design, Van der Kleij et al. (2011) identified
shared leadership of transformational-leadership behaviors as most fruitful for enhancing team
resilience.

Factors at Other Levels of Analysis

Teams are multilevel systems as they consist of individual members and are embedded in
a wider organizational context (Kozlowski and Ilgen, 2006). As such, relevant input factors
to team processes originate from the individual, team and organizational levels of analysis
(Mathieu et al., 2008). In addition to the team-level antecedents mentioned above, I will next
address important individual- and organizational-level inputs to team resilience.

Individual-level inputs
Although teams depend upon interaction and coordination to be successful, as “skills are
compiled from the individual to the dyadic to the team level” (Kozlowski, 1998, p. 134), the
role of individual team member factors as inputs to team resilience has received less attention.
While we know a lot about individual traits, capabilities, and competencies as sources of indi-
vidual resilience at work (e.g., Britt et al., 2016), we know little about whether these individual
characteristics also contribute to team resilience or not. Recently, Gucciardi et al. (2018) the-
orized that teams as goal-directed entities have the roots of their resilience in the capacities of
individual team members. While the authors highlight the role of individual knowledge, skills,
abilities and other characteristics (KSAOs) for team resilience, they also argue that these
individual inputs are only salient for team resilience if they are relevant to the task, objective,
and/or contextual circumstances of the team. Accordingly, they propose that the emergence of
team resilience relies on multiple successful combinations of team members’ resources, rather
than the existence of specific KSAOs. Moreover, some scholars have highlighted more con-
crete individual factors as potential sources of team resilience. Regarding the importance of
relational states and processes for team resilience, Barton and Kahn (2019) argue, that all team
members need sufficient emotional intelligence and empathy to notice if other team members
are struggling, which is required for switching from task to team-focused processes. Semling
and Ellwart (2016) argue that team members need to have positive resilience resources (e.g.,
risk perception, problem-solving ability, and emotional stability) to detect changes, share their
emotions and cognitions, stay optimistic, and engage in collective sensemaking and shared
problem-solving (Kaplan et al., 2013). Finally, Stephens et al. (2013) found empirical support
that a team member’s emotional carrying capacity (emotional expression and communication
of personal experiences) promotes mutual understanding and individual processing of difficult
events. How the individual resilience of team members is associated with team resilience
remains unclear. While a connection is assumed, it is also argued that a group of resilient
individuals does not automatically build a resilient team (Alliger et al., 2015).

Organizational-level inputs
As work teams come together to perform organizational tasks, their processes and behaviors
are shaped by the broader organizational systems and performance environments they are
embedded within (Kozlowski and Ilgen, 2006). We know from related fields that organiza-
tional factors are a precursor to many team processes and states (Guzzo and Dickson, 1996)
 Resilient teams 241

as well as individual resilience (Beck and Lengnick-Hall et al., 2009). Accordingly, a few
studies have highlighted how organizations can strengthen their teams’ resilience by offering
resources, support and adequate organizational practices, structure and culture. Van der Beek
and Schraagen’s (2015) interviewees mentioned several organizational-level factors helping
their teams to cope with unexpected situations, including reward systems focused on coopera-
tion, ongoing provision of adequate resources (e.g., material and skilled personnel), a respon-
sive, binding and safety-oriented organizational climate, adequate information systems, and
a focus on intergroup relations. Also, Vera et al. (2017) found that organizational practices
(e.g., work–life balance, career development, communication and rewards) are positively
related to work team resilience. They argue that those practices offer teams a positive cultural
context, external resources (e.g., information and support) and thus allow them to develop
specific skills and resources for team resilience. Blatt (2009) argues that organizational prac-
tices, which make expectations explicit and activities transparent, facilitate team resilience
through mechanisms of role clarity and accountability. Furthermore, by validating their
multilevel-resilience questionnaire, Schulte et al. (2016) found a positive correlation between
team resilience and organizational resilience.

SUMMARY AND AGENDA FOR FUTURE RESEARCH

Research on team resilience is growing exponentially, as resilience is seen as an important
quality of teams for dealing with adversity in times of increasing complexity and uncertainty.
Yet while offering a new lens on how teams deal with adversity, research on team resilience
is still in an early stage, including different viewpoints and understandings originated from
various contexts, fields, and influenced by different levels of analysis. Building on a process
understanding of work team resilience and by clustering previous research within a multilevel
IMOI-model of work team resilience, this chapter offered a meaningful overview of the
current state of team resilience research. Although there has been progress, there is still more
work to do to develop this area into a notable research stream. Within this final section, I offer
fruitful pathways for future research on team resilience.
First, the way teams transfer their resources into resilient outcomes still largely remains
a “black box.” Recently, scholars have started to theorize on team resilience processes and
their connection to different input factors (e.g., Gucciardi et al., 2018; Stoverink et al., 2020).
Yet, these models are normative in nature, arguing how teams should act to become resilient
and are thus only offering first insights into possibly relevant input factors, processes and
their connections. For example, when focusing on processes, the role of leadership behavior
in supporting different types of team resilience processes has hardly been addressed thus far.
Kozlowski (1998) argues that team leaders need to adapt their leadership behavior and roles
regarding a team’s task cycle and developmental stage to support adaptive team behavior
adequately. Similarly, focusing on extreme teams, Burke et al. (2018) showed that effective
leadership distribution and formality change during different phases of the task cycle. Related
dynamics in leadership might be fruitful for team resilience as well. For example, urgency
during adverse events might demand an individual decision of the team leader based on
perceptions of a few team members with the highest expertise, and thus, a temporal transi-
tion from more consensus-based leadership valuable in times of routine work. Looking at
antecedents, little attention has been given to cross-level input factors. While some scholars
242 Research handbook on organizational resilience

have started to shed light on organizational-level antecedents of work team resilience (e.g.,
Vera et al., 2017), other external resources have hardly been investigated. This is surprising,
as external resilience factors play key roles in resilience research at other levels of analysis
(e.g., Cooper et al., 2013). Focusing on crisis management in organizational teams, Choi et
al. (2010) found that teams heavily depend on external resources for overcoming team crises,
because their limited internal resources often do not match the requirements of a complex
crisis situation. Accordingly, we need more information on how teams can develop and
retrieve external resources, both within and without the focal organization. Moreover, it
remains unclear how different resources are interrelated and how they affect different resil-
ience processes. Recently, Stoverink et al. (2020) have started to illuminate this area by theo-
rizing on how four team resilience resources (team potency, team mental model of teamwork,
team capacity to improve, and team psychology safety) are enacted to support the emergence
of different team resilience processes. For example, they argue that a moderately high level of
team potency (a balance between confidence and caution) might be most fruitful for overall
team resilience, as too-high potency might hinder the recognition of weak signals. Similar
complexities might exist for other resources, like team diversity. We know that team diversity
offers teams a broader knowledge base and thus supports the development of strategic options.
Yet, diversity can also slow down decision-making processes and produce social conflicts
(Duchek et al., 2019; Van Knippenberg and Schippers, 2007).
Second, current research on team resilience largely suppresses the relevance of contextual
differences. Teams are highly context-dependent entities and thus, context-sensitive theorizing
is important in almost all areas of team research (Maloney et al., 2016). Accordingly, applica-
ble resilience processes and underlying resilience factors may vary as a function of different
contextual factors. While recent research highlights the role of adversity as a trigger for the
manifestation of resilience, little is known about the influence of different types of triggers.
For better understanding this connection future research can build upon event system theory
(EST; Morgeson et al., 2015). EST focuses on how discrete events affect organizational
entities and their behavior depending on the interaction of three central event components:
event strength (novelty, disruption, criticality), event space (origin, spatial dispersion, spatial
proximity), and event time (duration, timing, strength change). By clustering different kinds
of adverse events based on these components, EST offers various levers to expand our
knowledge on how different triggers may shape the emergence of team resilience processes.
For example, adverse events may trigger a series of related events. Losing a team member
may cause another team member to leave. Such events clusters and chains may call for short
cycles of repeating transition and action processes, and more intensive interpersonal processes
to deal with upcoming frustration. Applying the different event characteristics may also help
researchers to better determine the overall severity and potential negative consequences of
an adverse event. From team stress research, we know that team stressors (e.g., time pressure
and uncertainty) can lead to negative team effects (e.g., decreased cooperation and ineffective
communication), especially when unfolding in a complex combination (Dietz et al., 2017).
Besides different triggers, temporal aspects are another important contextual issue for team
resilience research, which has gained limited attention thus far (Kennedy et al., 2016). Yet,
“when a team event occurs may be as important as what the event is” (Mathieu et al., 2017,
p. 462). Focusing on team resilience, this seems to be relevant regarding both, the performance
episode as well as the developmental stage of a team during which an adverse event occurs. As
teams usually increase their actions after the midpoint of a task cycle (Gersick, 1988), adverse
 Resilient teams 243

events occurring late in a performance episode may be more difficult to overcome. Similarly,
adverse events may be particularly detrimental when hitting a team early in its life cycle, by
draining the few collective resources already developed. Team task or team type are additional
factors that can be leveraged to reveal important contextual differences in the emergence of
team resilience.
Third, we know that teamwork has changed significantly over recent years, marked by the
development of team forms that match less to our classic understanding of what work teams
are (i.e., common goals, relatively long lifetime). In many areas, teams are becoming more
fluid, virtual and complex, including multiple team memberships or working in multiteam
systems (Tannenbaum et al., 2012). Yet, it remains unclear if and how such new types of
teams can build resilience and how they interact in dealing with adverse events. For example,
we know that people who work in multiple teams often allocate their resources connected to
their individual roles (O’Leary et al., 2011), which might lead them to avoid the risk of getting
involved in adverse events and rather invest their resources in teams that work well. Moreover,
there might be spillover effects in such team settings. While it is common in multiteam settings
(e.g., project-based organizations) to orchestrate resources between projects regarding urgent
demands, this may cause adverse events in a related project team due to the loss of resources.
Modern teams also rely increasingly on technology (Kozlowski et al., 2015). Yet we know
little about how technology interacts with team members in shaping team resilience.
Finally, recent research on work team resilience is predominantly quantitative in nature (i.e.,
experimental and cross-sectional designs) and usually based on oversimplified measurement
tools, self-ratings, and post-hoc analysis. To move forward, future research should build on
methods that are able to capture the complex, context-specific, and dynamic nature of team
resilience. Recently, excellent theoretical work could illuminate the nomological network
of work team resilience. Yet, we should start to fill the developed categories with mean-
ingful empirical results. Salas et al. (2008) call for studying teams “in the wild” to develop
high-quality “context-specific” knowledge that expands theoretical models. Following this
call, future researchers should leverage qualitative (e.g., case study and organizational eth-
nography) or mixed-method approaches, and should provide detailed descriptions on their
studies’ contextual features (Bell et al., 2018). Results of such studies may act as a base for the
development of more nuanced and adequate quantitative data collection tools, which in turn
can be utilized in longitudinal and/or multilevel designs (e.g., diary method, Ohly et al., 2010;
structural equation modeling, Cheung, 2007).

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17. The effects of individual resilience on
organizational citizenship behavior in
contemporary public administration:
a dual pathway model
Dimitrios Karolidis, Fotis Vouzas and
Elena Antonacopoulou

WHY AND HOW TO STUDY RESILIENCE IN PUBLIC

ADMINISTRATION SETTINGS
The volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity (VUCA) (Bennett and Lemoine, 2014)
conditions dominating the socio-economic environment globally, have challenged both
private and public organizations to undergo significant strategic and operational changes.
Public organizations, in particular, are forced to adapt to these current trends by reforming
their business models in order to meet the needs of civilians and deal with changing govern-
mental policies and regulations (Curry et al., 2016). These reform endeavors are rooted in
the New Public Management (NPM) movement (Pollitt and Dan, 2013) and the new public
governance doctrine (Osborne, 2006) and strive to introduce a market-like orientation with
greater governmental flexibility and responsiveness. By adopting a market-like orientation,
by embracing organizational change in both structures and processes and by receding from
centralization, formalization and bureaucracy, public administration will ultimately conform
to the contemporary business environment. A growing number of researchers today claim
that public sector organizations can implement change by acting only through their members
and that successful change will persist in the long term only when employees alter their job
attitudes and behaviors in appropriate ways (Porras and Robertson, 1992).
In this setting, public sector employees are expected to develop novel entrepreneurial
attitudes, embody market practices and move away from public welfare towards commer-
cial norms in order to realize market, stakeholder and services orientations. This shift often
involves extra obligations and additional workloads for public administrators (the famous
mantra of doing more with less) as a means to accomplish work and task-related goals (e.g.,
for capturing the standards introduced by the NPM-related performance management systems)
(Conway and Monks, 2011).

Every now and then we get legislation for reorganizations, mobility, mergers etc. Many of my
colleagues are in pension right now through voluntary retirement and I read that we are down by
thousands of employees, but hiring is frozen. I use to feel secure for my job […] now I start to think
about it more often. I understand that we need to save money, be more effective […] there is not so
much money to be spent, I guess. I mean, I love what I do but the pressure that’s put on all of us […]
its stressful […] to do more with less because we are becoming a production factory. I am feeling the
strain. We have always been delivering services to people and people expect from us the same level
of services, if not even more today. (Maria: Social security worker)

247
248 Research handbook on organizational resilience

Public sector employees can react and deal with organizational change by demonstrating resil-
ience, the process of staying effective by bouncing back from demanding job circumstances
(Williams et al., 2017). The contemporary public administration settings with their turbulent
nature seem to provide fertile ground for studying individual resilience; we believe that there
are adversities (i.e., demanding conditions) coming out of current reforms in the public sector
and that employee resilience is essential for the successful implementation of these initiatives.
For example, the introduction of performance goals in public governance has the potential
to produce gaps between current performance and desired goals, and affect the individual’s
judgment of their own capabilities to execute courses of action required to attain these goals
(Bandura and Cervone, 1983). This in turn influences an individual’s likelihood to expend the
necessary effort and persist in the face of obstacles (i.e. adversity). By building up resilience,
these obstacles can be overcome.

Many things are changing at work right now. Everything has to be done so fast right now, is frighten-
ing. Most of my work at the office is done through the net […] I go through hundreds of emails every-
day […] people used to come here […] now they apply online, you know, for permits and renewals.
This really more than doubles my workload […] I have to reply, I have to keep hard copies […] now
all of my paperwork is uploaded over the internet and becomes accessible to everyone. I struggle to
store and upload the data and get the proof. Sometimes the system fails, the internet crawls […] In the
beginning it was a disaster. Now I am getting used to it. It took me a while to get around the interface,
to learn the software […] I am not really keen on computers. If you ask me, I see less people coming
here, no queues and that’s a good thing. I guess people are happier when they get their things done
from home […] (John: Registrar)

To meet organizational goals, resilient public sector employees interact with their work envi-
ronment. And this working environment could be defined by both the job characteristics (e.g.,
job demands) and the job resources (e.g. organizational aspects) which challenge individuals
to be behaviorally engaged in reform implementation, for the purpose of delivering optimum
public service quality. The Job Demands-Resources (JD-R) model (Bakker and Demerouti,
2007; 2014) provides the theoretical background upon which the outcomes of individual
resilience can be studied in the public sector during organizational change. The JD-R model
classifies the variety of work characteristics into two broad groups, job demands and job
resources, which include a diverse assortment of specific demands and resources depending
on the context under study. According to the propositions of this model, job demands (e.g.,
the high pressure to meet organizational goals) may well lead to threatening and stressful situ-
ations, while the existence of specific job resources (e.g., alignment to the vision and mission
of contemporary public administration) may assist individuals to deal with stressful conditions
and protect themselves from negative outcomes.
By demonstrating resilience, public sector employees exhibit attitudes and behaviors which
might affect organizational efficiency and effectiveness. For instance, the implementation of
novel managerial practices like quality management (i.e., creating and implementing quality
planning and assurance in order to maintain a desired level of excellence) can trigger resil-
ient employee reactions such as motivation (a critical characteristic of individual resilience)
(Skodol, 2010), leading to the development of positive attitudes and behaviors like courteous-
ness and friendliness to their peers, managers and customers (Davis and Stazyk, 2014). Still,
organizational change has the potential to demotivate, dissociate and dissatisfy employees,
thereby promoting resistance to initiatives such as reforms and leading to poor overall out-
comes (Michel and Jehn, 2003). Thus, NPM reforms resemble a double-edged sword; they can
 Resilience and public sector 249

either lead to negative behavior by state employees, or they can be seen as an opportunity to
actually improve public administration, and in this way, generate positive employee behaviors
and attitudes (Lane, 2002). Research findings in the public sector illustrate that both positive
and contradictory behaviors are possible during reforms (Vigoda-Gadot and Golembiewski,
2001). The labor-intensive facet of reform initiatives emphasizes the importance of behaviors
that enhance the social and psychological environment for optimum public service delivery
(Taylor, 2013). One of the behavioral constructs that has gained significant research attention
in organizational psychology literature as being an important determinant of both organi-
zational efficiency and effectiveness, is organizational citizenship behavior (OCB). OCB is
understood today as employees’ “extra role behaviors” that are discretionary, not officially
recognized by any formal reward system and are beneficial for the effectiveness of organiza-
tions (Podsakoff et al., 2009).
We believe that by building resilience, public-sector employees are able to adapt to changes,
deal with the challenges related to NPM and new public governance, and exhibit extra role
behaviors. We propose that the JD-R model provides a dual pathway which leads individual
resilience to “change-oriented citizenship behavior” and to “compulsory citizenship behavior”
(CCB) which are both crucial types of OCBs. The former is as a promotive type of OCB focus-
ing on organizational change (Moon et al., 2005) while the latter is the response to pressures
for increased performance in the workplace (Vigoda-Gadot, 2006). Both of these OCB types
are important and have their own merit during reform initiatives since they both capture the
extent to which public sector employees challenge existing workplace policies and practices
and introduce functional change, thereby improving the outcomes of public administration
(Campbell, 2015; Vigoda-Gadot, 2006). We first provide definitions for resilience and OCB
then explain the JD-R model to model potential effects of individual resilience on citizenship
behaviors during organizational change in the public sector domain.

DEFINING INDIVIDUAL RESILIENCE

In the organizational sciences, many definitions of resilience have been used to describe
organizations, systems or individuals. At the individual level, scholarly approaches on resil-
ience conceptualize the construct as a personal trait or personal capacity that helps individuals
to deal with and adjust positively to adversity (Jackson et al., 2007). This trait reflects a strong
sense of self which is indicated by self-esteem, self-confidence, self-understanding and the
ability to regulate negative behaviors and emotions. Other researchers define resilience as
a malleable phenomenon that can be developed, so that the individual can positively adapt
within a context of significant adversity (Luthar et al., 2000). This state-like approach refers
to the individual efforts: (a) to resolve a problem by taking direct action, and (b) to reduce any
negative emotions by changing the way the adversity is realized and interpreted. Finally, there
is the middle-ground approach which views resilience both from a trait-like and a state-like
standpoint. We embrace this last viewpoint and we define individual resilience after Williams
and colleagues (2017) as the process by which an actor (in our case an individual public
administrator) builds and uses its capability endowments to interact with the environment
in a way that positively adjusts and maintains functioning prior to, during and following
adversity. Capability endowments refer to those individual abilities (both traits and states)
which are responsible for the positive adjustment under challenging conditions and these
250 Research handbook on organizational resilience

may include, for example, the rapid assimilation of new task- or goal-related information,
enhanced cooperation and communication with peers, mental hardiness and self-regulation,
and the prompt development of social connections within the workplace. Positive adjustment
under challenging conditions, as proposed by Sutcliffe and Vogus (2003), is the absorbance of
strain, the preservation of personal functioning in the presence of adversity (both internal and
external adversity – such as organizational change or increased demands from stakeholders)
and the rebound from unfavorable events.
We view individual resilience as a changing and pliable construct (a process) because it is
formed through the interaction of the individual with their environment (i.e., the exchange of
actions, stimuli and information with peers, workgroups, organizations and the society itself).
The beneficial outcomes of public administrators’ resilience during organizational change are
well documented in scholarly research. These include, among others, first, a normative com-
mitment to change. Resilient public sector employees may support reform initiatives because
they have a sense of obligation to their organization (Shin et al., 2012); they feel a sense of
duty to work towards the change initiatives. The second outcome is an affective commitment
to change, where resilient public sector employees may demonstrate a desire to support change
based on their beliefs about the benefits it brings (Shin et al., 2012). For instance, committed
employees are less likely to demonstrate absenteeism (i.e., the frequent or habitual absence
from their work duties due to difficult circumstances) or even dissociate their organizational
membership (their bond or linking to the organization) (Meyer and Herscovitch, 2001). Third
is performance and effectiveness (Luthans et al., 2011), where resilient employees demon-
strate a positive and optimistic mental attitude which can heighten their confidence that they
can accomplish a wider range of quality solutions when faced with obstacles. For example, the
introduction and use of information and communication technologies (ICTs), like the Internet
and social media, in public administration carries with it the need for training and acquisition
of new knowledge and skills. An optimistic employee would view this adversity (i.e. demand-
ing situation) as a means to enhance the delivery and quality of public services for the benefit
of citizens, businesses, employees and other stakeholders involved, and bounce back to attain
the successful implementation of ICTs in public administration. These examples highlight the
importance of individual resilience as an organizational construct; the strategic management
of resilient public sector employees would serve as a stepping stone to develop the capacity
for resilience in public organizations because when individual resilience is aggregated at the
organizational level, it makes it possible for organizations to respond in a resilient manner
when they experience adversity (Lengnick-Hall et al., 2011).

ORGANIZATIONAL CITIZENSHIP BEHAVIORS

Daniel Katz (1964) argued that for an organization to survive and to function effectively,
it must require several different types of employee behaviors that are voluntary and not
prescribed by formal organizational rules. Dennis Organ and his colleagues identified these
extra-role helping behaviors as the “good soldier” syndrome (Smith et al., 1983) and the
concept of organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) was born. Accordingly, OCB reflects
individual behavior that is discretionary, not directly or explicitly recognized by the formal
rewards system, and promotes the effective functioning of the organization (Organ et al.,
2006). Since its original conceptualization, research on the construct of OCB attracted tremen-
 Resilience and public sector 251

dous attention, highlighting its importance which relies on the fact that it can make a signifi-
cant contribution to both individual and organizational effectiveness (Podsakoff et al., 2000;
2014). OCB is seen as a determining factor in the successful implementation of organizational
changes as the behaviors enable the organization to adapt and adjust more effectively to
reforms in the pursuit of organizational goals (Organ, 1997). Consequently, OCB is important
for the contemporary public sector because it increases employees’ productivity (Allen and
Rush, 1998) and improves public sector performance (Kim, 2006). Managers are progres-
sively recognizing OCBs as key work outcomes and try to connect them to the development
of human resource management practices in order to enhance organizational effectiveness
(Podsakoff et al., 2011).
Rioux and Penner (2001) introduced a framework according to which employees exhibit
extra role behaviors, because they care for other people, they care about the organization or
they want to look like a dedicated employee. Recently, Harvey and colleagues (2018) added
the dimension of duty or obligation to this framework suggesting that some employees demon-
strate OCBs because they simply feel as if they should or must do so. In this chapter, we use
this last updated framework of key antecedents of OCB to develop our theoretical model on
how public sector employees’ resilience in contemporary public administration settings might
be related to their propensity to exhibit OCB. We continue by setting the foundations of this
model.

BUILDING A DUAL PATHWAY MODELLING PUBLIC

ADMINISTRATION
We believe that embedded in our working definition of resilient employees, the word “func-
tioning” is a key component. Functioning refers to the way an individual performs a specified
action or activity under demanding working conditions. From an organizational point of
view, resilient employees have the potential to exploit the challenges related to organizational
change in order to emerge more resourceful (Lengnick-Hall et al., 2011), provide the desirable
outcomes despite hurdles to adaptation (Weick and Sutcliffe, 2015) and remain functionable
(Sutcliffe and Vogus, 2003). These resilient individuals interact with their work environment
to “function” in the current settings and meet organizational goals. The working environment
may be defined by both the job characteristics (e.g., job demands) and the job resources (e.g.,
organizational aspects) which enable individuals to face the challenges of reforms and be
behaviorally engaged in reform implementation, providing optimum public service delivery.
The Job Demands-Resources model (Bakker and Demerouti, 2014) provides the foundations
on which we build a dual pathway that leads individual resilience to OCBs in the public sector
during organizational change. Figure 17.1 depicts the JD-R model as proposed by Bakker and
Demerouti (2007). According to Bakker and Demerouti (2007), every occupation may have
its own specific risk factors associated with job stress. These factors can be classified in two
general categories: job demands and job resources, and they constitute an overarching model
that may be applied to various occupational settings, irrespective of the particular demands
and resources involved. The authors define job demands as the physical, psychological, social
or organizational aspects of the job that require sustained physical and/or psychological (cog-
nitive and emotional) effort or skills and are therefore associated with certain physiological
and/or psychological costs. An example of job demands in the current public administration
252 Research handbook on organizational resilience

Source: Adapted from Bakker and Demerouti (2007).

Figure 17.1 The JD-R model

settings could be the high work pressure to meet deliverables. Job demands are not always
negative but they may turn into stressors when meeting those demands requires a high degree
of effort from the employees (Bakker et al., 2004).
Job resources refer to the physical, psychological, social or organizational aspects of the job
that can be useful for achieving work goals and have the potential to reduce the physiological
and psychological costs associated with job demands. Job resources can stimulate personal
growth and development and can be found at the level of the organization (e.g., career oppor-
tunities), the work itself (e.g., task identity and task significance) and the social relations (e.g.,
group climate). An example of job resources in the current public administration settings
might refer to an alignment to the vision and mission of public administration, the match
between a person and their organization (P–O fit), and respectively the embracing of public
sector reform initiatives.
The JD-R perspective points to two different critical psychological processes that play a role
in the development of job strain and motivation. In the first one, increased job demands (e.g.,
work overload) impose additional psychological and physiological costs to the individual,
leading to the demonstration of performance-protection strategies. These include, among
others, work strategy adjustments such as selectivity and redefinition of task requirements
(Demerouti et al., 2004). The second process assumes that job resources have a motivational
potential and may lead to elevated work engagement and performance (Bakker et al., 2007).
Job resources can particularly influence motivation or work engagement when jobs demands
are high. This occurs because individuals seek to protect and retain valuable material, social
or personal resources. Therefore, we suggest that job demands and resources interact at any
given time within organizational settings to predict job strain (Bakker and Demerouti, 2007).
In the next sections we use the two general categories of job demands and job resources of
the JD-R model to build our pathway of resilience towards extra role behaviors in contempo-
rary public administration.
 Resilience and public sector 253

THE JOB DEMANDS PATHWAY

In the previous section we defined job demands after the JD-R model classification as the
physical, psychological, social or organizational aspects of the job that require sustained
physical and/or psychological (cognitive and emotional) effort or skills and are therefore
associated with certain physiological and/or psychological costs (Bakker and Demerouti,
2017). Current reforms include elements of physical, psychological, organizational and even
social job aspects which are associated with both physiological and psychological costs. For
example, the cost reduction, monitoring, downsizing, outsourcing and privatization of public
services, the assessment of individual performance with the use of performance indicators
and benchmarking, leadership and supervision under a business-like management perspec-
tive, and the need for acquisition of new skills and competencies may well represent less
favorable job demands. In order to meet these types of job demands, individuals may use
performance-protection strategies, which include, for example, task selectivity and redefini-
tion of their task requirements (Hockey, 1997).
We follow this line of reasoning to propose that resilient public sector employees might
demonstrate self-serving motives and behaviors (including OCBs) and performance-protection
strategies in order to maintain functioning in demanding work environments and still deliver
on performance goals. In the case of OCB, empirical work has indeed demonstrated that in
some cases employees demonstrated organizational citizenship which was not volunteering at
all, but rather compulsory for the purpose of meeting organizational goals. That is, a demand-
ing work environment caused them to feel ongoing pressure to do more than required and
pushed them to perform OCBs. Van Dyne and Ellis (2004) termed this behavior “job creep.”
A number of authors also support this assumption; Salamon and Deutsch (2006) proposed that
under the strain of work uncertainties, organizational members might flaunt their job qualities
by demonstrating OCBs. In this way, they show that they are also capable of contributing in
ways that go beyond their prescribed role requirements. Bolino and colleagues (2004) argued
that employees might selectively perform OCBs under demanding tasks in order to enhance
their own image and facilitate their personal success. These sorts of behaviors fall under the
generic term “impression management.” Vigoda-Gadot (2006) suggested that employees
might be engaged in OCBs, because this is what is expected by their managers or supervisors.
OCBs that are required in this way should be referred to as “compulsory citizenship behaviors”
(CCBs).
By elaborating on the job demands classification of the JD-R model and the above presented
empirical evidence on OCBs, we pave our first pathway which leads from resilience to OCB
in public administration during organizational change. We believe that resilient public sector
employees experience increased loads of strain because of the nature of their job demands
in current organizational settings. In order to accomplish their formal tasks, they target their
OCBs in such a way that they look more dedicated to their agencies. The mechanism of
impression management and their sense of duty/obligation towards their jobs affect their
propensity to engage in citizenship behaviors and this in turn leads them to exhibit compulsory
citizenship behaviors. Figure 17.2 depicts this first pathway of resilience to OCBs through job
demands.
254 Research handbook on organizational resilience

Figure 17.2 A pathway of resilience towards OCBs through job demands

THE JOB RESOURCES PATHWAY

Job resources is the second category proposed in the JD-R framework that can be used to
model working environments. Job resources refer to these physical, psychological, social
and organizational aspects of the job that are used by employees to achieve goals, reduce job
demands (along with the associated physiological and psychological costs), and stimulate per-
sonal growth and development (Bakker, 2011). An important component of the job resources
category is the personal resources which are defined as the positive self-evaluations that are
linked to resiliency and are related to the individual’s sense of their ability to control and
impact upon their environment successfully (Hobfoll et al., 2003). These personal resources
include goal setting, motivation and performance-job satisfaction (Judge et al., 2004).
Individuals with goal–self concordance are intrinsically motivated to pursue their goals and
demonstrate higher performance (Luthans and Youssef, 2007).
The public sector traditionally, but not exclusively, draws employees due to their inten-
tion and propensity to serve society (Perry and Wise, 1990). People choose to work for the
public sector, because they want to do good for others and shape the well-being of society
by embracing the mission of public administration (Perry and Hondeghem, 2008). The
New Public Management movement and the new public governance doctrine declare that
a market-orientation can help public services to fit better to the contemporary socio-economic
environmental requirements (Diefenbach, 2009). Also, a customer-orientation might improve
the quality of public services, while a stakeholder-orientation can contribute to higher levels
of accountability. Public sector employees might connect their individual goals and values
(e.g., their propensity to serve society) with these novel organizational goals and values (e.g.,
NPM reforms). The greater the congruence between organization and employee goals and
values increases – that is, the more a person (in our case the public sector employee) fits to
their organization (P–O fit) – the better these employees will perform through increased moti-
vation stemming from the embracing of institutional public values and the integration of new
organizational goals (Kristof, 1996; Perry and Hondeghem, 2008). Through this match with
their organizational vision and requirements, public sector employees might increase their
job resources (e.g., goal setting) and their ability to control and impact upon their working
environment more successfully. And by pursuing their personal goals, they will demonstrate
greater civic engagement and effort to achieve organizational goals, that is, implement change,
do good for others and shape the well-being of society.
Following this line of reasoning we propose that resilient public sector employees will be
highly motivated by relying on the personal aspect of their job resources (their increased sense
of their ability to control and impact upon their environment successfully). According to their
levels of caring for other people (their prosocial values) and for their agencies (organizational
concern), and to their match (P–O fit) with the new organizational goals, they will be engaged
 Resilience and public sector 255

in the challenges of their work, in their propensity to help and benefit others and the society
and finally, in the demonstration of a behavior that is intended to make constructive changes
in the work and task environment (Frese et al., 1997; Morrison and Phelps, 1999). This last
type of behavior is understood as a promotive type of OCB focusing on organizational change
and has been termed by scholars as change-oriented behavior (COB) (Moon et al., 2005).
A number of studies have shown that the demonstration of change-oriented OCB is related to
both individual (e.g., responsibility and self-efficacy) and situational factors (the perceptions
of the organizational climate for innovation, and leadership) (Scott and Bruce, 1994).
By elaborating on the job resources classification of the JD-R model and the above presented
empirical evidence on OCBs, we pave our second pathway which leads from resilience to
OCB in public administration during organizational change. We theorize that resilient public
sector employees use their personal resources (e.g., job satisfaction, goal setting) as a motive
to deliver outcomes. Their prosocial values, their organizational concern and their fit to public
administration goals and objectives affect their propensity to engage in change-oriented
behaviors and eventually improve public administration performance by meeting the novel
organizational objectives. Figure 17.3 depicts this second pathway of resilience to OCBs
through job resources.

Figure 17.3 A pathway of resilience towards OCBs through resources

OPPORTUNITIES FOR RESEARCH

Resilient civil servants maintain their functioning prior to, during and following organizational
change and at the end they meet the desired novel policies and outputs of their rapidly chang-
ing working environments. In doing so, they may demonstrate extra role behaviors which are
also essential ingredients of organizational success.
Our theoretical model relates resilience with extra role behaviors through two distinct paths,
because it relies on the JD-R theory’s assumption that all types of job characteristics can be
classified under two categories: job resources and job demands. These two categories generate
motivation or strain to resilient employees and respectively trigger positive behaviors such as
change-oriented citizenship behaviors, and less favorable ones, such as compulsory citizen-
ship behaviors. These OCB types are equally critical and have their own value during organi-
zational change since they can both contribute to the enhanced quality of public administration
outcomes (Campbell, 2015; Vigoda-Gadot, 2006). We believe that resilient employees will be
able to overcome, one way or another, the possible hurdles to performance and successfully
complete their various task requirements by demonstrating either COBs or CCBs, which we
see as alternative paths to successful outcomes.
Reviews of JD-R theory (Bakker and Demerouti, 2017) propose that job demands and job
resources may not be independent but rather cross-linked. Accordingly, it is possible that the
256 Research handbook on organizational resilience

current public administration settings may provide civil servants with both high job demands
(e.g., heavy workloads) and high job resources (e.g., immense engagement). Some authors
suggest the existence of dual processes in the two categories. Respectively, job demands
may play a motivational role as well. As an illustration, challenge stressors (e.g., the pressure
on a highly responsible civil servant to complete a given amount of work on time) are job
demands associated with high motivation because some employees may believe that if these
high demands are met, then valued outcomes will occur (like serving the society in appropriate
ways) (LePine et al., 2005). These two assumptions (i.e., the cross link of job demands and job
resources and the dual roles of motivation and strain) highlight the importance of establishing
empirically the relationships amongst all of the constructs we propose in our model.
What we see as a real challenge to advance our proposed framework is to investigate the rec-
iprocity between the personal characteristics of resilient employees, the sources of workplace
pressure and support (demands–resources), and the processes (motivation–strain) by which
resilient outcomes (COBs–CCBs) are achieved. In our definition of resilience, we briefly
referred to those individual abilities (both traits and states) which are responsible for the pos-
itive adjustment under challenging conditions. We believe that it would be of great interest to
research which of the characteristics of resilient public sector employees are related to their
propensity to exhibit extra role behaviors during organizational change. For example, resil-
ience is associated with constructs like self-esteem, self-understanding and conscientiousness,
a sense of purpose, perceived control, optimism, self-regulation and hardiness. Which of these
characteristics prevail in resilient public sector employees in the current settings? Once we
have established a cluster of specific characteristics then we can start looking for relations and
causality. For instance, self-regulation (Reich et al., 2012), the individual ability to manage
emotions and behavior in a way that delivers a good outcome for both self and peers, may
be a motivational factor that leads to change oriented behaviors in public sector employees.
Hardiness (Kobasa, 1979), on the other side, a protective function of self, may well qualify as
a predictor for the demonstration of impression management tactics in public administrators
leading to CCBs.
Another approach to develop our theoretical model further is to look for possible mediating
or moderating mechanisms that potentially affect the relationship between resilience and
OCBs in contemporary public administration. We have already discussed the construct of
commitment as a beneficial outcome of public administrators’ resilience during organizational
change. Shin and colleagues’ (2012) investigation of employees’ behavioral responses to
change examined the mechanisms of normative and affective commitment to change as two
types of organizational commitment through which employees manage their job demands
and resources to face the challenges imposed on them during organizational change. We
believe that normative commitment to change, which is the support for change that stems
from employees’ sense of obligation to their organization, may well influence their propensity
to exhibit CCBs. In contrast, the affective commitment to change (Meyer and Herscovitch,
2001), which is the desire to support change based on individual beliefs about the benefits it
brings, may well drive resilient public sector employees to be engaged in COBs. These two
variations of commitment in the workplace seem to hold real promise in contributing to our
further understanding of the effects of individual resilience on OCBs in contemporary public
administration.
 Resilience and public sector 257

CONCLUSION

In this chapter we offered a theoretical dual pathway model leading from resilience to organ-
izational citizenship behaviors in the contemporary public administration by reviewing and
integrating relevant literature in the field. Resilience is becoming a vigorous metonymy of
adaptability and perseverance in a broad spectrum of literature, from management to organi-
zational behavior studies. Its importance lies in the fact that organizational changes both in the
private and the public sectors will continue to be manifested as a result of the volatility, uncer-
tainty, complexity and ambiguity which dominate the global socio-economic environment.
We hope that our proposed framework demonstrates that resilient public sector employees
have the potential to interact with their changing working environment, bounce back from the
adverse effects of these changes and demonstrate behaviors which are necessary for the effec-
tive functioning and even survival of public administration. The understanding of the resilient
individual in the specific settings will hopefully foster and stimulate opportunities for further
research to elucidate the intricate linkages between personal, organizational and even societal
effectiveness in which resilience seems to play an instrumental role.

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18. Resilience and organizational culture:
a competing values perspective
Edward H. Powley and Kim S. Cameron

Resilience has become an important and frequently highlighted topic in organizational

research, among practitioners and the public press. Every organization and almost every
manager aspire to be more resilient in the face of constant and escalating threats, uncertainty,
competitive pressures, and challenges to values and beliefs. The trouble is, the concept of resil-
ience, as well as the mechanisms whereby organizations can become more resilient, despite
a long history of wide-ranging scholarship, continues to be under-developed and somewhat
ambiguous – often studied as an individual trait or state, or operationalized as risk manage-
ment and business continuity. The purpose of this chapter is to clarify and elaborate on the
traditional approaches to resilience and to offer a framework for helping to clarify the cultural
aspects of resilience, its meaning and practical utility.
Resilience manifests itself differently depending on the dominant artifacts, values and
underlying assumptions that characterize organizations. A resilient organizational culture
is primarily distinguished by stability – that is, maintaining values, practices and routines
that have served an organization well. Yet simultaneously, resilience tends to ebb and flow,
producing growth and transformation. Fostering an organizational culture characterized by
resilience necessitates that we explore what organizations need more of, and need less of, as
they seek to adapt to changing environments and threats to their survival. Resilience, then, is
about developing the capacity to manage and work through difficulty.
It is important to point out that resilience is a fundamental dimension of organizational
culture. Culture refers to the underlying, implicit assumptions that govern beliefs, values and
purpose. It is often manifest in norms and expectations as well as in artifacts and behaviors.
Fundamentally, however, culture is mostly implicit and unrecognized until confronted and
clarified, which is why in this chapter we use the Competing Values Framework as an organ-
izing framework to understand resilience in the context of organizational culture. More specif-
ically, we describe characteristics of resilience as they correspond to two primary dimensions
of culture. The question we address in this chapter is: What are the primary characteristics and
attributes of a resilient organizational culture?
What follows is an overview of the Competing Values Framework and then a brief literature
review of resilience organized according to the framework’s two dimensions. We describe
resilience as they pertain to four organizational culture types. We then connect four com-
ponents of organizational resilience and discuss their relationship to the four organizational
culture types. This approach to resilience elaborates the key elements of resilience and clarifies
its multiple manifestations in different circumstances. The chapter concludes with a discussion
of mechanisms to foster resilience and implications for practice and research.

261
262 Research handbook on organizational resilience

COMPETING VALUES FRAMEWORK

The Competing Values Framework offers one framework for understanding resilience in
varying cultures (Cameron and Quinn, 2011). This framework was developed initially from
empirical research on the major indicators of organizational effectiveness, but it has been
elaborated to include research on a whole host of other topics: shareholder value, mergers
and acquisitions, approaches to learning, organizational culture, leadership competencies,
organizational designs, communication styles, organizational virtues, creativity, financial
investments, and information processing. In each case, statistical analyses have confirmed the
robustness and applicability of this framework to a broad array of human and organizational
phenomena. That is, the same dimensions that emerged from research on organizational effec-
tiveness also emerged when studying a wide variety of other aspects of human and organiza-
tional activities, including organizational resilience.
The basic framework consists of two dimensions – one drawn vertically and the other
drawn horizontally – resulting in a two-by-two figure with four quadrants. Figure 18.1 shows
a rudimentary image of the framework. When studying the effectiveness of organizations more
than three decades ago, we noticed that some organizations were effective if they demon-
strated flexibility and adaptability, but other organizations were effective if they demonstrated
stability and control. Similarly, we discovered that some organizations were effective if they
maintained efficient internal processes whereas others were effective if they maintained com-
petitive external positioning relative to customers and clients (Quinn and Rohrbaugh, 1983;
Quinn and Cameron, 1983; Cameron, 1986). These differences represent the different ends
of two dimensions, and these dimensions constitute the rudiments of the Competing Values
Framework.

Figure 18.1 Competing Values Framework

 Resilience and culture 263

More specifically, one dimension of the framework differentiates an orientation toward

flexibility, discretion and dynamism from an orientation toward stability, order and control.
On the one hand, some organizations are viewed as effective if they are changing, adaptable
and organic – for instance, neither the product mix nor the organizational form stays in place
very long at firms such as Microsoft or Nike – since agility and volatility typify their perfor-
mance and are keys to their success. Other organizations are viewed as effective if they are
stable, predictable and mechanistic – for instance, most universities, government agencies,
and conglomerates such as the New York Stock Exchange and Boeing are characterized by
longevity and steadiness in both design and output – so performance is consistent and even.
One dimension in the Competing Values Framework, in other words, represents a continuum
ranging from versatility and pliability on one end to consistency and durability on the other
end.
The second dimension of the framework differentiates an orientation toward an internal
focus and capability and the integration and unity of processes, from an orientation toward an
external focus and opportunities and differentiation and competition regarding outsiders. That
is, some organizations have great value associated with their harmonious internal characteris-
tics – for instance, Dell and Hewlett-Packard have traditionally been recognized for a consist-
ent “Dell-way” or “H-P way.” Others have created value primarily by focusing on challenging
or competing with others outside their boundaries – for instance, Toyota and Honda are known
for “thinking globally but acting locally,” or, for having units adopt the attributes of local envi-
ronments instead of a centrally prescribed approach. This dimension ranges, in other words,
from cohesion and consonance on the one end to separation and independence on the other.

MAPPING RESILIENCE

The two dimensions of the Competing Values Framework offer one way to represent extant
resilience research. Fundamentally, resilience is about the dynamic interplay between main-
taining stability and consistency, while simultaneously adaptively and flexibly adjusting to
disruption and setbacks, or new circumstances. When scholars refer to resilience, they often
refer to restoring equilibrium (Masten et al., 2009), the ability to bounce back (Gittell et al.,
2006; Zolli and Healy, 2012; Caza and Milton, 2012) or how to muscle through trials and learn
from adversity (Janoff-Bulman, 1985; 1992; Tugade and Fredrickson, 2004). Resilience serves
a range of functions; the most prominent in the literature is its function to maintain a stable
trajectory to ensure equilibrium in amidst change, crisis and extreme situations (Maitlis, 2012;
Westphal and Bonanno, 2007; Guarnieri, 2017; Guarnieri and Travedel, 2018).
This is no less true in psychological sciences: resilience “reflects the ability to maintain
a stable equilibrium” (Bonanno, 2004, p. 20) and the ability to “maintain relatively stable,
healthy levels of psychological and physical functioning” (p. 20). A post-9/11 study demon-
strated that the “capacity to maintain healthy, symptom free functioning” (Bonanno et al.,
2006, p. 181) seemed to be more likely after a major crisis than previously believed. Indeed,
resilience in the context of extreme situations is, in keeping with the conservation of resources
theory, “the sustaining of resource reserves” (Hobfoll et al., 2000, p. 277) and an equilibrium
of resources that “offset or minimize the impact of the loss” (p. 277).
On the other hand, organizations find equilibrium through adjustment and adaptation to
varying conditions; organizational scholars define resilience as positive adjustment under
264 Research handbook on organizational resilience

challenging conditions (Luthar et al., 2000; Sutcliffe and Vogus, 2003; Caza and Milton,
2012). We see consistency in this view of resilience across academic disciplines. Physical,
environmental and ecological sciences have long thought of resilience as adjustment, adap-
tation, absorption of change and disturbance, as systems return to equilibrium (Bodin and
Wiman, 2004; Holling, 1973).
Similarly, resilience is concerned with both inward and external dynamics. To understand
this dimension, we need to see resilience as a latent capacity that enables organizations to
bounce back from untoward events and the ability to withstand setbacks (Wildavsky, 1991).
A latent capacity implies resources developed and fostered internally through positive rela-
tionships and well-guided operational policies and procedures – which become key resources
that are available for use (Gittell et al., 2006). Moreover, the organization develops resilience
over time into an adaptive capacity that involves learning, growth and efficacy (Sutcliffe and
Vogus, 2003; Wildavsky, 1991; Kayes, 2015). Such a developmental perspective takes into
account the long view of resilience, not as a short-term fix, but instead emphasizes incremen-
tal growth and iterative learning from challenging events, that is, as an adaptive process that
improves over time (Greve and Staudinger, 2006; Leipold and Greve, 2009). As a result, resil-
ience accrues, grows, expands, develops and changes. Organizations hold it in store, as it were,
until it is drawn upon or activated in a crisis (Sutcliffe and Christianson, 2012; Powley, 2009).
On the other hand, organizations facing crisis, major change or disruption invariably focus
outward. Organizations must remain committed to clients, customers or the public, and
move quickly to restore business operations, public trust or vital services. In this case, latent
resources are directed, almost as an inflammatory response, toward those caught in crisis. In
the moment of crisis where business operations temporarily halt, resources held in reserve
are activated to enable resilient responses (Powley, 2009). But rather than being reactive,
the response externally is purposeful and proactive, even though information and the way
forward may seem unclear. For example, in cases where crisis disrupts strategic partnerships
or business operations, key clients and specific customers – those who may provide short and
long-term benefit to the organization – receive support and focused attention (Powley, 2013).
Resilience in this sense is generally referred to as “business continuity” and deals specifically
with the issue of risk management, mitigation, and attending to vulnerabilities.

ORGANIZATIONAL CULTURE TYPES

What is notable about the resulting four quadrants in the Competing Values Framework is that
they represent opposite or competing assumptions of performance, relationship, outcomes or
effectiveness. Each continuum highlights key performance criteria that are opposite from the
performance criteria on the other end of the continuum – that is, flexibility versus stability,
internal focus versus external focus. The dimensions, therefore, produce quadrants that are
also contradictory or competing on the diagonal. The upper left quadrant, for example, iden-
tifies performance criteria that emphasize an internal, organic focus, whereas the lower right
quadrant identifies performance criteria that emphasize external, control focus. Similarly, the
upper right quadrant identifies performance criteria that emphasize external, organic focus
whereas the lower left quadrant emphasizes internal, control performance criteria. These com-
peting or opposite elements in each quadrant give rise to one of the most important features of
the competing values framework, the presence and necessity of paradox.
 Resilience and culture 265

Each of the four quadrants has been given a label in order to characterize its most notable
characteristics for accounting for performance. The original formulation of the Competing
Values Framework used terms derived from the scholarly literature in organizational studies
to define each quadrant: Clan (upper left), Adhocracy (upper right), Market (lower right),
and Hierarchy (lower left) (Cameron and Quinn, 2011). In communicating to practicing
leaders and managers, however, we have found it helpful to substitute action verbs as labels
which can cue leaders as to the kinds of activities that relate to performance in each quadrant:
Collaborate (upper left), Create (upper right), Compete (lower right), and Control (lower left).
The Competing Values Framework has become the most frequently used framework for
diagnosing and changing organizational culture (Cameron and Quinn, 2011). This is because
approximately 90 percent of all organizations worldwide are characterized by one or more of
these quadrants as their primary culture; that is, their corporate values, employee relations,
managerial philosophy, competitive strategy, and incentive systems are dominated by one or
more of the four quadrants. Hence, organizational culture has commonly become associated
with one of the four quadrants in the Competing Values Framework.

Resilience and the Culture Types

The two major dimensions of the framework produce two tensions – important tensions to
consider with respect to resilience. The first tension deals with the steady, persistent anchoring
of enduring values, processes and procedures over time where change is incremental versus
radical change, disruption and/or adaptation in the short term. One the one hand, a core organ-
izational identity is maintained and has longevity, while on the other hand, adaptation, emer-
gent change, crisis, new market conditions, new opportunities or leadership direction create
minor operational shifts or significant strategic moves. The second tension deals with the focus
on developing cohesive, tight-knit relationships versus producing short-term victories and
problem solutions. One emphasizes relationship building, places a high value on cohesion, and
has a long time horizon. The other is fast-paced with a focus on short-term wins and solutions,
and where value is measured in terms of immediate, tangible results.
Resilience in the Collaborate quadrant focuses on social and relational dynamics, with an
emphasis on fostering positive connections and enhancing interpersonal relations. Leaders
develop vision that centers on strengthening internal cohesion and positive relationships
within and between members of organizational units, teams, and functional groups. A resil-
ient Collaborate culture adds value by fostering positive energy networks, building connec-
tive capacity, and encouraging a commitment to the development of others. The resilient
Collaborative culture adopts a slower pace and works through positive relationships to create
a sustainable organization and long-term value. Organizational leaders might ask: Do we have
sufficiently cohesive internal relationships to work through our current challenge? Have we
developed our people so they are capable and ready to handle what may come? Are we patient
and committed to sustainable long-term (vs. short-term) results?
Resilience in the Compete quadrant focuses on meeting external stakeholder demands,
achieving targets and goals, and competitively moving the organization forward despite
setbacks. Time is a limited resource. To remain competitive amidst disruptions, organizations
do not have the luxury to stop operations to peer too deeply into a problem. Leaders are goal
focused, results-driven, and seek for optimal solutions quickly. Resilience in this quadrant
means that the organization overcomes barriers and obstacles, obtains the results it desires,
266 Research handbook on organizational resilience

and maintains a successful competitive position in the environment. Leaders understand the
competitive environment and provide strategies for obtaining results and overcoming resist-
ance. They ask: Do we have stakeholder support and healthy external relationships to manage
disruption? Which external stakeholders, clients or partnerships should we leverage first to
help us improve our competitive position? How will we keep continuity and focus on reaching
goals, objectives, profits and results despite current roadblocks?
Resilience in the Create quadrant emphasizes bricolage, improvisation and adaptation.
Organizational leaders recognize the instability of extreme situations and significant change,
and pay particular attention to managing complex dynamics. Leaders are concerned with
addressing ever-evolving and ever-changing conditions, all while managing the tension of
future potentialities, unintended effects, and vulnerabilities. The resilient Create culture must
operate at a faster pace to adjust to new, dynamic relationships and to address emerging chal-
lenges. Organizational leaders in the Create culture manage the tension between immediate
challenges and future vulnerability. They ask: Do we have the resources to enable us to take
risks and manage a messy future? Do we have the capacity and resources to meet unpredicta-
ble and emergent challenges? Do our leaders see current setbacks as opportunities to change
the status quo, to experiment with new possibilities, and to convert current challenges into
future strengths?
Resilience in the Control quadrant is about maintaining stability, following policies
and procedures, and using established processes, practices and routines to maintain order
and regularity when faced with disruption. The resilient Control culture is deliberate and
intentional, where leaders take time to ensure proper adherence to rules and regulations and
execute procedures according to policies and standard operating guidelines. Organizational
leaders value process as a means to work through setbacks and maintain permanence. They
ask: Do we have the right policies and procedures that will help us effectively work through
our challenges? How can we improve our management control systems so that we can better
manage disruption? To what extent have we developed backup systems to ensure continuity?
What incremental steps will be most effective at helping to restore processes? What should we
measure and control to ensure stability and continuity?

KEY COMPONENTS OF ORGANIZATIONAL RESILIENCE

All culture types are important, and empirical research confirms that organizations should
develop at least average competency in each (Cameron and Quinn, 2011). Four key compo-
nents of organizational resilience are operative in each quadrant to help activate resilience.
Organizations need to have vision and convert opportunities into strengths (Create culture),
but organizations also need process and structure to ensure there is a systematic approach to
achieving desired outcomes (Control culture). Thus, leadership emphasizes established rou-
tines and practices to help employees focus on higher purpose and vision, and organizational
learning emphasizes the essential role of learning from failures or missed opportunities.
Moreover, organizations need to focus on cohesive interpersonal relationships, thus devel-
oping the connective capacity of functional units, groups and teams (Collaborate culture),
while simultaneously attending to external relationships and competitive strategies in order
to develop solutions to challenges with the goal to maintain productivity (Compete culture).
As such, mutual support underlines the relationships necessary to move forward with confi-
 Resilience and culture 267

dence, and recovery from setbacks means being able to return to a state of order and business
continuity.

Leadership

Leadership is a critical aspect of organizational resilience because engaged leaders provide

purpose, promote values of learning and efficacy, and build teams and units that strengthen
cohesion. Leadership is arguably one of the most deterministic factors of the success or failure
of organizations (Pearman, 2002). Resilient leaders provide purpose, guidance and motivation,
and direct the allocation of key resources to accomplish the goals of the organization while
simultaneously limiting dysfunction and promoting organizational values, learning, growth
and efficacy (Altman-Dautoff, 2001; Lengnick-Hall et al., 2011; Sutcliffe and Vogus, 2003).
Leaders also skillfully build teams that can handle adversity without a drop in performance
through training, education and experience, and provide flexible/adaptable responses in
crisis situations (Altman-Dautoff, 2001; Pérez-Sales et al. 2005; Sutcliffe and Vogus, 2003).
According to Pearman (2002), a study of 937 articles published in major journals from 1985
to 2000 cited relationship and team building as paramount to the success of organizations. The
data from the research also cited the lack of relationship and team building by leaders as the
largest indicator of organizational failure.
This underscores the importance of leaders in building teams and developing relation-
ships with subordinates that strengthens unit cohesion and builds trust between leaders
and subordinates. Leadership improves the resilience and efficacy of organizations while
simultaneously contributing to their overall success by binding all resilience factors together
(adequate resources, organizational learning, flexibility/adaptability, mutual support, and goal
orientation).

Mutual Support

Mutual support represents the extent to which organization members are supportive of one
another during trying times and that they have social support mechanisms in place. A key to
mutual support is social connections in organizations (Dutton and Ragins, 2007). The restora-
tion of connections has the potential to enable resilience of social units (Olekalns et al., 2020).
When dealing with hurt or pain, individuals tend to turn toward each other in a supportive and
caring manner indicative of high degrees of social support (Fazio and Fazio, 2005; Barton and
Kahn, 2019; Kahn et al., 2013; 2018).
Research on communities and social groups in difficult experiences suggests that positive
relationships in communities are necessary to ensure their viability (Ayalon, 1998; Blatt and
Camden, 2007; McGinn, 2007). Scholars studying effects of war on families and communities
agree that social intervention and collective support, either from those within the community
or external agencies, make an important difference in handling challenges (see Ayalon, 1998;
Jareg, 1995; Lumsden, 1997; Terr, 1991). Blatt and Camden (2007) studied temporary workers
and found that their workplace affiliation derived primarily from positive relationships with
other temporaries. Through swift “positive in-the-moment connections,” they created a sense
of community. Likewise, McGinn’s (2007) analysis of San Pedro dock workers suggests that
positive communities, based on networks of supportive relationships, serve as one indicator of
membership and belonging which enable resilience.
268 Research handbook on organizational resilience

Organizational Learning

Organizational learning focuses on increasing the cumulative knowledge, skills, capabilities

and efficacy of an organization to accomplish goals in adverse and challenging environments
(Sutcliffe and Vogus, 2003). For example, in military units this entails battle drills and
occupational training necessary to be efficient and effective in their operational environment.
However, for military units it must also entail the collective knowledge, experience, and
coping mechanisms necessary to deal with adverse situations and promote resilience and
positive functioning under arduous conditions.
Organizational learning builds resilience by increasing an organization’s capabilities and
competencies to deal with adversity, while also promoting growth, improving efficacy, and
strengthening the capability of the unit and its members in positively dealing with future
adverse environments or challenges (Edmondson, 1999). To do so properly, the organiza-
tional learning process must include mechanisms to learn collectively from mistakes (through
lessons learned) and adopt a developmental or lifelong learning perspective where each
challenge successfully faced adds to the units’ collective ability to face future challenges.
Moreover, organizational resilience is founded on learning processes: assessing loss, making
sense of disruption, distilling lessons learned, and integrating new understandings into current
and future practice. A more nuanced view may be at the level of routines organizations use to
accomplish individual and group tasks. Embedded in those routines are the seeds for assess-
ment, making sense, and distilling knowledge. Kayes (2015) draws on learning theory from
Dewey and learning styles by Kolb to articulate learning routines that enable resilience.

Recovery from Setbacks

Recovery is a process to repair and return to normalcy (Haas et al., 1977; LaPlante, 1988;
Petterson, 1999; Sonnentag et al., 2012; Lilius, 2012). In terms of level of analysis, organ-
izational or community recovery is a process to restore system functioning (Mitchell, 1996)
whereas psychological recovery includes cognitive processes to manage difficult work expe-
riences. Recovery may positively affect changes in positive states such as well-being, job
performance, or organizational citizenship behaviors, and recovery involves restoring what
was once lost and then resuming a previous state (Sonnentag et al., 2012).
Resilient organizations are those that improvise, and provide flexible and adaptive respon-
sive to adverse situations. Enabled by concerted leadership and through organizational
learning, an organizational unit is able to learn from past experiences, remain flexible, adapt
to changes in their operational environment, and accomplish their goals with minimal dysfunc-
tion without wasting the unit’s finite resources. According to Altman-Dautoff (2001), organ-
izations that display “flexibility in dealing with uncertainty” reduce organizational stress by
applying approaches to problem solving that allow them to confront, deal with, and overcome
obstacles “without being overwhelmed by them” (p. 26).

RESOURCES AND MECHANISMS OF RESILIENCE

Resilience in an organizational sense involves two primary sets of resources: strategic and
relational (Gittell et al., 2006). Strategic resources are those things that enable an organi-
 Resilience and culture 269

zation to continue to function and maintain operations despite any setback. These kinds of
resources are based on (a) ways an organization attempts to control challenging circumstances
through existing structures and procedures, and (b) established methods and processes to
create, improvise, learn and innovate in order to become stronger in times of change or crisis.
Resources might include clear strategic vision and goals, financial reserves, standard operating
procedures and logistical redundancies, insurance policies, integrated systems and structures,
adaptive technology, modular approaches to work processes, stable yet flexible management,
and so forth.
Relational resources have their foundation in the connective capacity of internal and external
relationships that help activate resilience (Powley, 2009; Kahn et al. 2013; 2018). These kinds
of resources are based on (a) ways an organization builds and develops positive, collaborative
relationships within and between work groups, teams, departments, and across functional
boundaries, and (b) partnerships with government and private sector; and customers, supplies
or competitors who may provide needed help from outside when times are tough. Resources
might include adaptable human resource and employment policies, social and intellectual
capital, high performance teams, sufficient manpower levels, engagement and results-oriented
management, positive social dynamics and cohesiveness including high quality connections
among employees as well as external partners, and so on.
When facing setbacks, adversity and trials, individuals and organizations alike will be
more apt to demonstrate resilience if they draw on strategic and relational resources and
apply a variety of different mechanisms. The following six essential resources, both strategic
and relational, serve as key mechanisms to activate resilience. The first two – policy and
instruction, and anticipatory images – are unique to specific culture types in the Competing
Values Framework. The other four – identity, positive relationships, positive affirmation, and
vulnerabilities – have application to any of the four organization culture types.

Policy and Instruction

A core feature of the Control quadrant is the set of organizational policies and instruction.
Established systems with clear procedures and processes represent resources to which organ-
ization members can turn when facing challenges. Having instructions, standard operating
procedures, safety manuals and guidelines within reach as ready sources of information and
even committed to a leader’s working memory, they become trusted companions and experts
who possess knowledge, insight and a framework for action. A key is to hold fast to rather than
jettison rule books and policy manuals as they provide key understanding of challenges of past
organization members and how they handled, weathered or withstood previous challenges.

Anticipatory Images

Challenges or setbacks often cloud possibility, whereas an anticipatory image or clear vision
of what is possible orients future choices and actions. A future-oriented vision is an important
aspect of the Create quadrant. The words used to describe and questions asked about the future
are fateful. Holding a hopeful image of effective performance – an organization restored to
order and effective operations – organization members live and function in that new state.
A hopeful image is a resource to maintain perspective when times are difficult; moreover,
having hope in a possible future enables organization members to maintain perspective and
270 Research handbook on organizational resilience

to put into context current challenges. Fundamentally, an anticipatory image is about seeing
alternatives rather than staying wedded to a narrow or myopic view that limits potential inno-
vations and possibilities.

Identity

Knowing the core identity, that is, organizational values and principles, facilitates positive
action in accordance with roles and responsibilities. Likewise, understanding the leader’s and
other organization members’ identity and potential enables organization members to move
through challenges more easily and with confidence. Identification with an organization
and its values, and what it represents, guides actions and where leaders might situate effort.
Identity may be based on strong teams and developing employees (a feature of a Collaborate
quadrant), or identity may be focused on meeting customer demand and driving for results (as
in a Compete quadrant). Identity may be based on longevity, consistency and long-standing
policies and procedures that have worked in the past (as in the Control quadrant), or identity
may be based on a capacity for agile and flexible options (as in the Create quadrant).

Positive Relationships

Drawing from the concept of mutual support, relationships are important resources to enable
individual and organizational ability to work through difficulty. As organizations focus on
developing high quality relationships, those social connections become an added resource to
increase capacity to face challenges. They can help make sense of setbacks and challenges, and
they can provide emotional buoyancy and promote the sense that organization members can
succeed. Moreover, supportive personal and professional social networks provide perspective
and context to be able to see challenges, others, or the current situation in different ways.
Positive relationships are crucial for each of the culture quadrants, though perhaps readily
identifiable in the Collaborate and Compete quadrants. The criteria for success are based on
the quality of either internal or external relationships.

Positive Affirmation

To positively affirm competence and expertise is a principle of action, in that by positively

affirming effort and accomplishments, the probability that outcomes will be achieved is mark-
edly increased. Positive affirmations represent an encouraging, optimistic orientation both for
individual employees and organizations. Resilience increases by practicing positive affirma-
tions and acting in the direction of desired anticipatory images. Sometimes actions are taken
without knowing the immediate outcome or way forward, but nonetheless, organizational
leaders trust that by acting according to what is known (e.g., principles, knowledge, policy
or past experience), the outcome will be better than what could have been expected. Again,
positive affirmation is important for each quadrant. Positive affirmation in the Collaborate
quadrant builds confidence and optimism in the power of the collective. Positive affirmation
in the Compete quadrant enhances the organization’s confidence to pursue strategies that
produce fast results and goal achievement. Positive affirmation in the Create quadrant helps
build confidence to move toward an often unknown but desired future. Positive affirmation in
the Control quadrant signals confidence in the current operating guidelines and policies.
 Resilience and culture 271

Vulnerability

Resilience also requires an awareness and acknowledgment of weaknesses and fallibility.

Such recognition keeps in the forefront the potential of facing major disruption or even death,
and then coming to terms with those possibilities. That is, resilience involves full under-
standing of vulnerabilities – a humble stance toward weaknesses – in order to guard against
vulnerabilities and determine ways to mitigate potential challenges or risks. All quadrants have
a role to play in addressing vulnerability. Facing up to potential (or inevitable) setbacks means
paying attention to the internal and external environmental dynamics, vigilantly scanning for
potential challenges or weaknesses. Organizational leaders must know the status of systems
and processes to ensure early detection or warning signs. They must have an eye toward the
potential for breakdown. Awareness of individual strengths and weakness, and understanding
system limitations and fallibilities, affords organizations and their leaders the wherewithal to
manage potential deviations.

IMPLICATIONS FOR PRACTICE

The effectiveness of resilience mechanisms is based on the extent to which organizations

strengthen, develop and nurture them. A healthy profile of each culture type will go a long
way toward developing an organization’s capacity and resources for resilience. It is important
to draw on each culture type based on the needs or situation or conditions in the internal and
external environments. At times, organizational leaders will want to emphasize process, or
they will want to work quickly to solve a problem. At other times, organizational leaders
will need to spend more resources and time to develop, strengthen and build interpersonal
relationships so that the work of resilience can be sustained over time. In other circumstances
leaders will need to improvise and adapt to the changing external conditions or take advantage
of setbacks in order to maintain resilience.
The Competing Values Framework is an intuitive way to guide approaches to enhancing
resilience depending on the type of culture that exists in the organization. The model of organ-
izational culture and the mechanisms we have proposed to enhance resilience in each different
culture type should supplant particularistic and single dimension models of resilience. Using
the framework will broaden the repertoire of leaders and managers as they address specific
strategic questions within each quadrant. Enhancing the resilience of organizations can be
much more effective if a broader array of strategies is considered. What may be effective in
fostering resilience in one type of organization – say, a stable, efficient, predictable enterprise
– may not be effective in fostering resilience in another kind of organization – say, an entre-
preneurial, fast-paced start-up. This chapter has argued for a more sophisticated and expansive
approach to the enhancement of resilience in organizations.

IMPLICATIONS FOR RESEARCH

The literature on organizational resilience has traditionally focused primarily on a rather narrow
set of strategies and prescriptions, borrowed primarily from analogs at the psychological level
of analysis. The concept of resilience, as well as the prescriptions whereby organizations can
272 Research handbook on organizational resilience

become more resilient – despite a long history of scholarship – continue to be under-developed

and somewhat ambiguous. Resilience is often studied as an individual trait or state, or it is
operationalized as risk management and business continuity. Linking organizational resilience
and organizational culture is one way to broaden both the definition and the approaches to
resilience that have not yet been sufficiently investigated. Whereas this connection appears
at first to be intuitive, future development and the measurement of organizational resilience
promises to be an important step forward in the measurement of organizational resilience.
An extensive history of research based on the Competing Values Framework over more
than three decades (Cameron and Quinn, 2011) has produced a variety of insights, among the
most important being the commonality in a variety of organizational dynamics – from finan-
cial strategy and investment approaches to organizational culture and leadership competencies
– that lead to increased effectiveness. In the case of organizational resilience, the credibility
and validity of the Competing Values Framework provides the basis to understand more
thoroughly the dynamic, integrative and often paradoxical nature of resilience. An important
next step in resilience research would be to investigate the efficacy of the competing resilience
dynamics outlined in this chapter. Which strategies are most effective in what circumstances
and cultures? What are the caveats and contingencies that might be important to consider?
What differences occur not only in different types of organizational culture but in different
levels of analysis such as in subunits, teams and individual leaders, in different industry
sectors, and in mixtures of different leadership competencies?

CONCLUSION
This chapter has offered a broader and more sophisticated approach to resilience in organ-
izations. It proposes that organizational culture – among other important factors – can help
leaders identify the most effective ways to enhance the resilience of their organizations.
Whereas resilience has been approached and defined relatively narrowly in the past, this
chapter should open new possibilities both for researchers and for leaders of organizations as
they approach the challenge of understanding and enhancing organizational resilience.

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19. Interpreting the nightmare of Fukushima’s
superintendent: sensemaking in extreme
situations
Sébastien Travadel and Franck Guarnieri

Following a “reality shock” (Louis, 1980), an individual may suddenly be unable to act,
blindsided by an event that is beyond their frame of reference (Lagadec, 2013). Such a sit-
uation may be called “un-ness” (Maitlis and Sonenshein, 2010): unexpected, unscheduled,
unprecedented, and almost unmanageable. Weick (1985; 1993) coined the term “cosmology
episode” to qualify an overwhelming event in an organizational context. Cosmology refers to
a comprehensive system of thought that gives meaning to the otherwise chaotic experience of
time, space, change and contingency (Douglas, 1999; Weick, 1993). Given a particular cos-
mology, people act in everyday life as if events cohere in time and space, and change unfolds
in an orderly manner. Thus, a “cosmology episode” occurs when people suddenly feel that
the universe is no longer an orderly system, and rationality, as conveyed by organizational
features, loses its relevance.
In this chapter we investigate through a phenomenological lens how individuals in an organ-
izational context negotiate a disruptive threat, face death, make sense of the impending danger
and, ultimately, prevent a catastrophic situation from unfolding. In particular, we focus on how
individuals keep giving meaning to the flow of brute experience, an ability that we attribute
to resilience. Thus, we do not focus on the performance of action as such, as if it would be an
objective in itself to perform a core set of tasks within an organization; nor on the result of the
process of sensemaking; rather, we consider the process of sense-in-the-making as the main
driver of resilience. From this on-going activity, anchored in action, a positive outcome might
occur – or not. But for certain, when this process is impaired, so is action.
While it has been suggested that a temporary increase in ambiguity fosters sensemaking
process (Weick, 2015; Weick and Sutcliffe, 2007), a radical change will more likely cause
it to disintegrate, along with collective action (Weick, 1993). Research has suggested that
individuals (Cunha et al., 2015; Fischer, 1994; Maitlis, 2009; Schuetz, 1944) or even groups of
strangers (Powley, 2009; Quinn and Worline, 2008) can find a way to cope with an event that
has shattered their value system. However, there is a lack of theory concerning how sense is
remade in an organizational context of action, as most research into sensemaking under duress
has either focused on less catastrophic events (Bechky and Okhuysen, 2011; Colville et al.,
2012; Faraj and Yan Xiao, 2006) or aimed at finding ways to avoid this breakpoint, notably by
encouraging sensemakers to be mindful of ongoing changes (Gulati et al., 2014; Weick, 1988;
Weick and Sutcliffe, 2007). From this perspective, resilience is basically seen as the ability
to ensure a “minimalistic” set of core functions that are linked to the organization’s identity.
However, with a catastrophic event, actions and goals might need to be reinvented.
To address this gap, we use the case of the accident at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power
plant. On 11 March 2011, an earthquake and a tsunami of unprecedented magnitude hit the

275
276 Research handbook on organizational resilience

facility. After they lost control of the machines, operators were caught in a “nightmare for sen-
semaking” (Weick, 2010). We focus on the experience of Masao Yoshida, the plant’s superin-
tendent. In a radically new situation, far beyond any safety procedures, he managed his teams
in an incredibly harsh environment, and it is acknowledged that their action made it possible
to avert an even greater catastrophe (ICANPS, 2012; INPO, 2011; NAIIC, 2012; NRC, 2014).
We study how the manager addresses the threat posed by quasi-supernatural forces to guide
collective action in a completely new way: how does he make sense of his situation in order to
take decisions and act in a world that, a priori, is beyond his control?
Our main finding is the identification of five “situation types” of sensemaking which corre-
spond to different ways the crisis manager answered the evolution of events through specific
relationships to materiality, his care for the others and the kind of temporality into which he
anchored his action.

THEORETICAL BACKGROUND

The theoretical backdrop of our study is the extensive literature on sensemaking in highly
surprising environments (Holt and Cornelissen, 2014; Quinn and Worline, 2008; Schwartz,
1987; Weick, 1988; 1993; 2010; Weick and Sutcliffe, 2007; Whiteman and Cooper, 2011). It
is classically considered that sensemaking involves contextualizing a particular cue or expe-
rience in the context of a learned frame, narrative or category, which produces and enables
interpretation (Maitlis and Christianson, 2014, p. 67; Weick, 1995); thus, sensemaking starts
with a frame, a cue, and a connection (Weick, 1995). Communication is at the core of this
model of sensemaking (Weick, 1995; Weick et al., 2005), restraining the process to the “cool
and cognitive” (Weick, 2010, p. 545) dimensions of meaning-making (Magala, 1997). As
a result, most studies of sensemaking under duress focus on the breakdown of the connection
(Maitlis, 2009; Weick, 1993), or the commitment to an inadequate framing (Cornelissen et al.,
2014; Weick, 1988; 1993; Whiteman and Cooper, 2011). The reduction of sensemaking to
a controllable sequence of stages and itemized features might “smooth out” important nuances
of the way individuals actually order their universe into an ordered set of signs.

“Raw” Sensemaking

According to Holt and Cornelissen (2014), drawing on Heidegger’s phenomenology, sen-

semaking theory is insufficiently “raw” because the world is conceived as a collection of
ready-to-hand things (for instance, a “10 o’clock fire” in the Mann Gulch case). It mostly con-
cerns how people ask what things are, and the challenge for the sensemaker is then to maintain
or recover this readiness-to-hand within a project; however, this does not account for situations
where the world is no more at the disposal of humans.
We therefore acknowledge that the world may appear to the sensemaker as a source of
events that happen without being calculable or controllable. Sensemaking is then the activity
through which we interact with the world in such a way that we transform (enact) it into
a place of salience and value; it is interactional, an expression of human agentivity, and has
to be examined from the sensemaker’s perspective (Sandberg and Tsoukas, 2015; Thompson
and Stapleton, 2009). The commitment of the individual to the world, to others, and to things
is what Heidegger calls his “Being-in-the-World” (Heidegger, 1958; 1996). The out-of-self
 Sensemaking in extreme situations 277

projection that he uses to “order” the world into a place filled with expectations and valences
constitutes the “meaning,” the orientation of the project from which things can be envisaged
and anticipated as a set of possibilities, usages and utilities (Heidegger, 1996).
At a day-to-day level, this “Being-in-the-World” is not made conscious as the subject is
scattered across requirements and institutional frameworks: the “presence-at-hand” of things
(Heidegger, 1996). It becomes manifest through the moments when individuals experience
a discrepancy between organized life or surrounding events, and their temporal sense of exist-
ence (Holt and Cornelissen, 2014, p. 533). Acute and sudden danger – as a surge of chaos in
the cosmos – brings to the fore our relation to the world as such (Heidegger, 1996).
According to Heidegger (1996), the subject’s sense of “Being-in-the-World” translates, on
the one hand, into manifestations of their “preoccupation” relative to things and their usage,
things appearing through their obstruction, absence, or even imposition on the subject (or their
usefulness and expectations of their performance in the context of being present-at-hand); on
the other hand, it also translates as the “concern” or “solicitude” that the subject has for others
(being on their side, against them, absent, etc.). Heidegger finds the origin of these feelings in
“anxiety,” which he distinguishes from “fear.” Anxiety does not relate directly to any object,
but to the discomfort felt by the subject in a situation, whereas fear manifests itself when
anxiety crystallizes around objects in the world (Heidegger, 1996). Heidegger concludes that
the subject manifests himself primarily as “care.”
Accordingly, we consider that one of the sensemaking dimensions to be explored is the
preoccupation with materiality. Research on sensemaking has shown the role of materiality as
a “cue” for the framing process (Cornelissen et al., 2014; Weick, 1988; Whiteman and Cooper,
2011). Here, we are more specifically interested in the transformation of the relations of the
sensemaker to the world, triggered by breakdowns when things no longer work, are missing,
or block the sensemaker’s movements and thoughts (Holt and Cornelissen, 2014).
As a corollary, organizations’ interpretations of activities and goals may be at odds with
a sense of life “as something we alone experience and that is finite, so that our experiences
take on a unique importance” (Holt and Cornelissen, 2014, p. 532). Through such experience,
organizations and relationships with others become vacuous and pointless, and this feeling of
out-of-jointness may trigger a sensemaking process in the form of a questioning of an individ-
ual’s Being-in-the-World.

Temporality and Sensemaking in the Face of Indeterminacy

Moreover, according to Heidegger (1996), manifestations of “care” reveal the experience of

the time of the subject as the horizon of meaning. As a constituent of the human experience of
making sense, it cannot be abstracted away (Langley and Tsoukas, 2010). Hernes and Maitlis
(2010), drawing on Heidegger’s philosophy, note that actors operate “in time” and that they
have to “create their own temporality as a coming together of past, present, and future” (p. 31).
However, this temporality of sensemaking remains little studied (Costanzo and MacKay,
2008; Langley and Tsoukas, 2010; Sandberg and Tsoukas, 2015).
What happens when the manager must face the possibility of external events that are
beyond their power to control? Recent developments in cognitive science suggest that, in the
face of highly surprising or dangerous circumstances, the cognitive processes at play inte-
grate “retrospective–prospective sensemaking” through counterfactual reasoning (Costanzo
and MacKay, 2008). Counterfactual thinking is “a process in which the factual sequence of
278 Research handbook on organizational resilience

events leading to the outcome takes on counterfactual values through a systematic process of
mutating the prior events and simulating a new outcome” (Gavanski and Wells, 1989, p. 315).
A variety of “possible worlds” can be envisaged, which give meaning to relations such as “if
c were to occur e would occur; and if c were not to occur e would not occur” (Menzies, 2001).
Thus at least two notions of temporality need to be distinguished, depending on the
“strength” attributed to the link between the present (or past) and future. Dupuy (1992; 2013;
2014) designated “projected time” as the experience of time in which a future event is seen
in the present as a prophecy; this contrasts with “occurring time,” which corresponds to the
arrow of time and a more malleable view of the link between a present state and a future state
that is only probable. Dupuy showed that each of these temporalities is associated with their
own rationality: counterfactual reasoning in projected time; and causal (forward) reasoning in
occurring time.
Counterfactual reasoning and the experience of projected time concern the search, in the
present, for signs of a future event by considering its very likelihood (Dupuy, 1992). It is this
deterministic link that justifies, by counterfactual reasoning, an agent’s attempt to “modify”
their present state in order to outwit the prophecy; thus, in projected time, the future can cause
the present. This assertion can be compared to the position of Heidegger, who argues that the
individual becomes conscious of their own relation to the world through the consciousness
of their death as an undeniable certainty that is, at the same time, completely indeterminate.
The awareness of “Being-in-the-World” presents itself as a possibility that “arises from the
future” (Heidegger, 1996, p. 299). Projected time is thus the one in which moral judgments
derive their sense (Dupuy, 2004, 2013), and from which actors can counterfactually evaluate
the ethical consequences of their potential action or inaction.
This experience of projected time and its link with counterfactual reasoning is highlighted
in ethnological research (Evans-Pritchard, 1937). In a similar vein, Wiebe (2010), studying
managers responsible for implementing change noted that those who “hit a wall” – those who
are working in a new era in which the old, iterative elements no longer apply – project into the
present a vision of the future that is seen as “already there,” in order that all that needs to be
done is “to make it so” by adjusting routines, organizations and so forth.
At this point, our aim can be rephrased as follows: we intend to describe how Yoshida made
sense of his being with others and things, in order to take action in a situation that was so far
beyond his control, and that of his organization, that it may potentially have destroyed them.

CASE STUDY AND METHODS

On 11 March 2011 an earthquake and a tsunami struck northeast Japan. Both were of an
unprecedented magnitude and went far beyond any safety margins or emergency management
plans implemented at the Fukushima nuclear power plant. Not only was there considerable
damage on a regional scale, the two events destroyed all sources of electrical power. The plant
was plunged into darkness and the control room instrumentation became unusable. Operators
lacked their usual decision-making supports, such as monitoring, measuring and communi-
cations equipment. Information exchange became extremely difficult, and external technical
support and manpower were very limited during the first week. In such conditions, it was
difficult for the operators to anticipate the behaviors of the reactors and to find any form or
order in their situation; the case clearly qualifies as a “cosmology episode.”
 Sensemaking in extreme situations 279

The crisis reached its climax on 15 March 2011. After this date, operators were able to
continuously cool the reactors until the nuclear reaction was under control. During the crisis
period, they stayed onsite in extremely precarious conditions, and many were irradiated. The
scenario resembled a battlefield, with extreme temperatures, high levels of radioactivity, after-
shocks, floods and piles of debris. In several cases, the plant’s superintendent, Masao Yoshida,
had to order his staff to undertake life-threatening actions that required incredible commitment.
Despite the highly dangerous situation, these intense activities extended over several days, and
raise questions about Yoshida’s “being-in-the-World,” in other words, his interaction with
others and things, and how they changed as the crisis unfolded. This being-in-the-World nec-
essarily implies a making of sense (Heidegger, 1996; Holt and Cornelissen, 2014; Sandberg
and Tsoukas, 2015; Thompson and Stapleton, 2009).
Moreover, it is recognized that the commitment of the actors at the site made it possible to
avoid an even greater catastrophe (ICANPS, 2012; INPO, 2011; NAIIC, 2012; NRC, 2014).
The analysis of Yoshida’s experience therefore offers a direct perspective on how he made
sense of the situation to direct effective action despite the many setbacks. By contrast, case
studies of failure (Cornelissen et al., 2014; Weick, 1988; 1993) can only infer hypotheses
about what could have prevented a failed action.

Yoshida’s Testimony

Although an impressive amount of information has been made public about the Fukushima
accident, there are few detailed accounts of the crisis as it unfolded at the site.
However, public pressure led to the publication of Yoshida’s testimony to the commission
appointed by the Japanese government (ICANPS, 2012). This testimony takes the form of
a semistructured interview lasting over 28 hours, and its transcription covers more than 400
pages. Yoshida was able to speak freely to the commission and his testimony is astonishingly
vivid. He remained at his post in the crisis room throughout the entire period, and his account
provides the reader with a unique insight into the management of the accident. He delivers
a detailed account of how he struggled to make sense of his decisions and actions. Although in
general he related events in chronological order, Yoshida was invited to share his own views,
an opportunity that he was quick to grasp. His detailed answers constitute short stories that
unfolded over the course of the hearing. His seemingly tangential yet often candid responses
expand the perspective to include human, social and political considerations, linked together
by descriptions of material aspects of managing the crisis. He therefore introduced an element
of drama, as he revealed his subjectivity through his choice of words, turns of phrase, and
irony.
Yoshida’s subjective account was supplemented by an analysis of official reports (ICANPS,
2012; INPO, 2011; NAIIC, 2012; NRC, 2014; NEA, 2013). These objective sources of data
include post-accident simulations, numerous hearings, and reports on the state of the plant’s
reactors. However, in the reports the subjective dimension is largely absent. We also evaluated
several other accounts provided by journalists (Kadota et al., 2014; The Japan Times, 2014) in
order to broaden our understanding of events.
In addition, this study is part of a broader research program on the Fukushima accident,
which led us to interview more than 30 major actors of the crisis, including the Japanese prime
minister and the chief operators of reactors 1 and 2 at the time of the event. We also visited the
site and the surrounding areas.
280 Research handbook on organizational resilience

Yoshida was the main crisis manager regarding technical aspects in the plant, and his testi-
mony is the most vivid account of events; it therefore forms the basis of the present study. We
take it as a rich context to get new theoretical insights into sensemaking.

Methods

We focus our analysis on the situation at the site during the “critical” period (Stein, 2004),
beginning with the earthquake on 11 March and extending to 15 March 2011. We carried out
what could be called a “revisited” analytic induction (Katz, 1983, p. 130; Riessman, 2002;
Wiebe, 2010). To this aim, we created two subsamples of data for fine-grained analysis. The
first was a key segment of the testimony, through which Yoshida made sense of a turning
point of the accident management sequence: his lie to the Tokyo Electric Power Company
(TEPCO)’s headquarters and the Prime Minister’s Residence. After more than 24 hours of
desperate operations, water reserves were exhausted, and Yoshida decided to inject seawater
to keep cooling the reactors. However, the Prime Minister Naoto Kan expressed doubts about
the consequences of such operation, and managers at TEPCO’s headquarter asked Yoshida
to postpone it, to give them time to answer Kan’s concerns. Yoshida publicly pretended to
consent, but secretly asked operators on site to proceed with seawater injection. In a long
passage of his testimony, Yoshida offers the unique description of this intense moment in the
management of the crisis, a moment that marks his emancipation from his interlocutors.
We conducted a narrative analysis of this sequence, based on Labov’s (2013; Labov and
Waletzky, 1966) structural analysis principles. This step provides interesting insight into the
processes at play in such circumstances, and facilitates the understanding of the remainder of
the narrative (Gephart et al., 2010; Wiebe, 2010).
The second subset concerns all of the passages related to decision making, the justification
for action, or expressions of concern, relevant to our theoretical framework (preoccupation for
things, solicitude for others, cues regarding the temporality of sensemaking). These elements
were organized chronologically in order to capture the evolution of Yoshida’s sensemaking
process in the light of unfolding events, while at the same time referring to the original data in
order to contextualize them. This temporal bracketing strategy provided comparative units of
analysis (Langley, 1999). This was followed by an iterative process, beginning with the insight
gained in the first step and then looking for negative cases (evidence contradicting the current
explanation), which must be transformed into a confirming case by revising the definition of
either the explaining or explained phenomenon (Katz, 1983, p. 130). For each negative case
(data segment), an expansion analysis was performed in order to interpret the data (Gephart et
al., 2010). The analysis describes how Yoshida engaged with others and things “in time,” and
how these dimensions are reflected in the data segments.
After examining and reexamining the narrative, we developed five sensemaking situation
types (Table 19.1). We then created a narrative of each situation from Yoshida’s account,1
thereby identifying their specific characteristics in terms of: (1) their temporality; (2) the
preoccupation with things; and (3) the concerns for others.
 Sensemaking in extreme situations 281

SENSEMAKING IN EXTREME SITUATIONS

Context

Yoshida held various positions with TEPCO between 1979 and 2011. Notably, between 1991
and 1995, he was responsible for the maintenance of installations. He was director of the
Management of Nuclear Facilities department from 2007 to 2010. As such, he was in charge of
implementing the corrective measures in response to the earthquake that happened off Chuetsu
on 16 July 2007. He was also responsible for assessing the impact of tsunamis on the Daiichi
nuclear power plant, in view of the latest scientific developments regarding tsunami modeling.
He was appointed Fukushima’s superintendent on 28 June 2010.
On 11 March 2011, approximately 6400 people, including 750 TEPCO employees, were
onsite at the plant. Reactors 1, 2 and 3 were operating, while reactors 4, 5 and 6 were in
programmed shutdown. The core of reactor 4 was being discharged into its deactivation pool.
At 14:46 a magnitude 9 earthquake occurred. The emergency shutdown systems for reactors
1–3 were automatically activated and emergency diesel generators were activated. TEPCO
employees who had not been assigned to managing the reactors, and subcontractors who were
still onsite, took refuge in the anti-seismic building, which housed the crisis unit. This unit was
supervised by Masao Yoshida.
The highest waves (11.5–15.5m high) hit the coast at 15:37. The flood damaged pumps,
electrical panels, batteries and emergency diesel generators. Operators were plunged into dark-
ness, and lost all measuring, control and command instruments. The direct current (DC) supply
to reactor 3 was maintained. Reactor 6’s generator had also survived the flooding, and was
used alternately on reactors 5 and 6 to continue the cooling of their cores and storage pools.
Most machinery was destroyed, especially vehicles, and rubble was scattered all over the site.
The earthquake had exposed sewers and damaged roads and buildings, which made access
to the plant and the movement of workers difficult. In addition, the exchange of information
between the crisis unit, operational teams, and agents in the field was hampered by damage to
telecommunication facilities.
At 16:36, Yoshida informed the government of the situation, in accordance with the leg-
islation in force. The videoconference suite that connected the crisis room to the operator’s
headquarters in Tokyo constituted the main link to the outside.
Over the following four days, Yoshida would work with his teams to contain the reactor
meltdown. We identified five “situation types” that are seen throughout the crisis, each
with distinct sensemaking nuances. Table 19.1 summarizes the characteristics of each sit-
uation type, specifying the context and the drivers of Yoshida’s sensemaking process: in
Heideggerian terms, his “care,” which has its own temporality and translates into a preoccupa-
tion for things and concern for others, which we explain in more detail below. Each situation
type corresponds to a way the superintendent coped with uncertainty and the lack of resources
throughout the crisis, in order to keep making sense of operations that, otherwise, would seem
chaotic and irrational.
Type 1, 2 and 3 situations followed each other chronologically over the course of the first
day. Beginning on the evening of 11 March, a type 4 situation occurred. Subsequently, type 4
and 5 situations alternated as the crisis unfolded. Table 19.2 puts this succession in perspective
with the unfolding of events.
Table 19.1 Summary of situation types and their characteristics

Key Elements of Yoshida’s Engagement with

Situation Type Central Story Drivers of Yoshida’s Sensemaking Process Temporality
Things and Others
1. The expectation Enforce procedures, – Confrontation with the power of nature and – Control the state of reactors by applying – Impossible to anticipate the future, it is
despite concerns indetermination procedures suspended
– Doubts about the technical resources – Ensure the physical integrity of colleagues and – “Normalization” of the past by the
designed to control the situation assuage their workers technical characterization of events
– Impossible to share doubts in the confusion – The present is made a continuation of the
past via the application of procedures
2. Face a cosmology Situate action in – Uselessness of “presence-at-hand” – “Encounter” things to discover new ways to take – Projected time
episode projected time – Evidence of the impending catastrophe action – The future catastrophe made clear by its
– Exasperation with respect to “external actors” association, in terms of its characteristics,
who do not fully understand the situation with a “worrying” event in the past
3. Bricoleur Believe in possible – The discovery of potential ways to take – Recovery of “presence-at-hand” in “bricoleur” – The time horizon of an imminent
alternative to avoid an action mode catastrophe sets the tempo, the urgent need
inevitable disaster – Access to parameter measurements – Belief in the few pieces of positive information to act
282 Research handbook on organizational resilience

available, notably measurements that are consistent – Action is understood technically in

with previous frames of reference occurring time
– Problems in the field not understood by those
removed from the situation
4. Addressing radical Trust his own instinct – Radical indeterminacy of the world – Inaction is equivalent to chaos, catastrophe – Chaos as a temporality of indeterminate
indeterminacy – Difficulty in the encounter with things – Encounters with things are interpreted intuitively, succession
– Re-center on his own beliefs, his personal by analogy with recent experience – Intuition anchored in projected time
convictions – Proximity to the situation determines concern for
others, as a function of understanding difficulties
– Solitude of the decision-maker
5. Last-chance actions I thought I was going – Feeling an imminent catastrophe – Solitude when face to face with death – Projected time with death as the
to die – Oppressing obstruction of things – Action that suggests a “bet” immediate horizon
 Sensemaking in extreme situations 283

Table 19.2 Chronology of events and situation types

Situation Type
Date Event
(number, name)
11 March
1. The expectation
14:46 Earthquake
2. Facing a cosmology episode 15:37 Tsunami. Station blackout
3. Bricoleur 17:12 Examine methods to inject water with fire trucks
20:07 Fall in pressure in reactor 1 tank
23:50 Fall in dry chamber pressure (reactor 1), high level of radioactivity
4. Addressing radical indeterminacy 12 March
05:46 Start of freshwater injection into reactor 1
07:11 Visit of the prime minister
08:03 Order to manually vent reactor 1
5. Last-chance actions
14:54 End of preparation to inject sea water into reactor 1
15:36 Explosion of reactor 1 building
4. Addressing radical indeterminacy 19:04 Start of the injection of seawater into reactor 1
13 March
02:42 Shutdown emergency cooling system in reactor 3
5. Last-chance actions
05:00 Water level in reactor 3 falls below critical value
09:20 Start of seawater injection into reactor 3
14 March
4. Addressing radical indeterminacy 09:30 Increase in pressure in reactor 3; order to take shelter
10:30 Return to the field
11:01 Explosion of reactor 3
13:25 Shutdown emergency cooling system in reactor 2
5. Last-chance actions 16:30 Resume injection of seawater into reactor 3
23:00 Start of continuous seawater injection into reactor 2
4. Addressing radical indeterminacy
15 March
5. Last-chance actions. Yoshida’s order to 06:14 Explosion of the reactor 4 building; fall in pressure in reactor 2
evacuate

Situation Type 1: The Expectation: Enforce Procedures, Despite Concerns

This situation is observed after the earthquake and before the tsunami. It corresponds to doubt
felt by Yoshida, caused by tension between the experience of an earthquake that he describes
as “impressive” and the technical resources available to control the situation. On the one hand,
he was reassured that emergency equipment was triggered:

I arrived in the room and I knew that the automatic shutdown [of the reactors] had happened […]
following the earthquake. Knowing that [the reactors were] shut down was already a relief. If they
hadn’t stopped, we were headed directly for disaster. But for now, the reactors had shut down. Then
I received information that diesel generators had also automatically shut down. A second reason to
feel relieved. (p. 119, Vol. I)

On the other hand, he feels uncomfortable, which crystallizes into “very serious concerns”
about the effects of the retreat of the oncoming wave:

In the case of tsunamis, what makes us most afraid is the receding waves, more than the incoming
waves. Knowing that when the wave recedes there will be no more water, that, that’s scary […] we
didn’t know that such a big tsunami was on its way, but logically it was possible that a tsunami would
284 Research handbook on organizational resilience

follow the earthquake. In this case […] what we fear most is when the wave recedes and we no longer
have enough water to supply the [cooling] circuit. […] Obviously, I anticipated that we would have to
carry out maneuvers to inject this water through the emergency cooling system of the reactor’s core.
(p. 90, Vol. I)

Yoshida, however, cannot dwell on this question because:

the response to the tsunami, until it is here […] Anticipate the magnitude of a tsunami, whether we
can do something before the tsunami hits [...] What can be done at that time, there’s almost nothing,
well, actually nothing at all. (p. 101, Vol. I)

Temporality
The earthquake is “normalized” by the observation of the automatic shutdown of the reactors.
In this way, it is integrated into the continuity of a past characterized by the effectiveness of
the technology. The present is understood as an extension of the past by focusing on the appli-
cation of procedures. The future is put on hold, waiting for an event whose scale or effects are
impossible to assess.

Preoccupation with things

Furthermore, he internalizes his concerns, rather than sharing them with his colleagues.
Outwardly at least, he strives to fulfill his administrative functions of providing headquarters
with information and checking that the correct procedures have been applied to shut down the
reactors. He also endeavors to clear up the confusion in the crisis unit.

Concern for others

He shows great concern for his colleagues, which tends to mask or counterbalance his worries:

At that point, the most important thing was whether the men [were] really still alive. That was it. This
was what I really needed to know first. (p. 89, Vol. I)
Everyone had been bowled over by the earthquake. I do remember telling them that they had to regain
their composure. That’s what I told them. That they had to regain their composure, that they must not
panic, and that they had to proceed calmly with the check-lists. I also told them that there would be
aftershocks, and that they needed to take the necessary measures. That’s what I said to them. (p. 90,
Vol. I)

Moreover, to some extent he “offloads” his worries regarding the management of the forth-
coming situation onto his colleagues. Thus, concerning the anticipation of solutions to over-
come the problem of water injection into the reactors, he says:

It goes without saying that team leaders, in this situation, knew much better than me what needed to
be done, and it was based on the assumption that they were naturally doing what had to be done that
I was thinking. (p. 90, Vol. I)

This attitude contributes to a normalization of the future, as Yoshida assumes that the others
necessarily have the answers to these foreboding questions.
In situation type 1, Yoshida therefore tries to force a form of continuity between past and
present. Resilience, as the process of keeping on making sense of the flow of brute experience,
is then maintained at the cost of “forgetting” (Heidegger, 1996) and focusing on the immediate
 Sensemaking in extreme situations 285

management of the situation in accordance with the rules, making sure that this “distance” to
the danger is not impaired by any negative feeling amongst his teams.

Situation Type 2: Facing a “Cosmology Episode”: Situate Action in Projected Time

The type 2 situation corresponds to an intense surprise that shatters the sensemaker’s refer-
ences: when the tsunami occurs and strikes out all electrical sources, Yoshida faces a “cosmol-
ogy episode.” However, the evidence of this cosmology episode is only revealed gradually:

[W]e couldn’t see outside. So, we received the news of the arrival of the tsunami a little bit later, from
some people who went outside and watched from another building, but for us, the first anomaly was
the loss of all AC power sources. […] On top of this, we learned that the diesel generators didn’t work
anymore, which we said wasn’t possible and finally, we said that the tsunami must have arrived. That
is how, little by little, everyone agreed, and came to the same conclusion. Right then, at that time, we
were all stupefied. (p. 104, Vol. I)

Initially, faced with an unprecedented situation, Yoshida takes care of administrative tasks to
maintain an artificial form of continuity:

We were all so floored by events that we were speechless. Right away, we became calm and got on
with administrative tasks, such as reporting the loss of all AC power. [But,] while carrying out these
administrative tasks, emotionally, we were devastated. No, we didn’t shout. I think everybody felt the
same. (p. 120, Vol. I)

At the same time, he wants to know if he can reuse known resources:

Would the diesel generators restart? At that time, no one knew if they had been flooded by the tsunami
or not. So, you ask yourself first, whether we can get them going again. What do we do if we can’t
recover? If we have the [emergency cooling equipment], we can cool for several hours, but what
about after that? These kinds of thoughts were going around and around in my head. (p. 106)

But, piece by piece, emergency equipment proves to be defective. Finally, in the words of
Heidegger (1996), the “presence-at-hand” loses its meaning, as procedures become useless:

Specifically, for us on the ground, the generators were not working. […] Faced with this reality,
manuals [procedures] are out of the question. The emergency was to find answers. That’s all. (p. 133,
Vol. II)

With this in mind, Yoshida tries to give meaning to collective action.

Temporality
He quickly places his Being-in-the-World in “projected time” (Dupuy, 1992) and makes sense
“as if” the future catastrophe had already happened. He takes as a starting point the certainty
of a catastrophic future and seeks, nevertheless, to avoid it by his actions:

To be quite frank, I was devastated. Myself, I mean. I thought that we were facing a terrible situation.
But it was no use complaining. Obviously, we were heading for a major accident and it was necessary
to prepare for it. That’s what I told myself. (p. 106, Vol. I)
286 Research handbook on organizational resilience

He’s attempting sensemaking in a Heideggerian sense by grabbing on to what he knows and

can relate this to. The disaster seems to him all the more “real” as he compares it with an
accident in 1991:

We had already had a similar experience in 1991 [i.e.: flooding of diesel generators]. That was on unit
1. […] At the time, I was at head office, and I was very worried by this flood event. What we experi-
enced in March was somewhat similar, in that seawater entered the turbine buildings. Only in 1991,
there had been no earthquake […] there was an external power supply available. So, we didn’t have
any concerns about the electrical power supply. That allowed us to consider all kinds of solutions. But
as an accident, I find that there are similarities. […] Given my experience of the 1991 event, it was
very bad news that we had been flooded by seawater. (p. 133, Vol. II)

The situation of 11 March 2011 is, to some extent, the actual resurgence of a catastrophic
situation of which he caught a glimpse in 1991, but rejected as beyond the realm of possibility.

Preoccupation with things

By situating his activities in projected time, Yoshida envisages the possibility of radically
new actions. He does not examine the possibility of extending the operation or recovering the
emergency cooling systems, for which he would later be reprimanded (ICANPS, 2011). In his
view, these actions he took had an end that was more or less immediate:

I was desperate, at my wits’ end. We were in a major accident situation. With regard to the injection
of water, we couldn’t use any of the [emergency cooling systems]. When all [these systems] stopped,
if the battery stopped, how could we cool it? I gave the order to think about it but, even myself,
I couldn’t see any hope of a solution. (p. 110, Vol. I)

Starting with the obvious – the need to inject water into the reactor to cool it – and the total
lack of equipment that could be used for this purpose, he sent his colleagues to “encounter”
(Heidegger, 1996) the things that populated their new world and discover new ways to respond.

Concern for others

His relationship with his colleagues onsite reflects institutionalized hierarchical relationships,
through which the superintendent is able to impose meaning to action. Yoshida takes his
stance of plant superintendent to give them orders to go into the field and take a measure of the
situation. By the same token, he shows his annoyance with headquarters and state authorities,
who do not share his sense of futility regarding the presence-at-hand of things:

Headquarters had made the urgent restoration of power supplies the priority. I kept telling them; they
didn’t understand. There were a lot of idiots who believed it was the same thing as usual, the loss of
external power. […] I never stopped telling them that, even if we could get electricity, there were very
few places where we could distribute it, but they were unable to understand. (p. 138, Vol. II)

In this situation type, his assessment of the situation relates to intimate feeling and Yoshida
cannot accept any challenging view.
 Sensemaking in extreme situations 287

Situation Type 3: Bricoleur: Believe in a Possible Alternative to Avoid an Inevitable

Disaster

The “encounter with things” offers new ways to respond, which gave Yoshida new hope. He
began to believe that it was possible to avoid the catastrophe and developed a completely new
plan, approximately two hours after the tsunami:

In the midst of all that […] while we were wondering whether there were any other ways to inject
water, we realized that by using the fire system, you could send water with a fire truck. I don’t think
that is mentioned in any crisis management manual. But, since it was an alternative, it had to be
considered; we even had to think about how to test it. So, I asked them to consider it. (p. 111, Vol. I)

Temporality
With the discovery of a possible alternative scenario, projected time coexisted with occurring
time. The latter is manifested in technical expectations, as illustrated by Yoshida’s strategy
regarding the fall in pressure in reactor 1:

Whether it was the fire circuit or the fire truck network, [you can only use them] once you […] let
the steam escape and the pressure in the tank has fallen. At the moment we are talking about, [we]
knew that the water could not enter. But the idea was that it would become possible. (p. 121, Vol. I)

Preoccupation with things

As an engineer, Yoshida sought to find what was present-at-hand. But his approach was that
of the “bricoleur” (Lévi-Strauss, 1966), a concept to which he refers many times. These are the
objects that, in part by their discovery, but above all in what they impose (e.g., their failure or
absence), shape his project. Although contact with things is brutal, it offers a few opportunities
to connect the present situation to usual frames of reference, notably through the intermittent
verification of measurement equipment. However, Yoshida admits that his knowledge of the
situation is fragmented, and that many elements escape him:

At the end of the day, the real situation was unknown, but the most important point for us was whether
the level of water was sufficient. Knowing if the core melts or not, if the water level exceeds a certain
given value, for us, that’s reassuring. (p. 130, Vol. I)

The importance placed on such “things” (such as the water level, which ultimately Yoshida
could not ascertain the real value of), translates, in the words of Heidegger (1996), into a way
to control anxiety via its crystallization into “fear” of the values shown on the instrumentation.
Yoshida is either reassured or concerned as a function of the information he receives about the
water level or pressure in the reactors, based on his old benchmarks:

Today I realize that I convinced myself that everything was fine because we were able to verify that
we had a certain margin for the water level. (p. 124, Vol. I)

Concern for others

Mainly because of the communication difficulties and the great uncertainty of the situation,
Yoshida is suspicious of the actions of his colleagues and is annoyed that his orders are not
exactly applied:
288 Research handbook on organizational resilience

The time that it takes to reach the crisis unit, things had changed or were no longer certain. I was
getting reports with “it seems,” so I had to ask for clarification, “where, exactly?” “how did you verify
this?” etc. It’s like the [emergency cooling system of reactor 2]: I had asked [if it] worked. They told
me yes. I ask them how they saw it, what they used to check it. So, then they told me they had not
checked it. I kept on asking what they saw, and so on. (p. 166, Vol. II)
I was hard on the people working shifts. Please understand, I was in the earthquake-proof building,
I did not truly know the actual conditions on the ground. It was only later that they told me how they
had to equip themselves, to protect themselves to carry out the check [of the Reactor Core Isolation
Cooling – RCIC of reactor 2]. But at the time, I wondered why they could not do something so simple.
(p. 192, Vol. II)

In the initial hours, Yoshida did not have a clear understanding of the difficulties encountered
by the team outside the crisis room, a situation which limited his empathy toward his col-
leagues. However, he becomes sensitive to their suffering as he becomes aware of it. Notably,
the death of two of his team would haunt him throughout the crisis:

[In] the basement of the turbine building of reactor 4, there were two people who had died. The two
bodies were still there and there was water. We had tried to recover this water, because it would have
allowed us to remove the bodies of these two people. We had made several attempts. Here there is
an entrance for bulky materials. They had broken down the entry door with a digger, we had brought
a fire truck to try to pump water. [But] the water level was too low for it to work effectively. […] All
this time while we were looking for the water, I couldn’t get rid of their image. That’s why I was so
keen that we try to recover the water from reactor 4. I was hoping that during the operation, they could
be recovered. But my hopes were not fulfilled. (p. 280, Vol. II)

We wonder whether this image presents him with evidence of his own mortality. Is doing
everything he can to recover the bodies not also a manifestation of struggling against his own
downfall?

Situation Type 4: Addressing Radical Indeterminacy: Trust his Own Instincts

Situation type 4 is characterized by extreme physical uncertainty and violent events. This type
of situation is observed from the evening of 11 March. Yoshida sums up his experience from
that date:

We were in a situation where any of these systems could shut down at any time. In addition, we lacked
personnel. To be quite frank, in my head, I was panicking. But […] for me, the only thing to do for all
the reactors was to inject water, and then venting.2 That’s all there was. And in the middle of all this,
there was the explosion of reactor 1, which we had to deal with. Meanwhile, we also had to monitor
developments in reactors 2 and 3. It was total confusion. And it is in this atmosphere that I had to give
orders. (p. 201, Vol. I)

Things seem to behave autonomously, independently of instructions from operators. This is

the case for reactor 1, which shows signs of failure beginning on 11 March, at 20:07:

[T]here were things we couldn’t explain. Things we couldn’t imagine in our poor little heads. To us,
when we saw the indicators, the figures were completely implausible. That’s what it was like. […]
It was as if the unit was depressurizing all by itself, without anyone doing anything, and here I was
wondering what was happening. (p. 129, Vol. I)
 Sensemaking in extreme situations 289

His narration of his lie to the highest state authorities highlights the rationality that would
guide Yoshida. For him, the suspension of action is tantamount to disaster. Thus, the water
injection operations “cannot” be suspended for an indefinite period, not even, as ordered by
headquarters, for the time to respond to a technical question from the prime minister. This
relationship to time refers back to the powerful need to act, which, while incomprehensible to
others, justified for the decision-maker his recourse to his own intuition, his “instinct.” Armed
with this instinct, Yoshida presents himself as the guardian of operations, someone who knows
where he is headed and who is capable of clear judgment. In contrast, he rejects his external
interlocutors whom he sees as irrational and irresponsible, since they do not understand the
situation on the ground.

Temporality
Two temporalities therefore coexist. Events seem to be a series of shocks and opportunities,
and Things first manifest in their otherness, their radical indeterminacy. Thus, with respect to
the injection of water into reactor 1 (beginning 12 March at 05:46):

At first, we started by using the water that was in the [fire] truck’s tank and, once the tank was empty,
it had to be refilled. At first, we could only make single injections. […] We started by injecting the
water that we had available, then we restocked. And while we did that, we decided to use the water
from the fire reserve tank, but we had pressure problems. Then, by chance, some other fire trucks
arrived from outside and, by having three trucks rather than one, we managed to increase the output
pressure. All of these operations were improvised in situ. (p. 153, Vol. I)

The “outside” – headquarters and the authorities – also appear as sources of randomness,
through the trucks that seem to appear from nowhere. Similarly, Yoshida commented on the
prime minister’s visit (12 March, 07:11):

The prime minister asked some unexpected questions that we did our best to answer. It boiled down
to that. (p. 156, Vol. I)

This unpredictable succession of events can be contrasted with projected time, which clearly
provides an anchor for Yoshida’s instinct. It is in this temporality that he evaluates the conse-
quences of his decisions. Thus, after the explosion of reactor 1 (12 March):

Above all else, we had to inject water. That was mandatory. Then, and this is what would happen to
reactor 2 and reactor 3, we had to trade off the hazards my men were exposed to, and the urgency
of the situation. That was one of the hardest things for me. Should I keep them safe or send them to
work? But if we didn’t try to restore these circuits, we couldn’t move to the next step. It was always
a question of finding a delicate balance between the two. That was the situation when I asked them to
go back and once again prepare the circuit for the injection. (p. 185, Vol. I)

The trade-off between sending his men into the field or remaining in the shelters raises an
ethical question. He responds with counterfactual reasoning, which takes its meaning from
the horizon of the obvious disaster. The potential hydrogen explosion of a reactor building is
compared with the imminent risk of the nuclear explosion of six reactor cores.
290 Research handbook on organizational resilience

Preoccupation with things

At this stage, for Yoshida it becomes obvious that the few observed parameters are clearly not
“present-at-hand.” Operators discover that many of the indicators were broken by the earth-
quake, and that the information they provide is incorrect, or impossible to verify. Nevertheless,
the belief in an instrumental indication serves as anchor to “justify” an action. This relation-
ship with the instrumentation is illustrated by Yoshida’s comment about the confidence he had
in the water level indicator for reactor 3 (which proved to be faulty) as the basis for prioritizing
his actions:

At that time [in the morning of 13 March], water began to enter [in reactor 3], the pressure had
dropped and the water level began to rise again. At that point, I was happy. I don’t know if the water
level indicator [of reactor 3] showed the real numbers or not, but we went from −3000 to a positive
figure. I can’t tell you how happy I was. (p. 222, Vol. I)

On several occasions, Yoshida would “trust” indicators that would later prove to be wrong. It
is the need to address the situation that dictates the interpretation of measurement instruments.
Fear crystallizes on the threshold values of these measurements. But, at this stage, unlike
situation type 3, the interpretation of the latter is no longer necessarily based on old frames of
reference, and rather reflects a “gut feeling.” This is illustrated by Yoshida’s presentiment of
the explosion of reactor 3:

[The explosion of reactor 1] happened around the time when the pressure was 0.5. I believe that the
explosion occurred when we were at around 500kPa, at about 15:00 [on 12 March]. Since then, that
was a pressure that made me feel uncomfortable. As for reactor 1, the pressure had risen higher, then
fell back to 500. But that didn’t stop the number 500 making me uncomfortable. I know that it’s
totally irrational, it was just a feeling […] (p. 256, Vol. I)
When the pressure in reactor 3 exceeded 0.5 MPa [14 March, 09:00], I had the feeling that it was
getting dangerous and I ordered the general withdrawal. (p. 252, Vol. I)

The number “500 kPa” is interpreted as a sign of an imminent disaster, a sign through which
Yoshida manifests his anxiety. This intimate relation to things is reinforced after the explosion
of reactor 3, which occurred soon after he sent his personnel back into the field, having been
convinced by TEPCO’s headquarters officials that the stability of the parameter meant that the
reactor had stabilized, contrary to his feeling:

Let’s say that I had a hunch and I’d ordered the initial withdrawal. You can’t imagine how much
I regret having authorized the return to the field. (p. 256, Vol. I).
The withdrawal lasted over an hour. Except that we had to provide a supply circuit for reactor 2,
among other things. There were so many other things to do in the emergency. I hesitated, I hesitated
a lot. Could I send the men back into the field or not? Could they resume work? [At] that time we
were talking to head office by telephone. I maintained the withdrawal, and head office asked me when
I was going to lift the order. I answered that there was a risk of an explosion and that I couldn’t send
men into the field. […] We had talked about it. Then, the rising pressure stabilized around 0.52. I was
talking to Mutô, who said that it looked as if it was stable. […] (p. 253, Vol. I).
In the beginning, just after the explosion, when the very first reports arrived from the field and when
I knew that there were around 40 people missing, I really thought I would kill myself. If it was true
and that there were really 40 deaths, I had decided to commit hara-kiri. But gradually, information
arrived and the number of people missing gradually fell to zero. (p. 255, Vol. I)
 Sensemaking in extreme situations 291

In this excerpt, Yoshida expresses his unease at not having trusted his inner conviction, of
having betrayed the only reference he believes he can count on in such a situation. At the
climax of the crisis, resilience is anchored in the intimate feelings of the leader.

Concern for others

The situation is defined by contact with things, and this proximity determines the ability to
“understand” (or not) others. The situation is incommunicable, as it is no longer within the
realm of presence-at-hand. Yoshida therefore comments on his decision to vent reactor 1 on
11 March around midnight:

Even I didn’t have a clear understanding of the situation; it was just second-hand information.
I clearly understood what was happening with the control room equipment. I was much closer to the
ground than head office. But somehow, I still thought that they would manage to sort it out. I was only
100 m from the ground, but I couldn’t directly see what was happening, I didn’t see them. I thought
that they would manage to do it, one way or another. Head office was even more remote than I was...
(p. 146, Vol. I)

In fact, the distance from what was happening in the field determined the break with the
outside, which reached its culmination during the evening of 12 March. Headquarters and the
authorities no longer “understood” the situation. Consequently, Yoshida explained that when
they needed to study technical solutions in the crisis room, they muted the teleconference call:

[H]ead office didn’t need to know all that. Never in a million years would they ever have been able to
provide us with information such as “there is seawater in a turbine pool,” so we were forced to search
for solutions on the ground. (p. 240, Vol. I)

Left to rely on his instincts and locked in the crisis room, Yoshida marks his isolation. Notably,
he underlines the gap between his expectations and those of his colleagues:

I realized […] that a shift team, for example, expected a lot from the Diesel Driven Fire Protection
system. That’s where there was a big difference. Personally, I didn’t expect very much. (p. 212, Vol.
I)

However, we argue that it is also the veracity of the relationship to himself and to things that
allows Yoshida to address his team, who are psychologically shattered after the explosion of
reactor 3, to remobilize them in a form of “psychosocial resonance” (Giust-Desprairies, 2009):

[A]s with reactor 1, the explosion must have caused damage, with a high risk that the water injection
systems and other networks were dead. […] We had to react. However, everyone was in shock,
frozen, and unable to think. So, I got them all together to address them. I told them how I was sorry to
have them sent back into the field when it was still dangerous, that I had made the wrong decision and
that I asked them to forgive me. I also told them that there was a high probability that the water injec-
tions had stopped, that it was necessary to prepare for the injection of reactor 2, and that if we didn’t
respond we were heading for an even more catastrophic situation. But the ground was very likely to
be littered with debris, so the first thing we had to do was remove this highly radioactive rubble. I told
them to be cautious, to scrupulously measure radioactivity levels and to do as little as possible. […]
I asked them to do that, humbly. It was then that I experienced one of the most emotional moments
of my life. They all wanted to return to the field, they even jostled each other out of the way. I had to
calm them down. (p. 259, Vol. I)
292 Research handbook on organizational resilience

Situation Type 5: Last-Chance Actions: “I Thought I was going to Die”

On several occasions Yoshida was faced with the ineffectiveness of his response to the reac-
tors that had become beyond his control, and were hurtling him toward destruction. Situation
type 5 is an evolution of situation type 4, and is characterized by a sense of impending destruc-
tion, a real confrontation with death. Commenting on his difficulties during the night of 14–15
March, Yoshida provides an insight into the catastrophic vision that has driven him since 11
March:

If the water doesn’t flow in [reactor 2], this ultimately leads to fusion of the fuel rods. If the fuel
melts […] it will break through the bottom of the tank before then breaking through the walls of the
containment vessel. […] Whatever has been said, even if everything we tried wasn’t as effective as
we would have liked, there was still a containment vessel, and a tank, which represented protection
barriers. If these were to disappear completely, [to us], it meant the complete destruction of eastern
Japan. (p. 321, Vol. II)

Safety barriers, and notably safety equipment upon which nuclear safety is based, no longer
seemed to bring a reliable protection in the face of the violence of the phenomenon. The fact
that the destruction of the whole nation becomes a possible outcome radicalizes the superin-
tendent’s Being-in-the-World.

Temporality
This perspective of the destruction of Japan serves as the horizon for projected time, where
Yoshida situates his actions:

knowing that sooner or later all the reactors would end up in this state, I was doing the impossible to
delay this moment for as long as possible. It was my mission (p. 217, Vol. I).

When his attempts prove unsuccessful, the impending catastrophic future justifies last-chance
actions. On 12 March at 08:03, he decides to vent reactor 1 manually:

I can’t remember whether it was the government or headquarters, my memories aren’t very accurate,
but it was a matter of deciding the deadline […] I saw what was happening on the ground. I thought,
it’s not because they’re telling us 09:00 that we’ll do it. But since the order had been given, we had to
obey it. So, in the end, I asked, well I ordered my men to do it. (p. 160, Vol. I)
At that time [8:03] we thought that we had to go there in person, because all of our attempts to carry
out operations remotely had failed. I knew the staff would be exposed to radiation, but I thought it
was the last resort. That was when I made my decision, and asked them to perform the operation.
(p. 163, Vol. I)

The increased pressure in the containment vessel, which was well above design limits, was
perceived (without knowing whether the indicator was reliable) as an undeniable sign of an
impending disaster. Yoshida thus “justified” the sacrifice of sending his men into the field,
knowing they would be irradiated, by the 9 o’clock deadline – the “embodiment” of this
imminence.

Preoccupation with things

The obstruction of his actions by things reduces Yoshida to a “double or quits” confrontation
with death:
 Sensemaking in extreme situations 293

[On 14 March, at around 19:00, I went] to see people working for our partner companies who were
in the corridor. They were all there, looking rather lost. I think they didn’t really understand what had
happened to them. I felt very strongly that I couldn’t involve these people in what might follow. I told
them “we have done everything in our power, but the situation has become very dangerous. Please, go
home.” I didn’t tell them it was a withdrawal, an evacuation. I just told them to go home. […] After
that, I went back into the room. I couldn’t say another word. All we could do was wait. The water
would either flow in [reactor 2], or it wouldn’t. It was a gamble. Once I’d talked to the people in the
corridor, I hardly said anything else. I slept, or rather, I was in a daze. (p. 317, Vol. II)
I think we managed to inject water [in reactor 2] in extremis. We were really balancing on a tightrope.
Personally, it was as if I wasn’t alive any more. I was dead. (p. 266, Vol. I)

Concern for others

On the threshold of disaster, violence was spreading; internal tensions added to the strained
relationship with the outside. Thus, on the night of 12 March, when attempts to inject water
injection into reactor 2 failed, Yoshida said:

That’s when I really lost it.”What? The water’s not flowing in?” “It’s not flowing in, there’s no more
fuel.” That’s when I lost it. I swore at XXXXX and I punched him in the face (p. 319, Vol. I).

Similarly, when Yoshida mentioned for the first time a possible withdrawal of his colleagues
given the danger, the Prime Minister has some harsh words: “there will be no withdrawal,”
“I demand that you sacrifice your lives,” “you are slow,” “not rigorous enough,” “you’re
making mistakes,” “it is the survival of Japan that is at stake […]” (p. 323, Vol. II). Yoshida
considers his remarks to be unfair:

The people outside were saying we were slow, and a bunch of other things. But I want to tell them,
just you try. Oh how these stories annoy me! You have three nuclear units that are unleashed, right
before your eyes, you’re doing the impossible with the few staff you have and they dare say that it’s
too slow? I cannot forgive them, these people. (p. 217, Vol. I)

Several times, the tension subsides, the threat of imminent death goes away, and Yoshida
returns to a type 4 situation (see Table 19.2). This switching is particularly evident during
the night of 14 March. After having prepared the evacuation of staff when he tried all-out to
inject water into reactor 2, Yoshida soon abandons the plan when the operation appears to have
succeeded:

[W]e tried again to inject water and this time, it worked. There were signs that made us think that
it had flowed in. We were happy. I thought that all we had to do was continue to inject water, and
I forgot all about the evacuation. Frankly, it’s a time I would like to forget. I’ve forgotten a lot of
things, but I can assure you there was a moment when I thought we were finally saved. (p. 321, Vol.
II)

Epilogue (failure of last resort actions)

On the morning of 15 March, an explosion occurred in the building of reactor 4 and a fire broke
out in the pool of this reactor. At the same time, the pressure in the wet chamber of reactor 2
fell sharply. Yoshida saw himself as overwhelmed by four out-of-control reactors. Lacking an
alternative scenario, he decides to evacuate, ignoring the words of the Prime Minister. Yoshida
thus increases further his isolation by sending his colleagues to take shelter, asking only a few
close collaborators if they wanted to stay with him.
294 Research handbook on organizational resilience

In his testimony, Yoshida does not describe the situation after the evacuation. However,
several documents show that there was a strangely calm atmosphere in the crisis room during
this period. Those who remained took some time to write messages to their relatives or took
photos to leave a record (Kadota et al., 2014; The Japan Times, 2014). Indeed, according to
Heidegger (1996), death is the only certain experience that one must undergo alone and is the
truest and deepest intimacy.

DISCUSSION

While we shed light on the management of the Fukushima accident, this case study provides
an opportunity for an in-depth investigation of a rare moment when sense-in-the-making can
be observed in relatively raw conditions. Perhaps Yoshida placed too much faith in a few
indications from the instrumentation, which could be read as a lack of flexibility in the framing
of the situation; clearly, he also lacked information or misinterpreted it. All of these interpreta-
tions of his actions have been proposed by the official investigations (ICANPS, 2012; NAIIC,
2012). But the simple fact that he faced an unprecedented technological failure and was able
to contain, over four days, the fusion of six reactors shows that it may be useful to look beyond
only these aspects of the construction of meaning, and adopt a relational perspective centered
on the sensemaker.
The five situation types identified in this work correspond to different conditions regarding
the “failure,” and, notably, the possibility the sensemaker enjoys to simply “deny” the brute
reality of his situation or, on the contrary, the urgent need to cope with an unpredictable reality.
The feeling of lack of control over things and the inability to anticipate the effect of action
seem to be the main drivers of the emergence of “projected time,” as a way to recover new
degrees of freedom when usual ones failed. As if, not being able to give meaning to his action
on the basis of the immediate future, given the acknowledged uncertainty, the sensemaker
still may choose his “present” and keep making sense of his situation from an overwhelming
undesirable event in a more-or-less distant future.
The time horizon for projected time, as we have seen, was the fusion of one of the reactor
cores, ending in the perforation of the tank, an event that would have ended all attempts
to control the other reactors and which would have triggered a chain reaction causing the
destruction of one region of Japan. Situation types followed each other over several days, each
characterized by Yoshida’s feeling that he was approaching this reference point in the future.
After the earthquake (situation type 2), this point continued to appear infinite. Shortly after the
tsunami (situation type 3), Yoshida thought he could rely on some of the instruments’ readings
to understand the state of the reactors and organize a response. These indications led him to
think that he had a certain margin of error. The discovery that it was impossible to be sure
that the instruments were reliable, even when they were temporarily reconnected (situation
type 4), made the disaster omnipresent. Faced with complete indeterminacy, Yoshida recen-
tered himself on his own beliefs and his relationship to the world became one of instinct and
feelings. In such a world, its end is the measure of experience. The failed attempts to delay
the disaster (situation type 5) were a reminder of the absolute imminence of a more-or-less
fantasized “rupture” (manifested by an indication of increased pressure, or a fall in the water
level). The decision-maker then found himself reduced to a “bet,” faced with the possibility
of his own death.
 Sensemaking in extreme situations 295

However, these situation types are commensurable, because they are part of the same
framing. Drawing upon the philosophy of Heidegger (1996), we hypothesize that this relates
to Yoshida’s anxiety when faced with his own death. His narrative highlights his changing
commitment to the world, as a function of circumstances and opportunities to remain at a dis-
tance to his own finitude. A notable example is “forgetting,” either by immersing himself in
management procedures or, conversely, facing the challenge following the evacuation of the
plant. This main concern, which runs through Yoshida’s narrative, enables us to identify the
transitions between situation types as events unfold.
We also note that Yoshida’s ethical decisions were taken in the context of projected time.
This result is consistent with Dupuy (2004, 2013), who argues that projected time, linked to
a future that is seen as causally responsible for the present, is more likely to be the frame of
moral judgments than occurring time. This result allows us to put into perspective the theo-
retical hypotheses of Quinn and Worline (2008), who state that courageous action requires an
initial, very credible narrative of a situation (an airline hijacking, in the case they study), from
which actors can assess the ethical consequences of their possible action or inaction. Building
such a narrative comes down to creating a very credible picture of the future outcome of the sit-
uation and, as such, reflects a change of temporality that enables a counterfactual assessment
of alternative actions faced with an impending, catastrophic future.
Yoshida’s testimony shows that the cosmology episode is not necessarily an end point, the
catastrophic and unavoidable culmination of a series of erroneous framings resulting in panic.
If presence-at-hand loses its relevance, the world itself remains present and the sensemaker is
in contact with it. In response, an individual can reconstruct meaning to survive the “extreme
situation” (Bettelheim, 1979a; Fischer, 1994). This extends to questioning former mental
frameworks (i.e., their cosmology), in order to frame action within a new temporality, and
a new commitment to others and things. We cannot help but note the parallel between the tes-
timony of Yoshida and that of Bettelheim (1979b), regarding the attitude adopted by the Jews
who faced the Nazi threat: “those who faced up the announced intentions of the Nazis prepared
for the worst as a real and imminent possibility. It meant risking one’s life for a self-chosen
purpose, but in doing so, creating at least a small chance of saving one’s own life or those of
others, or both” (p. 252).
These “characteristics” of Yoshida’s testimony should be no surprise if one notes that
“projected time” is the temporality of narrative, and counterfactual reasoning is the logic of
narration. Indeed, resilience, seen as a continuing capability to give meaning to flow of brute
experience in order to keep acting, is anchored in this specific human capability to elaborate
narratives. The leader, as a “sense-giver,” is first and foremost a narrative-maker, who grasps
together the elements of the situation into meaningful scenarios. Ultimately, his narrative in
the face of a disruptive event constitutes, for himself and others, a region, a psychic place
which becomes “inhabitable” (Freeman, 2002) and from which it becomes possible to react.

NOTES
1. Yoshida’s testimony has been made available by the Japanese government at the following link:
http://www.cas.go.jp/jp/genpatsujiko/hearing_koukai_3/hearing_list_3.html. It is also available in
French in two books by Guarnieri et al., Vol. I in 2015 and Vol. II in 2016; main extracts, which
serve as a basis for the present chapter, are available in French in Guarnieri and Travadel (2018).
296 Research handbook on organizational resilience

Quotations are taken from these latter documents, with simplified references to the page and
volume. We offer our own translation.
2. Venting is an emergency procedure to reduce the pressure in the reactor.

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20. Resilience of inter-organizational systems
Julie Chesley and Victoria D’Avella

INTRODUCTION
One of the largest and most complex global challenges today is energy and its effects on the
environment. Accelerating climate crisis, increasing demand and declining resources have
produced intense pressure to find long-term, renewable energy solutions (Westley et al., 2011).
New policy frameworks and solutions continue to emerge, including the Paris Agreement,
which establish ambitious carbon emissions targets to slow global warming. Addressing these
issues requires coordinated and collaborative efforts by multiple sectors and organizations
over a sustained period of time (Shell, 2018); in short, these systems must be resilient.
Our study explores inter-organizational systems working to solve energy challenges asso-
ciated with global warming and provides insight on the factors that enhance the resilience of
their partnerships. First, we present an inter-organizational diagnostic model (Ainsworth and
Feyerherm, 2016a) that explains the elements and key processes needed in inter-organizational
systems and show the connection to resilience. Second, we present preliminary results
from our study of inter-organizational collaboration in the pursuit of energy sustainability.
Our study examines three resilient inter-organizational partnerships that address energy
sustainability in different ways from climate adaptation of electrical systems to incremental
improvement in environmental impact of oil sands. Our study reveals themes that can guide
inter-organizational collaboration efforts and provides the basis for future thinking about this
topic. Third, we suggest ways that the study, the process model and inter-organizational col-
laboration can inform research on resilience.

Introduction to Inter-Organizational Systems and a Diagnostic Model

Inter-organizational systems have been categorized in many different ways for different pur-
poses. In this study we examine inter-organizational systems most closely aligned with the
definition of a Transorganizational System: a group of organizations that agree to collaborate
interdependently for a period of time to attain a common goal that is larger than any one organ-
ization could achieve alone (Cummings and Worley, 2015).
This study builds on the work of Ainsworth and Feyerherm (2016a) (Figure 20.1) to frame
the elements and processes of a transorganizational system. Their model leverages existing
literature on best practices and key elements of successful transorganizational systems and can
be used for design and assessment of any inter-organizational system.
The input is a “wicked mess or opportunity.” As described by Trist (1983), this input
is a complex challenge beyond the scope of one organization, such as sustainable energy
systems. The design components, those processes a system uses to convert inputs into outputs,
include specific elements that have been identified as determinants of system functionality
and enable coordination among members. These include Mission and Vision, Constituency,
Governance Structure, Information Systems, and Measurement Systems. Trust and Negotiated

299
300 Research handbook on organizational resilience

Source: Adapted from Ainsworth and Feyerherm (2016a, p. 773).

Figure 20.1 Transorganizational diagnostic model

Order are both design components and intermediate outputs. Trust is seen as an incremental
feedback loop, where members take risks, and if the response is positive from other members,
trust continues to grow (Ainsworth and Feyerherm, 2016a). Closely related, negotiated order
is the joint conditions or terms of engagement among members. Negotiated order and trust
both evolve through feedback loops as conditions change (Ainsworth and Feyerherm, 2016a).
Finally, the outputs of the system include Individual Organizational Effectiveness,
Transorganizational System Effectiveness, and solutions to the wicked problem (full or
partial). The benefits of a comprehensive model can serve to further advance theory regarding
inter-organizational functionality and can offer practitioners a tool to evaluate and intervene in
existing or beginning inter-organizational systems to promote their functionality and enhance
their performance.
While this model provides a comprehensive way to look at a total system, even
when these factors are in place, scholars agree that it is very challenging to adapt these
complex inter-organizational systems to shifts in environmental factors. In fact, many
inter-organizational system failures are related to unexpected challenges (Inkpen and Beamish,
1997; Makino et al., 2007). We advocate that the ability to evolve as an inter-organizational
system signals resilience – a necessary condition to address wicked problems.

Resilience

Resilience has been defined in many ways and applied to many levels from individuals to
organizations (Holling, 1973; Masten, 2007; Van de Graaff, 2015; Linnenluecke, 2017). Our
study builds on research at the system and organizational level (Holling, 1973; Sutcliffe and
Vogus, 2003; Fiksel, 2006; Kuntz et al., 2016; Linnenluecke, 2017). Holling (1973) suggests
resilience pertains to the persistence of relationships within a system, making an important
distinction between stability and resilience. He suggests stability is the ability of a system
to return to equilibrium after disturbance, and resilience is a “measurement of persistence of
systems and of their ability to absorb change and disturbance and still maintain the same rela-
 Inter-organizational systems 301

tionships between populations or state variables” (1973, p. 17). This distinction is especially
important to transorganizational systems that tend to be under-organized, and as a result, prone
to instability and dissolution (Cummings and Worley, 2015; Makino et al., 2007). Existing lit-
erature on inter-organizational partnerships has spoken more to factors that allow for stability
and success, and we build upon those to understand the factors that contribute to the ability of
partnerships to persist in the face of unexpected change.
Organizational resilience also provides valuable insight for the study of transorganizational
resilience. At the organization level, resilience has been described as the capacity to exhibit an
adaptive response to significant adversity (Kuntz et al., 2016). Sutcliffe and Vogus describe
resilience as “positive adjustment under challenging conditions” (2003, p. 95). Scholars
(Fiksel, 2015; Weick and Sutcliffe, 2015) are careful to make the distinction between risk
management: preparing for disruptions, and resilience: designing and building capabilities that
enable adaptation in the face of change and unforeseen challenges. Similar to the diagnostic
model, scholars have suggested factors that enhance organizational resilience, including
a great sense of purpose and meaning (Horne and Orr, 1998; Weick and Sutcliffe, 2015;
Sutcliffe and Vogus, 2003; Sheffi, 2005; Valikangas, 2011; McCann and Selsky, 2012; Boin
and van Eeten, 2013), strong values (Coutu, 2003), governance design features and resources
(Gittell et al., 2006), requisite variety of members (Horne and Orr, 1998; McCann and Selsky,
2012; Valikangas, 2011), and cohesion among employees, alignment with objectives, and
networked relationships (Megele, 2014; Van de Graff, 2015).
While many of the factors that influence resilience at the organizational level are similar to
the design factors for effective inter-organizational systems, we were interested to understand
which factors most influenced resilience in these complex systems. Our working definition of
inter-organizational resilience is the ability to adapt to challenging and unexpected conditions,
while continuing to collaborate interdependently to address wicked issues that can’t be solved
by one organization alone. Will factors that enhance resilience in independent organizations
scale to inter-organizational systems or are there other factors that are more salient in these
complex systems?

METHODS
This study used a mixed-method design (Creswell, 2014) to examine inter-organizational
resilience. Twenty-four members from three inter-organizational systems addressing the chal-
lenge of energy sustainability participated in this study (see Table 20.1).
Each inter-organizational system existed for three years or more and had responded to one
or more changes in the initial conditions (external or internal). A minimum of three years
acted as a proxy for resilience. While three years may sound short in an organizational context,
research finds that many inter-organizational systems fail before achieving their purpose
(Gulati, 1998). For instance, in one study on international joint ventures, only 10 percent of the
inter-organizational systems studied achieved their purpose, while 90 percent of them failed
and ended prematurely (Makino et al., 2007).
In addition to the proxy of a three-year minimum, each of these inter-organizational systems
survived significant unexpected jolts, ranging from massive layoffs and a complete swing in
political climate to extreme weather conditions, all the while exhibiting adaptability and pos-
itive responses to stress (see Table 20.1). For example, in System 1, the partner organizations
302 Research handbook on organizational resilience

Table 20.1 Inter-organizational systems studied

System Description of system and major disruptions Number of participants

1 This system is a strategic alliance made up of 11 organizations of oil sands production 9
companies collaborating to accelerate environmental performance in Canadian oil
sands. They face the challenge of energy sustainability and reputational risk by
sharing technology and IP that can enhance their operational performance to be more
environmentally sustainable. Their focus is on four environmental priority areas:
land, water, greenhouse gases, and tailings. During their six-year existence, they have
maintained stability through significant change in the market, including a bust in the
oil and gas industry, exit of company partners, and increasingly difficult political/
regulatory landscape for natural resource development.
2 This system is a cross-sector partnership of 50 organizations exploring how to 9
transition to a future energy system for Alberta, Canada. Individuals apply to become
a fellow of this system, which requires organizational support and a fee. They bring
diverse members together to discuss and envision an energy future and develop
projects to support that vision. This system existed for five years at the time of the
study and adapted to market change, political change, and a transition to a new way of
working together as a result of partner needs.
3 This six-member working group between utility companies and municipal and 6
provincial levels of government assessed climate risks and developed solutions
to enhance the resilience of the electrical system to climate change and extreme
climate events in Toronto, Ontario. They operated as a working group with member
representatives from each partner organization, and a chair provided by the municipal
government as a backbone. Three members were from electrical utilities and two were
from provincial regulatory bodies. The system existed for three years and adapted to
significant external political shifts, funding challenges, and extreme weather.

– all oil and gas companies – experienced a significant market downturn, where “companies
were fighting for survival,” yet they continued to collaborate. System 2 experienced the same
market downturn, in addition to two political swings, “we’ve survived a massive political
swing, while maintaining credibility and engagement.” In System 3, they experienced several
disruptions including a shift in their primary funding source leading to a reconsideration of
mandate.
Each participant completed a modified Collaboration Effectiveness Assessment Instrument
(CEAI) (Ainsworth and Feyerherm, 2016b). The CEAI is based on Ainsworth and Feyerherm’s
diagnostic model and was created to help members of inter-organizational networks assess the
level of effectiveness of their collaboration. Descriptive statistics were used to determine the
presence and importance of these factors in resilient inter-organizational systems.
Additionally, each participant engaged in a 60-minute, semi-structured interview. Interviews
were conducted to understand how the inter-organizational system (the individuals, member
organizations, and system as a whole) successfully adapted to changing conditions (see
Appendix 20.1). Factors assessed included the existence of a wicked problem, mission and
vision, governance, measurement systems, information systems, trust, negotiated order,
and outputs of the system. Interview data were analyzed using Taylor-Powell and Renner’s
approach for analyzing narrative data (2003). A second rater tested the validity of the coding
and ensured that the data was reflected accurately in the analysis. Inter-rater reliability was 85
percent.
 Inter-organizational systems 303

FINDINGS: RESILIENCE IN INTER-ORGANIZATIONAL SYSTEMS

The factors that were rated the highest in these three resilient inter-organizational systems were
the acknowledgement of a wicked problem that required collaboration to address, a process for
sharing information (information systems) and the establishment of clear goals (mission and
vision). The lowest rated factor was trust in the system (see Table 20.2).

Table 20.2 Summary statistics of the effective collaboration assessment for resilient
inter-organizational systems

Factors Questions Mean SD

Issue / Wicked Problem –The issue or problem we are working to solve is so large and complex 4.38 0.43
that it can only be addressed through the collaborative efforts of
multiple organizations working together.
–No single organization working alone is capable of solving the
problem or issue our collaboration is focused on.
Information Systems –Our collaboration has an established process for distributing 4.20 0.63
information to members.
–As a member of the collaboration, I have access to the information
I need to do my part.
–In our collaboration we get information at the right time that allows us
to effectively carry out our jobs.
Mission and Vision –Our collaboration has clearly articulated goals. 4.15 0.60
–Our collaboration members are in agreement about the goals we are
trying to accomplish.
–I am clear on what our collaboration is trying to accomplish.
Governance –Our collaboration has a clear organizational structure. 3.96 0.65
–The leadership of our collaboration is participative in nature.
–Our decision-making process is participative – we all contribute to
collective decisions.
–I am clear about my organization’s role in doing the work of our
collaboration.
–We have the basic resources we need as a collaboration to do our
work well.
–We have a clearly articulated process we follow to resolve conflicts
among members of the collaboration.
–Our collaboration has someone or some group responsible for
administrative tasks.
Outputs –The effort my organization spends to be part of the collaboration is at 3.95 0.31
least equal to the benefit we receive.
–My organization is aligned with the goals of the collaboration, and by
being a member of the collaboration my organization is attaining its
goals.
–Our collaboration is making a positive difference in the large-scale
problem we are working to address.
–Our collaboration has successfully made an impact on the large-scale
problem we are working to address.
–As a result of being part of this collaboration, I am developing the
skills and knowledge I need to work better in other collaborations.
304 Research handbook on organizational resilience

Factors Questions Mean SD

Constituents –We have the right members in our collaboration. 3.87 0.49
–We have clear membership requirements – everyone knows what it
takes to be active participants of the collaboration.
–Our collaboration is missing key members that really need to be a part
of our effort to achieve our mandate.
Negotiated Order –As a member of the collaboration, I am clear on the “rules of 3.80 0.45
engagement” or the norms we follow when we interact with one
another.
–All members of the collaboration agree on what needs to be done to
accomplish our goals.
–All members share an understanding of how we will work together to
address the problem or issue we are working on.
Measurement –Our collaboration has performance measurements in place that can 3.63 0.94
help us gauge progress toward our goals.
–I have a good sense of where we are in accomplishing our goals.
–In our collaboration we evaluate the effectiveness of our work on the
broader system we are trying to influence.
Trust –There is an adequate amount of trust between all individual members 3.38 0.22
of our collaboration.
–I am confident that other member organizations of our collaboration
will not act opportunistically at the expense of other members.
–There is a lack of trust among members of our collaboration that holds
us back in working well together.

Analysis of the interview data highlighted several factors that impacted resilience specifi-
cally (many of which overlap with the factors in the model). The relative importance of each
factor differed as the interviews focused on factors that impacted resilience specifically. Each
factor from the interview data was further divided into sub-themes as shown in Tables 20.3a–e,
with the number of participants (out of 24 total) who spoke about the theme noted. Supporting
quotes for each theme are included in Appendix 20.2.

Table 20.3a Factors influencing resilience in inter-organizational systems: commitment

Theme Sub-themes Definition N %

Commitment Commitment Expectations of what and how the 20 83.33
expectations members of the partnership commit to the
partnership, including formal expectations
of funding, resources, and other governance
requirements.
Commitment enactment Act of committing and process of continued 22 91.67
commitment by partners including buy-in
from key influencers, growing organizational
capacity and integration, and recommitting
when conditions change.
 Inter-organizational systems 305

Table 20.3b Factors influencing resilience in inter-organizational systems: people and

relationships

Theme Sub-themes Definition N %

People and Relationships Characteristics of Type of individuals representing 22 91.67
representatives member organizations in the partnership.
Characteristics include: passion, leadership,
expertise, credibility.
Quality of relationships Relationships built among member 14 58.33
representatives are deep, trusting, respectful,
supportive, and effective.
Inclusion Intentional act of including organizations 15 62.50
and individuals that are representative of the
wicked problem.
Trust A sense of safety that is built within the 12 50.00
partnership and towards the partnership.
Individuals and organizations trust the
partnership to share potentially vulnerable
information in order to advance the vision.

Table 20.3c Factors influencing resilience in inter-organizational systems: vision

Theme Sub-themes Definition N %

Vision Translating vision to Actualizing the vision in a way that 18 75.00
action creates value and meaning to all member
organizations. Includes shared metrics for
progress and impact, short-term goals, and
tangible actions.
Co-created vision The vision is agreed upon by all 13 54.17
organizations. Both the process of creating
a vision and the existence of a co-created
vision that adds value are important.

Table 20.3d Factors influencing resilience in inter-organizational systems: sensing and

adaptation

Theme Sub-themes Definition N %

Sensing and Adaptation Opportunistic mindset An attitude or mindset around seeing 19 79.17
opportunity over adversity, recognizing
changing conditions, and choosing to find
opportunity within those.
Feedback processes Sensing, measurement mechanisms and 16 66.67
processes to gain feedback and adapt to the
needs of the member organizations to be most
effective as a partnership.
Methodology A specific model, approach or framework 8 33.3
is consciously applied to guide thinking and
practice within the partnership.
306 Research handbook on organizational resilience

Table 20.3e Factors influencing resilience in inter-organizational systems: significance

and breath

Theme Sub-themes Definition N %

Significance and Breadth Relevance of the wicked The wicked problem that the partnership 14 58.33
problem exists to solve must be deeply important to
each member organization.
Expansive goal The goals and mandate within the 13 54.17
inter-organizational system are broad
enough that they can capture a variety of
actions towards the goal, yet still be related
to the vision, so that organizations can see
themselves fitting into the vision and making
progress towards it. The goals are expansive
in terms of scope as well as timeline.

Commitment

The theme of commitment was the most frequently discussed factor impacting resilience
in the inter-organizational systems. Our study found that when member organizations con-
firmed how they were going to participate and had mechanisms to regularly engage, the
inter-organizational system was able to withstand external jolts.

Commitment expectations
Commitment expectations are how and what organizations in the inter-organizational system
are expected to commit. This includes clear, formalized expectations of the breadth and
depth of engagement in the inter-organizational system and levels of funding. For instance,
a respondent said that the clear expectation of partnership was one of the top three reasons that
members stay committed: “Our expectations of partners are that they’re all in or they’re all out
– it’s in the legal agreement.” More than half of the respondents spoke specifically about the
importance of funding that suits the timeframe and the vision (as a commitment expectation)
for resilience: “We’ve had the luxury of a funder that is highly committed to social innovation
and emergent outcomes.”

Commitment enactment
While commitment expectations can be designed, respondents also emphasized continuing
commitment beyond the initial design to generate value, such as involving key influencers,
growing organizational capacity and integration, and resourcing representatives. One respond-
ent said, “When these companies are fighting for survival, they had to make very conscious
decisions whether or not they wanted to retreat back into every company for themselves or to
double down on the alliance. But they didn’t. They doubled down on the alliance.”

People and Relationships

Our study found that resilient inter-organizational systems had passionate, credible people
engaged that purposefully revisited membership, and engaged in practices that enhanced
 Inter-organizational systems 307

trust and quality relationships. These people practices ensured that when unexpected issues
occurred, the system had the type of people, sound relationships, and a broad enough member-
ship to withstand external shifts, thereby enhancing resilience.

Personal characteristics
Passion, expertise, leadership and credibility were terms respondents used to describe the
people engaged in the inter-organizational system. For example, “People know that they are
invited to something that is not about advancing their own or organizational self-interest, but
that they are invited as an individual that wants to be a part of change and is open to doing so
through collaboration.”
When discussing responses to unexpected adversity, a respondent said they were able
to adapt and carry on because of “An openness to change and emergence. I attribute most
of it to [Person’s] leadership; he has been very well-connected and open to listening and
humble to the approach. Giving it a structure and allowing that structure to evolve.” One
of the top three reasons for resilience cited in one system was, “Leadership is fundamental,
[inter-organizational system 1] lives and dies on leadership, regardless of what level – the
CEO level, Shareholder Steering Committee level or technical level. You can’t show up and
take, you have to show up and lead. It is that leadership.”

Inclusion
The intentional act of including organizations and individuals that were representative of the
domain and wicked problem to support the goals and vision of the inter-organizational system
contributed to resilience. The inter-organizational systems in this study each had examples
of times where they revisited the make-up of membership to better achieve their goal, “They
actively look for gaps in who is represented around the table and ask, ‘Who do we need to
bring in?’” Additionally, the inter-organizational system sought to be resilient by being repre-
sentative of the domain that the inter-organizational system works within, “The organizations
represented here are a little microcosm of the system.”

Quality of relationships
Relationships that were considered deep, respectful, and effective contributed to resilience.
Participants spoke of camaraderie and teamwork that compelled members to remain commit-
ted and cohesive: “Cohesiveness of the [representatives] that really makes this valuable and so
that we can actually create impact.” Another respondent said, “I see the Steering Committee
becoming more effective as they’ve gotten to know each other.” Respondents related the
quality of relationships to their ability to continue to work together even in challenging situa-
tions, saying, “We were able to have open and frank discussions.”

Trust
Trust was discussed regarding the sense of safety in the inter-organizational system.
According to respondents, trust was increased through overcoming adversity together. “By not
hiding agendas, or disappearing in the face of adversity, but talking about what was happening,
we were able to work through it. And help each other understand.” Another respondent said,
“We’d been in [inter-organizational system 1] long enough that people had developed rela-
tionships with each other so there was a level of trust and we’re all in this together, up against
the same challenge, we understand each other.” Additionally, several respondents spoke about
308 Research handbook on organizational resilience

not just building trust among people, but having trust in the inter-organizational system itself,
from an organizational standpoint.

The biggest thing is the trust because these legal agreements are in place, although to be honest,
now that it’s been up for 5.5 years and no one has lost an eye, it’s less top of mind than it used to be.
There’s enough trust on the ground that people are showing their work to others.

Vision

Our study found that vision was critical to resilience; not only having one, but co-creating one
together with member organizations, and making the vision actionable. When these aspects
of the vision are fulfilled, members have a common understanding, as well as a sense of
ownership and belonging to the system, which enables them to endure through unplanned or
unexpected jolts.

Translating vision into action

Participants spoke of actualizing the vision in a way that creates value and meaning to all
organizations, including having a shared measurement system and tangible actions that deliver
on the vision. For example, one respondent said, “We are capturing the sense of where we
need to go in energy nationally and turning that into innovation and action.” Measurement also
demonstrated action: “Ultimately having measurements that show you’re making progress
helps. But the measurements are many fold – examples of projects developed by one company
and used by others, they’re performance goals, that sort of thing – you need specific indicators
that you’re fulfilling your mandate.”
Having shared measurement was both about showcasing progress towards the vision,
and value that was gained through the collaboration. When asked for the top three reasons
the inter-organizational system is still alive and thriving despite jolts, a respondent said,
“Participants have gotten enough value to stay at it.”

Co-created vision
Respondents spoke about the vision being created and agreed upon by all organizations
involved. “One of the things that comes to mind was getting us to agree collectively on
a vision. We do have a vision, and it took a long time to get there.” The process for co-creating
a vision was equally important: “We identified the gaps and common knowledge together to
find a way forward and a focus.” The concept of the co-created vision focusing action also
supported resilience: “There hasn’t been any mission creep; [participants] have been able to
maintain true to their core.” In times of unexpected adversity, respondents spoke about the
act of focusing and being more intentional: “We also really focused; was this project a need
to have or want to have? More assessment when times get tough. We’ve had equal or more
projects going through, but they’ve been very, very focused.” Co-created vision is not just
about the vision itself, but also the process of creating and revisiting the vision periodically.

Sensing and Adaptation

Having a mindset of opportunism, as well as the presence of internal feedback mechanisms

and methodologies to guide thinking and practice, all supported sensing and adaptation in the
 Inter-organizational systems 309

inter-organizational systems. These practices allowed members to identify changing condi-

tions, adapt to them and come out stronger or, at least persevere.

Opportunistic mindset
Opportunism involved seeing and seizing opportunity, even when faced with adversity, as
well as the ability to recognize changing conditions and choosing to act. Respondents spoke
about taking advantage of timing and environmental factors, with one saying, “We have a very
unusual policy window on energy futures in most parts of Canada.” When asked about adver-
sity, many respondents shared that members could see the benefits of the change that they were
facing. “In some ways that has made [inter-organizational system 1] stronger, so if investment
were to come back to the oil sands, I think we would be in a place culturally where they are
much more open to collaboration than before.”

Feedback processes
Sixteen respondents mentioned mechanisms for feedback and adaptation, speaking about the
ways that they sense and measure the internal needs of the inter-organizational system, and
adapt to the needs of the members. One respondent spoke about an internal feedback system
and process, “We are committed to developmental evaluation throughout, so that we can
reflect on the lessons and accelerate the rate of strategic learning and adapt to the needs of part-
ners.” As a result of internal feedback systems and processes, a number of inter-organizational
system members said they experienced a natural evolution over their time together, “There
haven’t been any surprises. We’ve evolved organically based on the participation of the
Fellows, so it all seems quite natural to me.”

Methodology
While it was less common than other factors, resilience was also impacted using a common
methodology or a specific model, approach, or framework to guide thinking and prac-
tice in the inter-organizational system. This enhanced resilience at various stages of the
inter-organizational system, including helping members have common understanding at
the start of the inter-organizational system: “We used a risk management framework and
approached it from that standpoint because we all had experience in it and could agree to it.”
The methodologies also seemed to have a liberating effect on the sample inter-organizational
systems: “The model allowed us to think differently about how we were approaching the
problem,” in some cases enhancing the opportunism in response to unexpected adversity.

Significance

Finally, the significance of the wicked issue and goals that the inter-organizational systems
were working on contributed to resilience because they enhanced commitment and gave each
member something specific to accomplish. These independent organizations recognized that
they were working on something important that they couldn’t solve alone, they could see their
contribution and the contributions of others, and they were committed to remain engaged
despite external turbulence.
310 Research handbook on organizational resilience

Expansive goal
Having broad goals in terms of scope and timeframe that can encompass a variety of actions
was important for resilience. This sometimes required flexibility within the model of the
inter-organizational system, “We didn’t all need to collaborate or invest in the same things,
but for those who wanted to do R&D, fill your boots, if you want to see what an inventor is
cooking in their garage, have at it.” Respondents also spoke about being open to creating new
connections with other partners to actualize the vision. One respondent said, “We’re moving
collectively in one direction, but not exactly the same direction. The arrows are pointing in the
same direction and you don’t need to buy into every aspect of every detail.”

Wicked problem
The relevance of the wicked problem was an important initial condition. Organizations must
have a significant stake in the wicked problem in order to engage in an inter-organizational
system. As one respondent said, “They have gotten out in front of an issue that is not just
a peripheral issue, it’s an existential level issue for Alberta. It’s a wicked problem and it’s
going to be defining the province for the next 20 years.”

DISCUSSION
Our study highlights several important factors about resilience of inter-organizational systems.
Much of this matches the work on organizational resilience, with a few exceptions that may be
unique to inter-organizational systems. We first present our findings as they relate to the diag-
nostic model of inter-organizational systems. We follow this by identifying areas of overlap
with research on organizational resilience and conclude by proposing ways that future research
might build on these insights to enhance our understanding of resilience.

Resilient Inter-Organizational Diagnostic Model

While much of our research supported the diagnostic framework of inter-organizational

systems (Ainsworth and Feyerherm, 2016a), we found that commitment was an additional
factor of resilience in the inter-organizational systems we studied. Also, we found that for resil-
ient inter-organizational systems, the scope and breadth of issue construction, the co-creation
and actionability of the mission and vision, and the individual characteristics and quality of
relationships influenced resilience. We proposed an updated model (see Figure 20.2).

Commitment
Commitment was the most cited resilience factor our study participants identified. It required
a combination of clear expectations of what and how members commit to the partnership
(formalizing funding, resources, and other governance requirements), and clear actions that
signaled commitment (buy-in from key influencers, growing organizational capacity and
integration, and recommitting when conditions change). Because of the complexity of these
systems, designing in not only structural methods to increase commitment, but ongoing dia-
logue and action, seems critical for these systems.
 Inter-organizational systems 311

Figure 20.2 Resilient inter-organizational system

Significance and breadth of the wicked problem

Our study echoed the necessity of a wicked problem for inter-organizational collaboration.
However, participants highlighted that the issue had to be significant and broad enough so that
it mattered to all members, and each member organization could see a role for their specific
contribution. This nuance broadens how we think about how an issue is constructed. If the
scope is defined too narrowly, then members may opt out, leaving the system less resilient.

Actionable, co-created vision

Mission and vision were also found to be important; however, our study also highlighted the
importance of everyone’s voice in the creation and active measurement of the vision. One
participant shared, “Our CEOs actually wordsmithed [the vision] in one of their meetings.
That’s how fussed they were. Hard to believe, but they did. Those 50 words got scrutinized and
revised by our member companies.” The active contribution to the development of the mission
and vision, as well as on-going dialogue on progress, echoes what we understand about change
and the role of involvement and measures to enhance success (Kania and Kramer, 2011; Hays
et al., 2000). This may be even more critical as external events influence the priorities of those
involved in inter-organizational systems.

Constituency
Our study found that it was not only who was involved in the inter-organizational system that
mattered for resilience, but also individual characteristics, and the quality and nature of the
relationships. The idea of membership breadth was important, ensuring representation of an
appropriate cross-section of the issue (Mattessich et al., 2001). In addition, leadership, exper-
tise, credibility, and passion were highlighted, in addition to the quality of relationships, citing
“constructive, honest conversations,” and even “fun” relationships. This echoes Williams’
(2002) findings on competent boundary spanners being able to build sustainable relationships,
manage through influence, and manage complexity and interdependencies.
312 Research handbook on organizational resilience

Sensing and adaptation

Having a way to collect, categorize, organize, analyze, and distribute information throughout
an inter-organizational system (referred to as Information Systems in the Diagnostic model) is
important for any type of collaboration. We also found this to be important for resilient systems
(a way to sense and measure the environment, as well as have a framework to guide the assess-
ment). In addition, for the three systems we studied, an opportunistic mindset – a choice to
search for and act on opportunities, in relation to shifts in environmental conditions – was crit-
ical for resilience. This mindset of opportunism recognizes reality, especially regarding what
conditions are changing, and requires a positive outlook to enable a constructive approach
to unexpected changes and adversity. The focus on reality for resilient inter-organizational
systems must include both the internal dynamics and conditions of partners, as well as the
external, broader environmental conditions.

COMPARISON WITH ORGANIZATIONAL RESILIENCE

There are various areas where our study corroborated findings at the organizational level, areas
where there were nuanced differences and some unique findings at the inter-organizational
level. For example, our findings reflect and nuance the resilience literature on shared vision,
diversity, sensing and adaptation, high quality relationships, and individual characteristics
and behaviors. Almost unanimously, scholars agree that behind resilient organizations, there
is a great sense of purpose and meaning (Boin and van Eeten, 2013; Horne and Orr, 1998;
McCann and Selsky, 2012; Sutcliffe and Vogus, 2003; Sheffi, 2005; Valikangas, 2011; Weick
and Sutcliffe, 2015). However, the nuance for inter-organizational systems resilience is the
emphasis on the process of creating the vision together and acting on the vision.
Previous organizational resilience research has highlighted the importance of diversity of
constituency – both individual diversity (skills, ideas and experiences) and diversity of opin-
ions as they both enhance the ability to respond to unexpected problems (Valikangas, 2011;
Weick and Sutcliffe, 2015). Our findings suggest that for inter-organizational systems, it is
important to include diverse organizations that are representative of and able to contribute
to addressing the wicked problem. At the organizational level, transformational leadership
has been connected to resilience (Valero et al., 2015), as these leaders develop a compelling
vision, create opportunities to develop shared purposes (Waugh and Streib, 2006), and foster
idea exchange (Valero et al., 2015). Organizational resilience literature has placed the onus
of development of these characteristics as a role of human resources (Megele, 2014), yet
this is a challenge for inter-organizational systems since members come from independent
organizations. Considering the capacity of organizations to sense and adapt to change, scholars
have cited an acceptance of reality as a characteristic of resilient organizations and leaders
(Coutu, 2003; Sutcliffe and Vogus, 2003). While facing adversity with optimism may be seen
as a form of denial (Coutu, 2003), our study finds that opportunism and a willingness to see
opportunities within challenging conditions were essential to resilience.
Commitment has been linked to organizational resilience (Horne and Orr, 1998) and to high
reliability organizations (Weick and Sutcliffe, 2015). Weick and Sutcliffe (2015) specifically
highlight a commitment to resilience itself, noting the importance of willing and active effort
to build skills that benefit the organization in times of uncertainty. We built on these concepts
of resilience, and found that for commitment to enhance resilience, it required a combination
 Inter-organizational systems 313

of clear expectations of what and how members commit to the partnership, and clear actions
towards commitment.
While the idea of significance has been shown to contribute to effective inter-organizational
systems (Dyer and Singh, 1998), it would be a new factor in the existing understanding of
resilience. Significance had two main elements in our findings. Choosing a wicked problem
that is important to each member organization was the first element. Secondly, the goals within
the inter-organizational system must be broad enough that organizations can take a variety of
actions that serve the vision and so that organizations can see themselves in the vision. This
is essential for and unique to inter-organizational systems resilience because it is completely
optional for individual organizations to engage in or exit the inter-organizational systems.

Limitations and Suggestions for Future Research

Despite the limited size and exploratory nature, this study provides a rich understanding of
resilience in inter-organizational systems. Future research could expand by increasing the
number of inter-organizational systems studied, as well as the scope of the systems. The
second limitation was that a minimum of three years was used as a proxy for resilience, lim-
iting the experiences respondents could draw from. Future research could explore a broader
time to test whether resilience factors change. Alternatively, a study could compare factors in
inter-organizational systems that failed to those that survived and adapted.
Addressing wicked problems requires resilient inter-organizational systems. For practition-
ers supporting or entering into an inter-organizational system, this study brings up key con-
siderations for designing, facilitating, and operating an inter-organizational system. Revisiting
Ainsworth and Feyerherm’s diagnostic model (2016a) using a lens of resilience, our findings
support that a model can be used to diagnose or identify risks to inter-organizational system
resilience, and conversely identify opportunities to strengthen the inter-organizational system.
Given the importance of vision co-creation, as well as the criticality of active commitment,
practitioners can facilitate intentional dialogue and help establish structures to revisit these
conversations. Practitioners can also facilitate deeper trust and commitment, and encourage
the development of high-quality relationships by making members aware of the importance of
relationships and facilitating the deepening of social bonds.
Individual constituents also have opportunities to enhance the resilience of the
inter-organizational system and play a significant role in the commitment of their organiza-
tion. At the outset, representatives can test the relevance of the wicked problem within their
organization and in exploratory conversations to ensure that the wicked problem is of deep,
long-term relevance to their organization before entering agreements. They can also facilitate
effective changeover by ensuring all individuals who become part of the inter-organizational
system are passionate, expert leaders who have credibility.

CONCLUSION

Organizational capacity for inter-organizational system commitment requires work, especially

sharing progress towards the vision. This is an area that representatives can facilitate, whether
by regular updates, town-halls, an annual integration workshop, or through the development
of operational plans. Overall, this study found that many factors that enhance resilience at
314 Research handbook on organizational resilience

the organization level scale to the inter-organizational level, with some important nuances.
Because inter-organizational systems are comprised of independent organizations, each with
their own agenda and capability, the dynamics between factors and fit are critical for resil-
ience. Inter-organizational system design components, relationships, and processes must not
only align, but adapt to address wicked, complex issues.

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316 Research handbook on organizational resilience

APPENDIX 20.1: INTERVIEW QUESTIONS

1. Tell me the story of the inter-organizational system that you have been a part of. How did
it come to be? What is its purpose/mission/vision? Who is involved?
2. What was your role in the collaboration? How did you come to be involved?
3. Tell me about a high point or significant achievement of the inter-organizational system.
What happened within the inter-organizational system to make this achievement possible?
4. Tell me about a time when the inter-organizational system faced unexpected adversity.
What shifts were required in the inter-organizational system? What do you think made
those shifts possible?
5. Sometimes inter-organizational system partners drop off or inter-organizational systems
fall apart completely. How have you kept partners on board and on track even in the face
of adversity?
6. In the life of the inter-organizational system, what significant changes in direction have
you experienced? What adaptations have these required in governance, decision making,
etc.? What made these adaptations possible?
7. If you had to identify the top 3 reasons why this inter-organizational system is still func-
tioning successfully, what would they be?
8. If you were starting over again, what shifts would you make to enable even greater
success?
 Inter-organizational systems 317

APPENDIX 20.2: SUPPORTING COMMENTS FOR EACH THEME

Table A20.1a Supporting comments for each theme: commitment

Theme Sub-themes Comments from interviews

Commitment Commitment –We had a five-year commitment from a funder, and the core commitment of
expectations long-term funding enables us to work on long-term outcomes.
–As an organization you have to sign on to join, and then you have to join at
least one environmental priority area. CEOs have to be involved and you have
to resource [each level].
–Everyone has to be contributing equitably. You can’t just sit on the sidelines
and get the benefits of everyone else’s research. Everyone has to contribute
relatively to their production.
Commitment enactment –Everyone has to have an operationalization plan to integrate [the
inter-organizational system] into their organization.
–We were realistic about what we moved forward to impress upon our own
organizations that these changes were important.
–It’s key to go back to your company and get their buy-in to these things.
I wasn’t the planner from [the organization], but I would go back and talk to
the planners and convince them of the outcomes of the committee.

Table A20.1b Supporting comments for each theme: people and relationships

Theme Sub-themes Comments from interviews

People and Relationships Characteristics of –You’ve got experts from across all different companies around the table here
representatives and that brings new perspective, new insights, learning that you wouldn’t have
had otherwise.
–Leadership is fundamental at every level.
–In the [inter-organizational system] we have people of high intention. People
who are empowered and confident enough in their own selves to say I can
make a difference. I have a piece of this and I want to contribute this.
–When I convened this working group, it helped that I had worked in the sector
before. So, I had credibility from my whole career.
Inclusion –We pulled together a robust committee that was strongly multi-disciplinary.
–The diversity of those involved helps too.
–We ask questions like, “Who’s not in the room that should be?” That led to
including [some organizations that] we were missing.
Quality of relationships –They know how to work together. It’s a sharing piece.
–We were able to assemble a group of people who were willing to be open in
dialogue, with information, really sharing what they knew and what they were
able to do.
–We’re good at having disagreements because we have built up that respect.
–I would go there and find a network of support.
Trust –The actual process for building trust and then actually getting the group to act
as a system.
–The economic context and the recognition of the value of the model, but
underlying those, trust was essential.
–I’ve noticed over the years, especially because no one has lost an eye, that we
can trust each other to share more informally than the big projects that we do.
318 Research handbook on organizational resilience

Table A20.1c Supporting comments for each theme: vision

Theme Sub-themes Comments from interviews

Vision Translating vision to –Achieving our goals] would be more work and everyone would have to invent
action the wheel internally. Instead, we have data we are collecting, we have a target,
let’s go achieve it.
–Organizations might have some patience to start with these [collaborations],
but there has to be something in it for them.
–It’s not just airy fairy innovation collaboration – there are real tangible
reasons to put our money behind it.
Co-created vision –The sense of shared direction and shared purpose. The vision, but it’s the
vision of the shared purpose. It gives them a higher aspiration for working
together.
–We identified the gaps and common knowledge together to find a way
forward and a focus.
–After we navigated the first several meetings, we were able to find our focus.
–Our CEOs actually wordsmithed [the vision] in one of their meetings. That’s
how fussed they were. Hard to believe, but they did. Those 50 words got
scrutinized and revised by our member companies.
–At least in the original partners, they could co-create a vision and stand
behind that publicly.

Table A20.1d Supporting comments for each theme: sensing and adaptation

Theme Sub-themes Comments from interviews

Sensing and Adaptation Opportunistic mindset –[The conditions] have opened people up to thinking differently and doing
things differently. So, it probably created more fertile ground for the
intervention.
–We chose to see the major environmental shifts as actually positive, rather
than shocks that were negative.
–I think the time is right to be talking about collaboration ... to look at what
is happening elsewhere and consider partners that aren’t usually in your
wheelhouse.
–Now that [a company partner] has exited, we saw new opportunities because
it allowed us to talk about subsurface projects.
Feedback processes –The team has been open to that and got interested in gathering feedback, and
actually making decisions based on that.
–At the end of the year they rate each other’s performance. There are
mechanisms in place to ensure every company is delivering its best and not just
sitting as an observer.
–We test and prototype ideas to see if something is actually worth paying for.
Methodology –That’s just the model and it allows us to stretch the boundaries to which we
would typically feel comfortable operating in.
–All those methodological things are really important to getting a genuine
forum for authentic collaboration.
–We use a certain model of transitions that talks about niche, regime and
landscape and we refer to that quite a bit in our [planning].
 Inter-organizational systems 319

Table A20.1e Supporting comments for each theme: significance

Theme Sub-themes Comments from interviews

Significance Expansive goal –It is framed and understood as a long-term challenge and endeavor.
–It’s a bit more esoteric for our group, so we have more opportunities to work
with more people and ideas.
–They haven’t positioned themselves at one end of a polarity. They’ve tried to
create a new kind of conversation; they don’t take sides in the debate, they try
to craft a new narrative. That means that when political winds shift, they aren’t
fragile or brittle to that.
Relevance of the wicked –There’s a recognition that [collaboration on environmental performance] is
problem more important now than it ever was.
–There is still a public need. There is no less condemnation in the public eye of
oil sands. So, we have a societal push to do better.
–It was just the compelling need, really concerned about how our residents
could be affected.
21. Organizational resilience in action: a study
of a large-scale extended-disaster setting
Bernard Walker, Sanna Malinen, Katharina Näswall,
Venkataraman Nilakant and Joana Kuntz

There’s buildings down everywhere here. We need as many units as possible.

We have got major damage.
We have building collapses with people inside. We’ve got whole three–four storey complexes com-
pletely demolished.
We’re gonna need fire here now. We’ve got buildings on fire now as well.
(Police-radio communications immediately after the Christchurch earthquake)

A series of severe earthquakes rocked the Canterbury region in New Zealand from 2010 to
2016. One of the most destructive was a M6.3 tremor centered near the heart of Christchurch,
the largest city in the region. This event was particularly violent, with some of the highest peak
ground accelerations ever recorded for this type of earthquake. Unlike the Northridge, USA
and Kobe, Japan earthquakes, the tremor struck at midday on a workday, causing 185 fatalities
and thousands of injuries (Ardagh and Deely 2019). The effects were devastating, rating as
the world’s fifth-biggest insurance event at that time, with overwhelming damage to land,
housing, physical infrastructure and businesses.
That M6.3 tremor was just the start of an extremely prolonged disaster situation. Destructive
aftershocks continued for many months afterwards, with a series of large and late tremors not
typical of other earthquakes (Christophersen et al., 2013). Much of the city’s central business
district remained closed for more than two years, and 70 percent of those buildings were
demolished. Thousands of residents and businesses were displaced, with whole suburbs per-
manently abandoned (Hall et al. 2016a), and major mental health challenges emerged among
the population (Fergusson et al., 2014). Business operations were severely compromised and
this was compounded by the ongoing tremors, with over 8000 aftershocks in twelve months.
The city’s critical infrastructure networks of roads, water, waste and power remained signif-
icantly impaired for an extended period. Agencies were confronted with a massive scale of
urgent reconstruction work.
This was a complicated, extended-disaster setting, rather than a single event. It presented
an extremely challenging environment for people and organizations, one that highlighted the
paucity of evidence-based knowledge of resilience trajectories in relation to protracted adverse
events. Earlier research into organizational resilience has tended to utilize either cross-sectional
survey designs, or single organizations in a specific, time-defined disruption. In contrast, the
Christchurch earthquake presented a rare opportunity for exploring organizational resilience in
an extended crisis. It allowed our research team to study multiple organizations over a period
of several years, as they simultaneously encountered wide-ranging disruptions, in a constantly
changing environment.

320
 Resilience in action 321

Our research program involved an in-depth study of twelve lifeline1 organizations. The
organizations were diverse, ranging from those managing physical infrastructure of water and
roads, through to financial services and communication providers. They all shared a common
feature: as lifeline organizations for the region, they had to continue functioning despite the
disaster, providing essential services. The organizations had to manage multiple, competing
demands in an unpredictable environment, with constrained resources, over an extended
period. This provided an extreme test of their ongoing resilience.

RESILIENCE LITERATURE

Recent decades have seen a growing interest in resilience, with writers exploring the concept
at individual, group and organization levels. A diverse range of concepts are used, with resil-
ience interchangeably referred to as either a trait, or state, or process variable (Britt et al., 2016;
Estrada et al., 2016; Norris et al., 2008; Sutcliffe and Vogus, 2003).
Resilience can be viewed as a capacity that resides within an individual, team or organiza-
tion, indicating a likelihood of positive adaptation. Writers such as Norris et al. (2008, p. 130)
adopt a process-based view involving such capacities, defining resilience as “a process linking
a set of adaptive capacities to a positive trajectory of functioning and adaptation after a dis-
turbance.” A similar process-based view of resilience has been presented by Williams et al.
(2017), which describes resilience as a dynamic process, prior to and after an adverse event,
where an individual, organization or community interacts with the environment and utilizes
various resources “in a way that positively adjusts and maintains functioning” (p. 742). Such
a definition allows for resilience to be enacted at multiple levels, and for a protracted time, not
just immediately following an event. The definition also suggests that there is positive adjust-
ment, which may imply, but does not require, that there is post-adversity growth for resilience
to be demonstrated.
There is growing interest in resilience at an organization-level, framed as the ability of
organizations, or organizational units, to adjust positively to adverse events (Powley, 2009;
Sutcliffe and Vogus, 2003). Within this, one perspective focuses on resilience as a personal
characteristic of the employees in an organization (Chen et al., 2015; Vanhove et al., 2015;
Varker and Devilly, 2012). Other perspectives address the resilience of the organization as
an entity (Gittell et al., 2006; Lee et al., 2013; Sutcliffe and Vogus, 2003; van der Vegt et al.,
2015). There is, however, only limited research addressing the interface between these perspec-
tives. Recent research from an employee resilience perspective highlights the ways in which
the organizational environment can influence employees’ ability to be resilient at work, which
in turn contributes to organizational resilience levels, acknowledging the person–environment
interaction in resilience development (Kuntz et al., 2017; 2016; Tonkin, 2018). The multilevel
view of resilience presented by Williams et al. (2017) suggests that resilience can be enacted
at different levels in the organization at the same time, and that resilience evolves and changes
over time as events unfold. Resilience, thus, does not only exist as a response to an event, but
also as a capability an actor possesses prior to an event, and which affects how the actor reacts
and copes (Kuntz et al., 2016; Williams et al., 2017).
This employee–organizational resilience interface is an area of growing attention in
the disaster recovery and resilience literature. Gittell et al. (2006), for example, explored
organizational resilience in the USA airline industry following 9/11. Drawing on publicly
322 Research handbook on organizational resilience

available data, the researchers analysed elements such as stock prices, employee layoffs and
strike action which were viewed as indicators of relationships, along with financial reserves,
and business models. Based on the data, they proposed that an interplay between financial
reserves and employee relationships contributed to organizational resilience. Powley (2009)
examined an organizational crisis with a shooting and standoff, identifying social mechanisms
that enabled healing among employees, and allowed the organization to resume operations.
From this, Powley proposed that the social connections, among and between organizational
members, form a latent capacity that is activated in crises, enabling an organization’s resil-
ience. Williams and Shepherd (2016) and O’Grady and Orton (2016) both report on the
aftermath of the Haiti earthquake. Williams and Shepherd (2016) found that organizations
that were created post-disaster to support recovery were vital to the progress, but only to the
extent they were able to build and create resources based on what was available. O’Grady and
Orton (2016) explore the way spirituality can support sensemaking and “cosmology episodes”
in which an individual engages in a re-evaluation of their assumptions to fit the post-crisis
context. By engaging in such re-evaluation and finding meaning in the new context, resilience
is supported.
Research into organization-level resilience links with the existing literature in areas
such as organizational crises, adaptation, organizational learning, high performance and
high-reliability organizations, when these occur in dynamic and volatile environments (de
Wall, 2012; Sutcliffe and Vogus, 2003). As resilience reflects the organizations’ ability to
learn and adapt, a capacity for learning and transformation becomes relevant, linking with the
extensive literature around organizational learning (for example Argote and Miron-Spektor,
2011; Zollo and Winter, 2002). Hence, organizational resilience is predicated on the extent
to which organizations establish and develop learning cultures, including the processes of
unlearning of established mindsets, values, beliefs and assumptions that may no longer be
relevant.
Resilience and recovery are two interrelated but distinct concepts in the literature address-
ing disaster situations. Recovery is usually used to describe the process of a community,
city or organization restoring to pre-disaster conditions after a major crisis (Aldrich, 2012).
Recovery is often protracted and can vary among different groups experiencing the same
crisis. Resilience is the capacity to engage in the recovery process (Aldrich, 2012). More resil-
ient individuals, organizations and communities are better able to utilize and create resources
that facilitate recovery, thus adapting more successfully to the post-crisis environment (cf.
Williams and Shepherd, 2016).

OUR RESEARH PROGRAM

Our research drew on Britt et al.’s (2016) definition of resilience, involving the demonstration
of positive adaptation in the face of significant adversity, which involves not only bouncing
back, but also growth or positive changes. As this was a sudden-onset disaster, characterized
by fast, discontinuous changes, it required a series of very rapid adaptations, which differenti-
ate it from the progressive change typically involved in traditional, business survival literature
(Bhamra et al., 2011).
The Christchurch earthquake setting clearly met the threshold for a significantly adverse
event triggering a complex resilience response (Britt et al., 2016). It involved a large-scale
 Resilience in action 323

disaster, with extensive impact on the built, economic, social and natural environments.
Organizations were operating in a context of ongoing uncertainty, as they confronted a series
of major challenges to their business functions. The wider backdrop involved a distressed
community, where the disaster had major effects on the health and well-being of individuals
and groups (Johal et al., 2016).
The focus of our research was on the resilience of the organizations. Two complementary
perspectives were utilized. One was organizational resilience, viewed as a process that enables
an organization as a whole to demonstrate positive adjustment and adaptation (Sutcliffe and
Vogus, 2003; Vogus and Sutcliffe, 2007). In this view, organizational resilience is not simply
the sum of the individual resilience of organizational members; rather, it is the functioning of
the organization as an entity.
The other perspective was that of employee resilience, defined as “behavioural capability
to leverage work resources in order to ensure continual adaptation, well-being, and growth at
work, supported by the organization” (Kuntz et al., 2017, p. 224). Rather than viewing resil-
ience as primarily the responsibility of individuals, this view posits resilience as a capability
that is developed through the culture, work practices and leadership in the organization. These
factors influence whether employees are resilient, signaled by their capacity to learn, adapt to
change, collaborate, and generate resources at work.

Research Methods in a Disaster Setting

Ideally, longitudinal designs, with baseline and follow-up measures, allow researchers to
examine how different agents adapt to adversity over time, in order to capture “resilience
trajectories” (Britt et al., 2016, p. 386). In practice, however, large-scale adverse events such
as sudden-onset disasters cannot be predicted in advance. This reduces the ability to assemble
pre- and post-event data sets, but it does provide a unique laboratory in which to explore
behaviour and change through a different lens (Britt et al., 2016; Hall et al., 2016b). Our
program explored the experiences of a range of organizations as they simultaneously encoun-
tered the common crises that emerged.
Our research methodology was based on identifying cases that were evidenced as showing
resilience, then searching for differentiating factors. However, as the Christchurch situation
involved an ongoing, unfolding and uncertain set of circumstances, the methods had to be
adaptive, allowing for unanticipated changes within organizations or in the physical environ-
ment. Post-disaster research has many challenges; a sudden, major aftershock for example,
would close down access. This meant that pragmatic research approaches were needed. For
example, although the ideal would have been a sequential progression where qualitative data
gathering and analysis were largely completed before moving to the quantitative phase, there
was a need to capture data while access was available and before recall bias affected responses
(Hall et al., 2016b). This also had to be balanced against the fact that the situation was
continuously evolving, and ceasing data gathering too early would have omitted significant
developments.
The study adopted a mixed-methods approach conducted by a multidisciplinary research
team. The case study design (Eisenhardt and Graebner, 2007; Stake, 2000; Yin, 2003) used
paired organizations within an industry sector, with a total of 11 organizations studied in-depth.
The qualitative section involved one-to-one, in-depth interviews and focus groups.
Typically, 15 participants were interviewed from each organization, although this varied
324 Research handbook on organizational resilience

Table 21.1 Participating organizations by industry and size

Organization Industry sector Employees Infrastructure Sector

A Construction 1000–4000 Water and waste; roading, landcare, buildings
provider
B Energy 300–500 Electricity supplies and distribution
C Transport 500–1000 Key transport-gateway provider
D Transport <500 Key transport-systems provider
E Communications 4000+ Telecommunications provider
F Local authority 300–500 Local government organization
G Local authority 1000–4000 Local government organization
H Finance 4000+ NZ Banking and financial-services provider
I Finance 4000+ NZ Banking and financial-services provider
J Construction 4000+ NZ Roading, transport infrastructure, and utilities
provider
K Construction N/A Roading, transport infrastructure, and utilities
provider

Table 21.2 Interview participants by industry sector

Industry sector Number of interviewees

Construction 48
Energy & Communication Transmission 28
Transport 26
Local authorities 27
Finance 38

with organization size, drawing on personnel from a range of roles and sectors across each
organization. A total of 167 individuals participated. Key informants were interviewed more
than once to further explore emerging themes, producing a total of over 200 interviews. The
majority of the individual participants were supervisors and middle or senior managers, and
the rest were frontline workers.
As the phenomenon being studied was relatively unchartered and dynamic, emergent,
inductive and open-ended methods were most appropriate. The transcribed data were analysed
using grounded procedures. This involved open and focused coding, constant comparison, and
theoretical memos (Bryant and Charmaz, 2007; Charmaz, 2008; Strauss and Corbin, 1997).
Throughout the project, the research team compared and discussed open codes and emerging
theoretical concepts. From this, detailed within-case analyses were created which were then
used in cross-case analyses to explore the ways in which key concepts functioned. Extant liter-
ature and theoretical perspectives were drawn upon throughout the research process (Charmaz,
2014).
Accompanying this, quantitative surveys were conducted in a selection of organizations
that participated in the interviews, with the surveys accessing larger samples of organization
members. The surveys measured constructs that emerged from our qualitative investigations.
The results from the quantitative surveys are reported on in more detail in Näswall et al. (2017)
and Nilakant et al. (2016).
The research approach captured the progress of the organizations through the disaster and
recovery, focusing on the three-year period following the initial, major seismic incident.
Figure 21.1 presents the timeline of our research. Data collection commenced eight months
 Resilience in action 325

after that major tremor. This allowed time to move beyond the initial state of civil emergency
and after an initial moratorium on research, as well as permitting the researchers to negotiate
access and obtain ethics approvals. As the extended three-year timeframe involved ongoing,
rapid adaptation to major disruptions, the research was able to produce findings that approx-
imated resilience trajectories, with the development and progression of an organization’s
resilience. The aim was to produce a comprehensive, grounded account of resilience-in-action
during a large-scale, extended disaster.

Figure 21.1 Timeline of major events and research milestones

The Organizations

The lifeline organizations studied were providers of water and waste systems, road and air
transport, energy supply lines, local government, financial services, and telecommunications.
One set of the organizations dealt with the physical infrastructure. These organizations faced
a massive challenge: 89 percent of the city’s residential dwellings, hundreds of kilometers
of underground water and waste pipes, hundreds of pump stations, bridges and reservoirs,
much of the power network, and over a million square meters of roadway, were all in need of
urgent repair. For those organizations, there was a tension between speed and sustainability.
Their work was of great urgency for the city’s recovery, so there was a need for long hours
and intensive work, but the scale of damage meant that this work would continue for months
or years. They had to learn ways of working, often with large numbers of projects, personnel
and resources, to achieve high levels of output, while at the same time being sustainable in the
longer term.
The second set of organizations were not dealing directly with the physical restoration of
the city, but they were also functioning in a new environment and faced significant challenges.
Even for sectors such as financial service providers, the major physical and population changes
meant that customer-flows were radically redistributed. As a result, employees encountered
resourcing issues, as some sites were overloaded with work, while others had significantly
reduced volumes. The emotional demands of the work changed. Client-facing interactions
were often highly emotive, as residents showed significant signs of stress and trauma. The staff
too were dealing with their own significant physical and psychological stressors.

WHAT DID ADAPTATION LOOK LIKE?

Unlike Powley’s (2009) case involving a single-episode, organization-specific incident, these

lifeline organizations did not have a “temporary holding space” where work was suspended.
Individuals and organizations were rapidly thrust into volatile, unfamiliar territory. Their
326 Research handbook on organizational resilience

pre-written Business Continuity Plans (BCPs) provided little guidance in the ongoing situa-
tion, as they never anticipated the extent of damage, or the duration of the crisis.
Significant disruption occurred at three levels. At the organizational level, the organizations’
facilities, IT and communication systems, were damaged or destroyed. Large inflows and out-
flows of staff occurred. Traumatized staff abandoned the city. Other workers and equipment
arrived from outside the region, sometimes more than doubling the workforce. The supplies
of resources were often inadequate. An electricity supply organization, for example, normally
held a reserve stock of cable joint-kits for reconnecting broken lines. After only eight days,
they had exhausted the entire available supply in two countries, Australia and New Zealand.
The personal-level disruption was also substantial, as staff dealt with injuries or bereave-
ments, damage to their homes and property, along with anxiety and stress from the ongoing
tremors. In the accompanying societal-level disruption, access to shops, fuel supplies, schools
and public transport were affected, while many homes lacked the basics of water, waste and
power.
Overall, this produced an unknown and unpredictable situation that required rapid
responses. Adaptation meant having to improvise in settings where there were few guidelines,
and the consequences of any decisions were largely unknown. Analysis showed that this
adaptation clustered around four interdependent factors: leadership and situational awareness,
employee-centric orientation, collaboration, and learning. These factors were already present
in varying degrees in the organizations, and continued to develop during the extended crisis.

Leadership

The discussion commences with leadership, as this was a critical element that distinguished
the more resilient organizations. Typically, the leader’s personal style and attributes were
echoed in the culture of the wider organization.
Across the organizations that showed greater adaptation to their situation, there was
a common pattern of approachable, empathetic and people-oriented leaders. One CEO, for
example, hired a mobile coffee shop and went around the many, tired work crews doing
road-repair work, talking with them, and making them feel valued and involved. These leaders
were accessible to the workers, providing tangible support and recognition of the workers’
efforts: “It probably cost us $30,000, $40,000 a week having that coffee van out there […] but
just the value of that in terms of engagement from our people was incredible.”
These leaders exhibited genuine concern for the workers, could understand their perspec-
tives and challenges, and reached out to staff. They symbolically and verbally communicated
a value system to the rest of the organization, including the importance of caring for workers,
giving direction, purpose, support and acknowledgement. Although they were what one inter-
viewee referred to as “blokes’ blokes,” they were clearly empathetic leaders (Boyatzis et al.,
2000; Boyatzis and McKee, 2005). “They just wanted to spend time with staff […] I can see
him, looking at his face, what he was worried about was our staff.”
In contrast, in the organizations that had greater problems with adapting, the senior manag-
ers remained more hierarchical and remote, focusing on operational matters.2 They were often
based outside the region and in some cases they never visited the affected work sites. They
showed poor understanding of the post-disaster situation, the resourcing, and the workers’
needs. Workers consequently felt unappreciated and unheard, resulting in resentment, lack of
 Resilience in action 327

engagement and being less willing to “go the extra mile.” Often these organizations lacked
a unifying vision.
In the more resilient organizations, the senior leaders simultaneously addressed operational
and strategic issues. They took ownership of the situation, provided leadership in their areas,
and were prepared to take risks with initiatives. The CEOs typically created a united, senior
leadership team around them, with a shared sense of ownership and shared values. They
empowered that team to actively deal with matters, especially crisis-related operational issues,
so that the CEO could often step back and deal with more strategic aspects.
These executive-level leaders united the organization, providing a shared identity and
vision. They articulated a common purpose for all the exhausting work effort, shaping this in
terms of serving the wider community in a time of crisis. The leaders interviewed showed an
openness to learning in their own lives, including gathering input from other people.
This leadership, at middle and senior levels, supported the other key factors that accounted
for organizational resilience: leaders’ situational awareness, an employee-centric orientation,
collaboration, and learning.

Situational Awareness of Leaders and Organizations

Conventional wisdom suggests that, in the aftermath of a natural disaster, organizational

leaders would be aware of significant changes to the work context, scanning for new
and emerging issues. This was not the case across all the organizations surveyed though.
Situational awareness emerged as a critical feature that differentiated between the organiza-
tions in terms of their adaptation to the crisis environment. It refers to the ability of leaders
to perceive arising changes and interpret novel situations, to proactively identify important
issues, and then aptly respond to them.

So, I was quite conscious in my own mind about styles because they change and as we’ve worked
through into recovery, the approach required in recovery, and I think this is a learning across all of
Canterbury is, that an entirely different mindset is required to manage recovery versus response. So,
it was just a self-awareness thing really. Situational. You would just call it situational management.
Identifying what the issues are and then working out how to get the best out of people and the best
approach to take.

Leaders in the more adaptive organizations had a higher level of situational awareness.
They accurately appraised novel and unique situational features and were able to prioritize
action accordingly. This was particularly manifested in their approach to employee wellbe-
ing, internal and external collaboration, and organizational learning. Situational awareness
encompassed mindfulness and mindful caring (Powley, 2009), noticing and understanding the
perspective of workers, leading to empathy.
In the organizations that adapted well, senior executives were not only alert to emerging
issues themselves, but were also active in fostering ongoing situational awareness as part of
the organization’s routines. They empowered other leaders to address specific issues, linked
to their unique area of expertise. For example, some senior executives appointed second-tier
leaders better attuned to staff needs, to maintain an ongoing, active focus on issues such as
wellbeing. This further developed the situational awareness of the overall organization.
328 Research handbook on organizational resilience

An Employee-Centric Orientation

In the first weeks after the earthquake, all the organizations responded in a similar manner pro-
viding for immediate, tangible staff needs. They offered support such as hotel showers, food
vouchers, water supplies, and even emergency house repairs. This mirrored a wave of initial
support occurring in the wider community. However, employee needs persisted throughout the
longer timeframe of the extended crisis, and evolved toward more subtle psychosocial risks,
such as mental health issues, fatigue, and ill-health symptoms. Yet, not all organizations were
alert to these changing employee dynamics (Nilakant et al., 2013).
The extent to which organizations were aware of employees’ needs and wellbeing in
the medium to long term constituted a second differentiating factor. In the more adaptive
organizations, staff wellbeing remained one of their priorities throughout the crisis. Those
organizations mirrored Powley’s (2009) notion of “carefully mindful,” remaining in touch
with staff perspectives, acknowledging and offering support for challenges. By comparison,
the less adaptive organizations lacked this type of mindfulness, and were less aware of, and
less responsive to, staff wellbeing issues.
This employee-centric orientation fostered the types of relationships, and the alignment
between workers and management, that facilitated higher levels of adaptation. The emphasis
on employee wellbeing reflected a broader organization-wide culture, and a people-focused
way of working. The more employee-centric organizations were characterized by positive
workplace relationships, with genuine care and respect for others. Importantly, these ways of
working existed prior to the disaster, and the support for wellbeing that was offered during the
extended crisis was just symptomatic of a longstanding and well-established employee-centric
orientation.
Middle managers were a key element in this employee-centric way of working. In the more
adaptive organizations, middle managers were treated as valuable partners. They shared this
employee-centric orientation, clearly seeing employee support as part of their role; they were
empathetic, and had the capabilities to perform this function. These managers typically felt
they were listened to, and connected to senior leaders, as well as to their staff.
In one very successful organization, almost every manager counted this people-focus
as one of the most important aspects of their role. Their empathetic concern extended to
employees’ psychological wellbeing, and understanding the disaster-related pressures outside
of work. These managers were also attuned to individual differences, rather than applying
“one-size-fits-all” solutions.

So I think that’s where the hierarchy was really strong. So we had twice daily conference calls with
our Store Managers who were in touch with all their staff and the whole call was about how are your
staff, what do they need and everything that they needed we just got for them. It has been really
a testament to our engagement of our staff now. They are still blown away by what we did for them
over a long period.

In contrast, with organizations that did not have an employee-centric orientation, local man-
agers were less likely to be empowered to address issues such as staff wellbeing, and if this
did finally happen, it tended to be much later in the crisis. Some local middle managers lacked
people management capabilities, and were slow to respond to problems affecting staff. They
also had a lower sense of togetherness and alignment with their seniors. The organizations that
encountered people-related problems were typically cases where the managers tended to pay
 Resilience in action 329

only lip-service to staff support. In those organizations, even when HR staff offered a number
of supports, there was little uptake. Instead, their staff became dissatisfied, and a range of
problems persisted in those organizations.
In other instances, the middle managers themselves were more empathetic, but had to work
in an unsupportive, wider organizational culture. While these managers sought to counter that
organizational culture, they were often forced to implement non-supportive practices that they
personally did not believe in, but were unable to challenge. This had a detrimental effect on
their own wellbeing, including perceptions of high emotional labour, stress and reports of poor
psychological and physical wellbeing. In one organization, middle managers simply ignored
some of the senior leader directives, as it was felt that staff concerns were not heard or acted
upon.
Over the duration of the crisis, the contrast between the employee-centric organizations and
those that did not display such an orientation, continued to grow. The resilience trajectories
were markedly different. The employee-centric orientation of the more adaptive organizations
existed before the disaster, in the mindsets, the routines and the capabilities in the organiza-
tion. This orientation gave them a greater situational awareness regarding staff-related issues,
and allowed them to respond more fully to those demands in the new situation. The capacity
was utilized from the outset of the disaster, and continued to develop further over the duration.
In contrast, the less adaptive organizations had a different trajectory. They belatedly discov-
ered the problems caused by their existing approach, and then began to create this capacity
much later in the disaster. In some situations, the move towards more people-centric policies
and culture only occurred years after the initial significant quake, after coming to realize that
a results-oriented focus, at the expense of people orientation, was costly and ineffective in the
post-disaster context.

Collaboration

The third factor that differentiated between organizations with regard to their resilience tra-
jectories was the ability to leverage collaborations. Despite the major constraints and resource
shortages, some organizations excelled, achieving significant outcomes in short timeframes.
This reflected the network of relationships that they were able to draw upon, both internally
and externally.
Externally, these organizations possessed a range of relationships that were often estab-
lished prior to the crisis. This provided them with external partners that were willing and able
to help from the very outset of the crisis. Their speed in obtaining support was a major asset
in a time-critical setting.
When the electricity provider mentioned earlier had exhausted all the supply of cable
joint-kits in the Southern Pacific area, they drew upon their relationships and networks. They
arranged with a German manufacturer to do a special production each day and fly them across
the world, so that at daybreak each morning a new supply would arrive in Christchurch for the
work teams. That process was repeated daily through the recovery.

Germany were making fault kits as fast as we could use them. So there was this huge supply chain
just to get the jointing kits in that were needed to actually keep repairing. When you think of it, there
was a whole world out there supporting a rebuild or just getting on with the rebuild, just getting it
connected.
330 Research handbook on organizational resilience

These networks were a central part of these organizations’ way of working, and they were
skilled at developing and maintaining relationships. In some situations, the disaster disrupted
the pre-existing networks. Although “swift trust” did emerge in a few instances, the predomi-
nant pattern was that when new connections were needed, these organizations had the ability
to create them (Beck and Plowman, 2014). They tended to make this a deliberate, high-priority
activity. In several instances, the CEO took on the role of liaising with external organizations.
In other cases, it was devolved to a team. One team, for example, developed and managed
a map of their networks, identifying all the key organizations that they needed to either
strengthen existing collaboration, or initiate a new relationship.
Internal collaboration was also important. When senior leadership teams worked closely
together, that collaboration was typically accompanied by collaboration across the functional
areas of the organization. Well-developed collaborative relationships with other geographical
units allowed the local units to draw on much needed staff and equipment resources.
In being able to access extra resources, equipment and people, these organizations could
share the vast task with a range of other groups and agencies, covering complementary areas.
They could access their networks for additional insight and technical support, and could enter
into joint projects. These connections fostered their innovation and gave them legitimacy that
allowed them to take new initiatives (Beck and Plowman, 2014).
This contrasted with the other organizations without the same connections and experi-
ence. In some instances, the senior executives of those organizations looked back over their
experience and observed that their organizations would have adapted much better if they had
collaborated. Networking was not a central part of their mindset and normal routines though,
and therefore was not prioritized. “I don’t think it was necessarily a matter of ‘no way, we’re
not working with those guys’. It’s probably just more a matter of maybe none of us had formal
working links with leadership of other [industry] and to work out how we can support each
other.”
Again, these factors influenced resilience trajectories. Some organizations belatedly began
to develop networks during the extended crisis. Similarly, organizations that lacked internal
collaboration gradually discovered that they needed to develop this during the extended crisis,
moving away from the isolated ways of working. These behaviour patterns produced slower
trajectories of resilience development.

Learning

Prior to this disaster, most organizations had only experienced short-term crises lasting a few
days. After those temporary disruptions they returned to business-as-usual. In that type of
situation, learning simply involved retrospective reviews once the disruption had ended, as
a process of learning-from-disaster. The Christchurch extended disaster situation, however,
was vastly different, with ongoing disruptions, and no foreseeable end-point or return to their
normal situation. It involved months or years operating in an unknown setting. This required
a dynamic process of rapidly learning-in-disaster, adapting to new situations as they emerged.
The capacity for this ongoing, real-time learning and adaptation constituted the fourth key
differentiating factor in terms of the organizations’ adaptation.
Learning depended on organizations perceiving the need for improvement, and having the
capacity to act on this. Several months before the major city quake, the city had a preview of
a major seismic event, with a tremor centered outside the city, but without major city destruc-
 Resilience in action 331

tion. For organizations such as a vital transport access-point, this was their first major earth-
quake. Their limited preparation and experience hampered their response, as they scrambled to
implement back-up systems and processes for reopening their facilities. As an essential access
lifeline, their delays had major consequences for the city.
After the incident, the management team set up a process to learn from the events and devise
systems for handling seismic incidents. A number of other organizations shared this approach,
viewing the events as an opportunity for learning and change: “[…] event gave us this massive
opportunity to take everything that we had learnt from the first one, everything we thought that
we screwed up, maybe not quite everything, and do it differently.”
When the devastating city-based quake occurred a few months later, the transport access
point put their improved systems into practice, reopening access to the city in a much shorter
timeframe. They calculated what those improvements meant, in terms of the numbers of
outside rescuers brought into the city with the earlier reopening, the number of rescues
performed and lives saved, in that time. These types of successes boosted the organization’s
motivation for ongoing learning, with a new sense of efficacy and a readiness to tackle other
challenges (Sutcliffe and Vogus, 2003). “So we always debrief. You can say anything you like
and it’s got to the point now where we go ‘I could have done this better’ and we go ‘right, what
do we need to do that’. It becomes almost a blameless environment and people are very open.”
Other organizations did not initially perceive a need for change though, until after the devas-
tating city quake, when they encountered a complex and unfamiliar situation where their pre-
vious experience offered little guidance. For all the organizations, there was a tension between
the known and unknown throughout the disaster situation. Their observable, day-to-day
activities often remained largely the same, working on roads, laying power cables, or coordi-
nating transport; however, the context had radically changed. The organizations that remained
focused on their existing routines, but paid less attention to the changed context, failed to fully
recognize the learning needed for change and adaptation.
Organizations such as the transport access agency had a higher level of situational aware-
ness, perceiving that need for change and learning, and they also had the capacity to imple-
ment this. Even before the disaster, they valued staff input, and were open to change. Those
organizations remained flexible and innovative, continuously adapting to emerging issues and
developing new ways to work. Some organizations moved beyond single loop learning. They
produced new technical processes, new organizational systems and processes, and acquired
new equipment and expertise; in addition, they went on to develop major changes in their
ways of thinking (Wang and Ahmed, 2003). Significantly, they also learned how to keep on
learning.
Several organizations actively translated their recent disaster-related insights into ongoing,
new ways of working that continued after the disaster, including new empowered leadership,
simpler systems for faster decision making, and structures that were more responsive to local
issues: “So [name] has gone in and she has taken 20 steps out of a 30 step process, got it down
to 10 steps and they go ‘oh are we allowed to do it that way?’ and we go ‘yeah’.”
The resilience trajectories of those learning-oriented organizations were enabled by the
other three key elements of our proposed resilience framework. Their employee-centric orien-
tation fostered a supportive learning environment and psychological safety, where members
could experiment and risk failures. Their collaboration set the foundation for collective learn-
ing, information sharing and joint exploration. Their leadership reinforced a culture of learning
332 Research handbook on organizational resilience

throughout the organization. During the disaster, those capacities developed further, as part of
a virtuous cycle, promoting their ongoing adaptation (Sutcliffe and Vogus, 2003).
In contrast, less resilient organizations tended to perpetuate their pre-disaster routines,
with less openness to taking on new information or unlearning ineffective practices. In one
organization, for example, the senior leaders were located outside of the region, and lacked
understanding of the Christchurch situation. They required that staff rigidly follow an existing
set of disaster procedures that had been developed from another location, from a different
type of disaster. Those procedures did not match the extended seismic setting. This adversely
affected the relationship between the workers and management, causing frustration and stress
as the organization’s systems were out of alignment with the changed context, especially the
nature and volumes of the new work environment.
Once again, the organizations that lacked the capacity for learning showed much slower
adaptation and growth. It was only much later in the disaster, when the consequences of their
rigid systems and mindsets became evident, that they belatedly realized the need for change.
At that point they were still limited by the extent to which their organizational environments
had the capacity to support learning, producing slower resilience trajectories.
Although sub-units sometimes attempted to develop their own learning, again, the
unsupportive wider organizational culture effectively obstructed new ways of working.
Compounding this, when an organization’s sub-units functioned in isolation from each other
and did not share new knowledge, there was even less chance of collective learning. Individual
staff sometimes gained new knowledge from working alongside other organizations, but if
their own home organizations were not open to learning, and lacked systems for gathering and
implementing new insights, this became a potent source of frustration and disillusionment for
those staff.

WHAT CAN BE LEARNED FROM THE RESEARCH?

The findings of this research give rise to a model of how organizational resilience is socially
enacted, and significantly, how it continues to develop, during an extended disaster. The
model is based around a set of capacities: leadership, employee-centric orientation, collabora-
tion, and learning. It affirms how these are largely relational, involving social processes, with
the organization as a whole going through revision of its cosmology, adapting its worldview
to incorporate the post-crisis context (Gittell et al., 2006; Powley, 2009). These capacities
function as resources that are utilized in a crisis, enabling the organization to adapt.
An important contribution from this research is the insight into the interdependency
between the four key capacities, and more specifically, how they function as a developmental
sequence. Figure 21.2 presents these as a maturity model with key areas. The starting point
of the resilience process is at Level 1, with creating the foundation of an employee-centric
orientation where employees are valued, promoting trust and engagement. Without this basis,
it is not possible to enact the other levels. From there, when employees are supported, they
can engage in collaboration and resource sharing, both within and outside their immediate unit
(Level 2). Ultimately, from these bases, the organization can progress to the organizational
learning and sharing of knowledge (Level 3).
Leadership has a key, ongoing role, through each of the stages, influencing each of the
other capacities. Leaders of resilient organizations exhibit the three core capacities in their
 Resilience in action 333

own lives, and simultaneously promote their development throughout the organization. The
leaders’ own personal capabilities enable them to have high levels of situational awareness,
perceiving the needs in each of the key areas, and acting in ways to foster resilience.

Figure 21.2 A maturity model of organizational resilience

The longer timeframe and context of this study offers insights into the development of
resilience during an extended crisis. While the findings point to specific capacity areas needed
for organizational resilience, these are not simple elements that can be changed in a short
timeframe. Those key capacities needed to be established in advance, so that they could be
drawn upon in a crisis. The more adaptive organizations exhibited cultures that were already
employee-centric, collaborative and supportive of learning, before the disaster. In a new,
unfamiliar disaster situation, the organizations’ ways of operating were based on those exist-
ing cultures. The key capacities were utilized from the outset, and in an extended crisis they
continued to develop, as part of a trajectory of constantly growing resilience.
In contrast, organizations that evidenced less adaptation had trajectories of slow, late
growth. They had limited capability in the four key areas; their leaders lacked situational
awareness, and they usually belatedly came to realize the problems caused by their existing,
less adaptive approaches. They only moved to develop capacities once the disaster had been
in progress for some time.
The maturity model has significant implications for organizations wanting to develop
organizational resilience. Viewing the process from this perspective of a time-related
sequence, progressing from employee-centric orientation through to collaboration to organ-
334 Research handbook on organizational resilience

izational learning, potentially explains why few organizations achieved capacities in all four
areas. Consistent with the propositions of earlier writers (de Wall, 2012; Sutcliffe and Vogus,
2003; Vogus and Sutcliffe, 2007), the study evidences how learning is particularly vital in
ambiguous, complex and unfamiliar situations; organizations that are skilled at creating,
acquiring and transferring knowledge show a greater capacity for learning and transformation
(for example, de Wall, 2012; Sinkula, 1994; Sutcliffe and Vogus, 2003; Vogus and Sutcliffe,
2007). However, in the context of a maturity model where organizational learning is the
ultimate stage, this requires that the other three areas are already well established, creating the
necessary conditions for organizational learning. This then implies that such learning needs to
be seen as a very sophisticated competency that takes time to achieve. It is significant to note
that each of the key elements typically require much time and work to change; an organization
that lacks these capacities would need to undergo a significant transformation to develop
organizational resilience fully, including the higher functions of organizational learning.
The use of paired organizations in the research design indicated that the differences in
adaptation could not be solely attributed to factors such as organization size, or the type of
industry. Some of the greatest variation was between two organizations of similar size, in the
same sector, with one of the pair demonstrating a markedly higher level of adaptation than
the other. Perhaps counterintuitively, an organization’s size was not necessarily an obstacle to
resilience; the more adaptive organizations were sometimes large but they identified the need
for responsive local leadership and devolved control to situationally aware leaders. Combined
with the more developed resilience-related capacities of those organizations, they could move
on a path of prompt and effective adaptation.
Finally, the research operationalizes a number of existing concepts from other areas of
organizational scholarship, combining these to create a model of how resilience devel-
ops at an organizational level, in a post-disaster setting. It offers a valuable insight into
resilience-in-action. In this respect, the research goes some way towards Britt et al.’s (2016)
need for building “more sophisticated models of resilience that conceptualize resilience as
a dynamic construct within a dynamic workplace system” (p. 394) by introducing a maturity
model of resilience in organizations.

NOTES
1. Defined as entities that provide essential infrastructure services to the community such as water,
wastewater, transport, energy and telecommunications.
2. Most organizations addressed the operational matters thoroughly but the differentiating factor was
that the leaders in the more adaptive ones also focused on the human side of the situation.

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 PART V

CONCLUSION
22. Conceptualizing the who, what, when, where,
why and how of resilience in organizations
Brianna Barker Caza, Michelle A. Barton,
Marlys K. Christianson and Kathleen M. Sutcliffe1

At the most basic level, the study of resilience in organizations aims to understand when
a period of stress culminates in positively adaptive responses from individuals, dyads, groups
and organizations. With the unexpected becoming an increasing part of the everyday, a more
nuanced understanding of resilience is a necessity, not a choice. It is therefore not surprising
that several recent reviews of the concept have noted a drastic surge in research on resilience
in organizations at all levels of analysis (see Britt et al., 2016; King et al., 2016; Kossek and
Perrigino, 2016; Olekalns et al., 2020; Williams et al., 2017 for recent reviews). The increasing
scholarly interest has led to a plethora of important insights about the ways in which individ-
uals, dyads, groups and organizations bounce back when facing a wide variety of setbacks.
Yet as the readers have likely concluded, despite significant progress, the study of resilience
in organizations is far from being a settled matter. Scholars have been calling for greater
conceptual clarity and empirical rigor for years (e.g., Britt et al., 2016; Linnenluecke, 2017;
Southwick et al., 2014; Sutcliffe and Vogus, 2003). But it is unclear how much progress has
been made, as evident by the number of chapters in this book continuing to highlight concep-
tual inconsistencies (see Britt and Sawhney (Chapter 2); Kay and Merlo (Chapter 7); Jones
Christensen, Hammond and Larsen (Chapter 15), Linnenluecke and McKnight (Chapter 11),
for examples). In part, this is because resilience is a complex and puzzling concept to study.
It is ambiguous, multilayered and dynamic. Resilience has its upsides; but it also has its (less
often discussed) downsides. Moreover, the salience and relevance of the upsides and down-
sides of a single episode of resilience may vary across levels of analysis and morph over time.
Our goal in this chapter is twofold. First, we aim to articulate and organize the conceptual
building blocks that constitute organizational resilience. Second, we use this framework to
highlight a few important theoretical and empirical avenues for continued research progress in
this area. To do this we start with an example of resilience in healthcare that illustrates some
of the inherent issues and complexities that should be considered in the study of resilience in
organizations. We draw on this example throughout the chapter as we move on to discussing
the conceptual issues (i.e., what resilience is, whose resilience is the subject of study) and
empirical challenges (i.e., deciding when resilience should be observed/measured). In the
final section of the chapter we turn towards exploring the when, why, how and where of resil-
ience, which, to date, are less well-developed, presenting an important opportunity for future
research.

Resilience in Healthcare: Workarounds and their Intricacies

Workarounds in complex healthcare environments such as hospital nursing units (like many
other service environments such as retail, hotels, restaurants, airlines, air traffic control) are

338
 Resilience future directions 339

ordinary (Tucker, 2004). To “workaround” means to bypass a recognized problem or limita-

tion in a system using novel or nonstandard methods. In healthcare, workarounds occur in part
because of the complexity and dynamism of the context (Tucker, 2004; Debono et al., 2013).
They occur because of the uncertainty surrounding patient care (Tucker, 2004; Debono et al.,
2013; Tucker et al., 2019) and because of ineffectively designed work systems as a means to
cut corners or improve existing processes (Tucker, 2004; Tucker et al., 2019). Hospital nursing
units, for example, are characterized by high levels of task interdependence. Nurses cannot
perform and complete their duties without a wide variety of other professionals including
“doctors, pharmacists, laboratory technicians, food service workers, housekeepers, secretaries,
and nurses’ aides,” to name a few (Tucker et al., 2019, p. 153). Additionally, the task of pro-
viding care to patients is essentially uncertain and unpredictable: patients have unique health
conditions and they respond to treatment sometimes in unanticipated and unintended ways.
Finally, the complexity, dynamism and changing nature of healthcare environments compli-
cates the ability to create efficient and effective work procedures and routines (Goodman et al.,
2011). Together these conditions exacerbate the likelihood that frontline clinicians (especially
nurses) will be faced with situations where they do not have all the tools and affordances that
they need to do their work. Improvisation and bricolage are necessary.
On the one hand, workarounds are both a source and demonstration of individual and
organizational resilience. When frontline clinicians encounter operational failures such as
miscommunications, human error, breakdowns in supplies of materials, equipment, or other
internal services needed to complete tasks (e.g., receipt of timely laboratory information), or
other performance obstacles, they can improvise in the face of these challenges and deliver
patient care more or less safely. For example, Tucker et al.’s (2019) recent study of the effects
of workarounds on the incidence of pressure injuries (localized damage to a person’s skin or
soft tissue) among 21,000 patients suggested that when frontline staff engage in workarounds
in response to these kinds of operational failures (e.g., rather than workaround to short cut
a process or procedure) patient outcomes improved. Thus, nurses’ capabilities for resilience,
abilities to adapt in the face of challenging conditions under some conditions (but not all),
benefit individual patients who receive care. Moreover, because workarounds can be a useful
source of ideas for improvement of tasks and processes, they promote clinicians’ resilience
by expanding individuals’ knowledge and response repertoires (Sutcliffe and Vogus, 2003).
Workarounds also stimulate individual resilience by fueling positive emotions. As
Fredrickson et al. (2003) have shown, by deliberately drawing on positive emotions, resilient
people can buffer themselves from depression. In addition, workarounds provide individual
caregivers (nurses and doctors) feelings of satisfaction and a sense of professional efficacy that
they could resolve sticky problems that might have obstructed care of the patient and the com-
pletion of their tasks. Finally, workarounds indirectly fuel unit and organizational resilience
through their effects on patient satisfaction (or even employee engagement and satisfaction).
The cultivation of a broad unit-wide culture of an “ethic of care” enacted through workaround
practices further generates emotional capabilities that foster an “ontology of possibility” that
facilitates collective resilience (Lawrence and Maitlis, 2012, p. 641; Williams et al., 2017).
On the other hand, these patterns of first-order problem-solving can have negative con-
sequences for dyadic, group, organizational and institutional resilience. When frontline car-
egivers work around immediate issues, regularly compensating for operational failures and/
or resolving problems on their own in real time, the failures come to be an “expected part of
the work routine” (Tucker, 2004, p. 162). The embedded nature of workarounds coupled with
340 Research handbook on organizational resilience

other individual, task- and context-related factors such as a sense of individual responsibility
and accountability for overcoming challenges, low expectations of control over change,
feelings of frustration and burnout, time pressures, as well as performance and production
pressures can curtail frontline caregivers’ motivation to voice concerns about existing issues
(Tucker, 2004). This not only reaffirms existing insufficient routines, but it also keeps leaders
and others who control resources necessary for removing underlying causes in the dark about
ineffective operational processes and the need for change.
More importantly, however, the lack of communication about failures thwarts organiza-
tional learning and the building of new competencies – both of which are foundational to
organizational and institutional resilience. Additionally, this contributes to a kind of rigidity
so similar problems are likely to reoccur. In effect, it erodes unit and organizational resilience.
Moreover, in a perverse way, workarounds often transfer the problem to another location.
For example, staff on one unit come to expect recurring stockouts of necessary supplies so
they secretly hoard these supplies and equipment. The unit’s secret hoarding of course causes
shortages in other locations, which naturally affects other units’ capabilities to adapt to these
operational failures. Unit and organizational resilience are compromised. In sum, workarounds
may enable individuals and organizations to continue functioning. People may find ways to
work around an immediate issue, and this means that they can be adaptable in the moment.
But that adaptability comes at a cost to other levels of organizational functioning. Resilience
researchers need to pay attention to the way in which an action, such as workaround, may
ripple out to impact interpersonal, group and organizational processes.
This example of workarounds begins to highlight the complex, dynamic, ambiguous and
sometimes even paradoxical nature of resilience in organizations. What does resilience in
organizations really mean? What does it look like? Whose resilience (i.e., individuals, teams,
organizations) should we focus on? When, why and how does it occur? And, under what
conditions are individuals, teams and organizations likely to be resilient? These are the key
questions we think researchers must grapple with in order to develop precise and robust the-
ories of resilience in and by organizations. Due to its conceptual and empirical messiness, we
urge organizational resilience researchers to be cognizant of the hurdles and decision points
they may encounter when conducting their research. In the remainder of this chapter, we will
draw on this example, as well as other studies of resilience to highlight key areas of concern
in the organizational resilience literature and to suggest approaches and recommendations that
might guide authors and reviewers of resilience studies.
Our chapter is organized around what we consider to be important theoretical touchstones in
the study of resilience. We begin by focusing on the conceptual nature of resilience, defining
and addressing inconsistencies in the primary components of the resilience equation (adversity
and positive adaptation) and exploring its conceptual boundaries (i.e., the what of resilience).
Then, we discuss its temporal (when) and multi-level (who) and nature. We next delve into the
messy nature of empirical resilience research with the aim of providing some practical tips for
raising the quality of organizational resilience research. Finally, we end by highlighting three
important future directions that are necessary for resilience researchers to traverse in order to
deepen and broaden our knowledge of resilience in organizations: temporal dynamics (when),
mechanisms (why and how), and context (where).
 Resilience future directions 341

THE ONGOING QUEST FOR CONCEPTUAL CLARITY

Many organizational researchers agree on the general essence of the resilience concept,
often citing Sutcliffe and Vogus’ (2003, p. 96) claim that resilience refers to the capacity of
individuals or organizations to “absorb strain and preserve (or improve) functioning despite
the presence of adversity.” Yet specific definitions of resilience vary quite a bit. Our struggle
to define it arises, at least in part, from the complexity of its conceptualization. Within this
volume we have seen that resilience can be viewed as something organizational actors have
(i.e., a trait or capacity) (Becker and Kabongo (Chapter 9); Caza et al. (Chapter 3), Chesley
and D’Avella (Chapter 20); Hernandez et al. (Chapter 10)), as a set of actions through which
a capability is activated and used (i.e., processes) (e.g., Jones Christensen et al. (Chapter 15),
Neville et al. (Chapter 6), Raetze (Chapter 16); Hartmann et al. (Chapter 4)), or as something
that results from that action (i.e., an outcome) (Frigotto (Chapter 5); McCluney et al. (Chapter
13); Stephens (Chapter 8); Walker et al. (Chapter 21)). The various conceptualizations within
this volume echo those found in the broader literature at the individual, dyadic and organiza-
tional levels of analysis (for recent reviews of resilience at each level of analysis see: Kossek
and Perrigino, 2016; Olekalns et al., 2020; Williams et al., 2017). Importantly, preferences for
conceptualizing resilience as a trait, capacity, process or outcome do not vary according to the
level of analysis. Rather, the same discussions seem to be taking place across levels of analysis
and disciplines (Luthar et al., 2000; Linnenluecke, 2017).
The significant variation in how scholars define, think about and study resilience is an issue
that has been elaborated in many recent reviews (e.g., Linnenluecke, 2017; Britt et al., 2016,
King et al., 2016; Kossek and Perrigino, 2016; Southwick et al., 2014; Williams et al., 2017).
It is a point of contention that many scholars feel passionate about. Yet we propose that this
debate and the field’s drive towards consensus to ultimately resolve this debate may be both
unrealistic and unhelpful to conceptual development. There is space for multiple perspectives
on the nature of resilience, and likely great utility in considering the full range of options. The
resilience literature (like sensemaking or creativity) is a large body of work and we suggest
that resilience scholars adapt a similar strategy to that of other scholars who study similarly
wide-ranging constructs. That is, rather than dividing the field with overly narrow definitions
or attempting to encompass all with wide generalizations, we suggest that scholars endeavor to
articulate exactly what kind of resilience they are studying and how this relates to other work
on resilience.
Further, by taking the time to identify the key ontological and epistemological assumptions
that ground their thinking about resilience, and then understanding how this relates to other
approaches, scholars can weave a richer and more complete tapestry of resilience. Cases of
resilience suggest that the desired positively adaptive outcome (i.e., maintaining or growth
in functioning) is the product of both static (i.e., system capabilities and resources) and
dynamic (i.e., system behaviors and processes) elements that are quite interdependent over
time (Olekalns et al., 2020; Williams et al., 2017). For instance, in the preceding example
of workarounds, adaptive actions (process) by nurses allow them to maintain functioning
(outcome) despite operational setbacks but their ability to engage in these actions may rep-
resent a learned set of response skills, developed over time (a capacity). Nurses may have
developed this capacity (or capabilities for durability; Williams et al., 2017) through the
process of successfully responding to operational setbacks. In turn, this capacity protects them
from future setbacks, making optimal functioning in the face of future threats more likely.
342 Research handbook on organizational resilience

Scholars may choose to zoom in on any one aspect (e.g., capacity) of this dynamic equation,
but acknowledging how the insights generated by their research relate to the other aspects of
resilience (e.g., process and outcome) is critical for contributing to a more general understand-
ing of resilience in organizations.

What is Resilience? Articulating the Essential Components

Although we believe that scholars should be open to the fact that there are capacity, outcome
and process elements of resilience, it is important that every study of resilience clearly articu-
late its two essential component elements: adversity and positive adaptation (Southwick et al.,
2014). In doing so, scholars can ensure that they are studying and theorizing about resilience as
opposed to other, similar but distinct concepts (such as thriving, coping or growth). Yet, while
any study of resilience should include both of these elements (Bonanno, 2004), the nature of
these elements varies dramatically – adding yet another layer of complexity to the conceptual-
ization of resilience in organizations. Different types of adversity and positive adaptation may
relate differently to the development of resilience capacity, the flow of resilient processes, and
the nature of resilient outcomes. We argue, therefore, that by more precisely conceptualizing
these component elements of resilience, scholars not only distinguish their work from other
related studies, but they do so in a way that allows each study to fit together so that we can
build a richer understanding of the nature of resilience in organizations. In other words, we
suggest how mindfully breaking down our conceptualization of resilience can help us to col-
lectively move the field of organizational resilience forward.

Adversity
Adversity is, of course, fundamental to how we conceptualize resilience and most scholars
agree that in the absence of adversity, there is no resilience (Bonanno, 2012; Southwick et
al., 2014). Many studies have considered resilience in the face of crises or other event-based
forms of adversity (Bonanno et al., 2006; Kahn et al., 2013; Powley, 2009). In this volume,
McCluney and colleagues (Chapter 13) look at organizational resilience in the case of
a large university diversity (and public relations) crisis. Two other chapters, Linnenluecke
and McKnight (Chapter 11) and Walker and colleagues (Chapter 21) analyze how resilience
emerges in the context of natural disasters. Such large-scale and infrequent events have the
potential to destroy or significantly damage organizations and communities. Even though such
events may be relatively infrequent, developing resilience in the face of discrete and signifi-
cant crises is critical to viability (Williams et al., 2017).
Yet, as our example of workarounds suggests, other types of less extreme adversity may
be far more prevalent in organizational life. Hospital nurses and other medical professionals
experience significant and consequential adversity each time they contend with insufficient
resources to adequately do their jobs and provide care to patients. Moreover, such resource
constraints build up over time, creating ongoing stress, anxiety and otherwise traumatic
working conditions. Bonanno and Diminich (2013) have labeled this type of resilience that
emerges in response to chronic adversity “minimal-impact resilience,” which is differentiated
from the “emergent resilience” prompted by single-incident traumas. In this volume, several
chapters are dedicated to understanding this minimal-impact type of resilience. For example,
Neville and colleagues (Chapter 6) theorize about “normal adversity” which they conceptual-
ize as chronic forms of setbacks and challenges. Hernandez and colleagues (Chapter 10) find
 Resilience future directions 343

that organizations report both shock-based and chronic stressors as the major hardships they
have faced. While shocks took the form of environmental events and employee death, chronic
stressors included hardships that arose from recessionary economic cycles, rising crime rates,
and labor force issues.
Importantly, what qualifies as adversity and the experience of that adversity is subjective
and quite variable across an organizational system (Kahn et al., 2018). The same event or
series of events may be experienced differently by different members. For example, in the case
of workarounds we see that an instance of adversity (e.g., shortage) may impact some nursing
units more than others. As a result, we suggest that scholars ask themselves whether the way
they conceptualize adversity impacts their conceptualization of resilience. Specifically, how
does adversity’s scope (e.g., major crisis vs operational disruption), longevity (e.g., single
event vs ongoing trauma) and level of impact (e.g., organization-wide vs one unit or person)
shape the way we think about and define resilience?

Positive adaptation
The second key element of resilience, positive adaptation, is equally as variable and conten-
tious amongst resilience researchers. While our workaround example suggests that main-
taining functioning in the face of everyday recurring “mini-crises” is a primary indicator of
resilience in healthcare, other researchers set a higher bar for positive adaptation, requiring
a system to have grown in some way after the adversity. Doing so suggests that resilience
may require systems to not only “bounce back” but “bounce forward.” For example, in this
volume, McCluney and colleagues (Chapter 13) argue that “resiliency is the capability of
envisioning and executing a vision and set of actions that move the organization beyond the
past, resolve the issues in the present, and plan for a thriving future.” In Chapter 5, Frigotto
classifies different levels of positive adaptation into three categories: absorptive, adaptive and
transformational resilience.
Importantly this distinction highlights the need for researchers not only to consider how they
are operationalizing positive adaptation, but also to explicitly consider when they are assess-
ing positive adaptation. Some researchers have measured outcomes in the face of adversity
(e.g., Powley, 2009; Lengnick-Hall and Beck, 2005), while others have measured outcomes
post-adversity (e.g., Gittell et al., 2006; Jüttner and Maklan, 2011; Shepherd and Williams,
2014; Williams and Shepherd, 2016). This lack of consistency regarding indicators of positive
adaptation makes it hard to understand what qualifies as “positive adaptation.” Do individuals
need to maintain a certain level of functioning at the time of and after an adversity? Or is just
one enough? Is it sufficient to return to pre-adversity levels of functioning or does resilience
require post-adversity growth or learning (e.g., Maitlis, 2012; 2020; Christianson et al., 2009)?
Could there perhaps be a complex relationship between these outcomes such that decreased
functioning in the time of adversity leads to more substantial growth after the experience of
adversity? Moreover, who needs to demonstrate positive adaptation? As our example high-
lights, some levels of an organization may show indications of positive adaptation while others
may not.
In summary, fully specifying what resilience is in any particular study, especially defin-
ing and measuring the components of adversity and positive adaptation, will often prompt
researchers to attend to and perhaps even question their assumptions of the when and who of
resilience. We turn to address these questions now.
344 Research handbook on organizational resilience

When does Resilience Occur?

As noted above and exemplified in our workaround scenario, researchers need to more
explicitly consider assumptions about the role of time in resilience. Specifically, an often
unanswered question is: when is resilience? Does it exist prior to adversity, manifested in the
unique capabilities, initiative, experience-based knowledge and flexibility of the caregivers?
Or is the time of resilience the period in which caregivers are actually engaged in workarounds,
during adversity? Or, do we see resilience in the outcomes of those workarounds, visible only
after adversity is overcome? How we operationalize and measure resilience – how we even
know it when we see it – is constrained by our ability to answer these questions.
Some scholars have suggested that resilience may manifest itself in different ways, shift-
ing to mean something different before, during and after engagement with adversity (see
Williams et al., 2017). For example, Pettersen and Schulman (2016) suggest that precursor
resilience involves monitoring and keeping operations within a bandwidth of conditions and
acting quickly to restore these conditions as a way of managing risk. Restoration resilience
consists of rapid actions to resume operations after temporary disruption. Finally, recovery
resilience involves putting damaged systems back together to establish a new normal that is
at least as reliable and robust as before. Similarly, authors have suggested that resilience can
be conceptualized in stages, including actions to minimize the potential for adversity, manage
its effects during adversity and mend the organizational system and resources in its aftermath
(Stoverink, 2018; Alliger et al., 2015). For example, in considering organizations’ response
to extreme weather events, Linnenluecke and colleagues argue for an overall resilience model
that includes anticipatory adaptation, impact resistance and recovery (2012). The dynamic
nature of resilience challenges researchers to move beyond static indicators of resilience and
thoughtfully consider the question of “when” these indicators may emerge.

Whose Resilience?

Our opening example illustrates another important conceptual challenge that scholars face: the
multi-level nature of resilience. This is especially important in organizational contexts. As we
have seen in this volume, resilience can be examined at the individual (Becker and Kabongo
(Chapter 9); Caza et al. (Chapter 3); Karolidis et al. (Chapter 17); Neville et al. (Chapter 6);
Kay and Merlo (Chapter 7); Johnson et al. (Chapter 12), group (Hartmann et al. (Chapter
4); Raetze (Chapter 16)), organizational (Hernandez et al. (Chapter 10); Kayes and Yoon
(Chapter 14); McCluney et al. (Chapter 13); Powley and Cameron (Chapter 18)), and system
(Linnenluecke and McKnight (Chapter 11); Walker et al. (Chapter 21)) levels of analysis. Yet
these conceptualizations are not necessarily discrete. For example, in this volume Neville and
colleagues postulate (Chapter 6) that an individual-level negotiator’s resilience will likely
impact the dyadic-level negotiation resilience, and perhaps even scale up to organizational
resilience. Becker and Kabongo (Chapter 9) talk about the group, organizational and environ-
mental elements influencing the resilience of entrepreneurs and how entrepreneurs’ resilience
influences the environment. These are just two of the many examples of resilience contagion
across levels of analysis found in this volume alone. As a result, some scholars suggest that
resilience is best viewed as a multi-level phenomenon in which individual resources and
capacities are coordinated to form group or organization-level resilience outcomes (Bowers et
al., 2017; Gucciardi et al., 2018).
 Resilience future directions 345

Even more intriguing (and problematic), we have seen that resilience at one level may shape
resilience at other levels in more complex ways. In our opening example, resilient action on
the part of individual actors (i.e., workarounds) creates an organizational capacity, or “ontol-
ogy of possibility,” for adaptive flexibility in response to short-term resource constraints. At
the same time, however, this very resilient action may undermine both individuals’ and the
organization’s ability to improve longer-term capacities for functioning. Individual resilience
can lead to burnout, inefficiency and organizational rigidity. The multi-level messiness of
resilience in organizations suggests that we, as organizational scholars, need to step back from
a single-level perspective on resilience, taking a much broader view in order to understand
how it emerges across levels over time.
Taken together, these challenges in conceptualizing resilience create corresponding empir-
ical complications. In the next section we turn to some of the practical implications worthy of
consideration when studying resilience in and of organizations.

INCREASING THE EMPIRICAL RIGOR OF RESILIENCE STUDIES

IN ORGANIZATIONS
Tackling the conceptually blurry, dynamic and complicated concept of resilience is also
empirically challenging. The first step, we would argue, is to clarify the what, when and who
of resilience within any particular study as described above. This also means keeping in mind
how any one study may relate to studies using other perspectives or focusing on resilience at
different levels of analysis.
Articulating one’s assumptions about the nature of resilience and answering questions of
what, when and who will also influence the appropriateness of various empirical approaches.
For example, when viewing resilience as a process, longitudinal data is often necessary,
though this time-series data could be gathered retrospectively (through archival documents
and interviews) or prospectively (through field experiments). Further, if the goal is to study
resilience in the wake of a particular type of context-specific adversity (e.g., organizational
crises), qualitative approaches – especially field observations – allow for investigating
complex processes that unfold over time and can “effectively address questions such as ‘What
is occurring?’ and ‘How is it occurring?’” (Lee et al., 1999, p. 164). On the other hand, if the
goal is to understand the mechanisms and drivers of the resilience in the face of recurring
trauma, it may be best to use repeated measures over the course of a day, week or month, with
quantitative or even open-ended experience sampling protocols. When viewing resilience as
an outcome, quantitative approaches may facilitate a more objective comparison of pre- and
post-adversity performance levels.
The availability of existing tools and research practices for studying resilience will be
likely to depend on the level of analysis. A number of measures exist to evaluate adversity
as a capacity or trait at the individual level of analysis. For example, Wagnild and Young’s
(1993; Wagnild, 2009) proprietary RS; Block and Kremen’s (1996) ego-resiliency scale,
Connor and Davidson’s (2003) CD-RISC scale, the brief resilience scale (BRS) (Smith et al.,
2008), Career Resilience Sale (London, 1983; 1993), and Kobasa’s (1979) hardiness scale
are all frequently used measures of individual resiliency (although each of these have their
limitations; see Caza et al., Chapter 22 in this volume for a review). Examinations of resilience
as a capacity or outcome at the organizational level of analysis often rely on a diverse set of
346 Research handbook on organizational resilience

indicators. The lack of standardization in resilience indicators can make it difficult to develop
insights on the antecedents, mechanisms and process of resilience across studies.
While it is beyond the scope of this chapter to delineate every empirical consideration or
tradeoff (e.g., qualitative vs quantitative, retrospective vs prospective, naturalistic field work
vs experimental), we feel that a more explicit articulation of the conceptualization of resilience
in terms of what, who and when can then guide empirical choices. Beyond this, however, we
offer two additional thoughts on the empirics of resilience.
First, most studies today demonstrate a positive bias in their views of resilience. We look
primarily at how resilience benefits organizations and their members. Yet, as our example
suggests, there can be a downside or dark side of resilience (Williams et al., 2017). What starts
as resilient individual behavior may lead, over time, to burnout and stress. Individual resilience
may come at the cost of organizational learning. Scholars can better protect against this pos-
itive bias in a number of ways. First, rather than measuring only positive outcomes, scholars
can expand the list to test for negative outcomes as well. In addition to measuring constructs
such as performance, efficiency and safety outcomes, we can include also stress levels, job sat-
isfaction and attitudes towards management. Second, as we have seen, resilience at one level
and time can have both positive and negative effects at another level and time. By expanding
the scope of the data collected (over time, across levels), scholars can develop a richer, more
nuanced and realistic view of the reality of organizational resilience.
A second issue that has critical empirical implications is the dynamic relationship between
resilience and the experience and sometimes even emergence of adversity itself. If resilience
occurs before, during and after adversity, then the act of being resilient substantively impacts
the adversity context (Williams et al., 2017). Consider the notion of precursor resilience
(Pettersen and Schulman, 2016) or what Linnenluecke et al. (2012) refer to as anticipatory
adaptation. By monitoring and adapting to the potential for adversity, we shape the envi-
ronments to which we then respond. Even during adversity, organizational actors enact the
ensuing context (Weick, 1993). Capturing these temporal and enacted aspects of resilience
may require more sophisticated methods of data collection. Retrospective views will likely be
colored by hindsight bias but perhaps more importantly, they may miss entirely the moments
of resilience when actors (knowingly or not) shape their own experience. Ethnography or other
observation techniques may better capture the unfolding of resilience.

Where Should the Study of Resilience Go in the Future?

In addition to designing studies in a way that addresses the conceptual and empirical con-
cerns currently complicating the organizational resilience literature, there are many exciting
under-developed frontiers that have the potential to provide important insights. Here we
highlight three important resilience trends we hope will gain momentum in the coming years:
(1) further investigation of the when of resilience, particularly the temporal dynamics and
durability of resilience; (2) greater exploration of the why and how of resilience, focusing on
identifying mechanisms; and (3) additional examination of the where of resilience, looking at
the impact of the changing context of work to better understand the development and process
of resilience.
 Resilience future directions 347

Temporal dynamics and durability of resilience

Throughout this chapter, we have called for scholars to be more precise about how they are
defining resilience and to articulate more clearly their underlying assumptions about the nature
of resilience. Many of these underlying assumptions suggest important but understudied
questions about the when of resilience – that is, the relationship of time and resilience (Britt
et al., 2016; Fisher et al., 2019). In particular: when does resilience occur (or when can we
see evidence of resilience)? When does it not occur, especially when we might expect it to be
present? How long does it last? How is it sequenced in relationship to various antecedents and
outcomes? We begin to explore some of those issues below.
If resilience is framed as a trait or capacity, especially if it’s a latent capability, how does it
wax and wane over time? One daily diary study of resilience at work found that individuals’
resilience can fluctuate day-to-day (Martinez-Corts et al., 2015). We might ask, then, how can
one’s capacity for resilience be maintained, strengthened or depleted over days, weeks or even
years? In a related field, scholars have experimented with ways to improve personal hardiness,
“a characteristic sense that life is meaningful, we choose our futures, and change is interesting
or valuable” (Bartone, 2006). For instance, Khoshaba and Maddi (2001) have shown that par-
ticipating in hardiness training programs led to increased personal hardiness (i.e., the attitudes
of commitment, challenge and control). Similarly, Griffith and West (2013) demonstrated that
resilience training was associated with improvements in well-being and coping with stress-
ful circumstances. Additional research has demonstrated that other popular trait resilience
measures are also subject to treatment effects, once again suggesting that one’s capacity for
resilience does morph over time (Britt et al., 2016; Campbell-Sills and Stein (2007); Conner
and Davidson, 2003). However, in a recent meta-analysis of resilience-building training
programs at work, such as hardiness training, Vanhove and colleagues (2016) concluded that
such programs only have small to moderate effects that subside over time. Adding more lon-
gitudinal data collection such as repeated survey measurement or longer-term qualitative data
collection may allow researchers to unpack the mechanisms associated with the ways in which
individuals’ capacity for resilience develops and changes over time.
If resilience is framed as a process, questions related to temporal patterns and trajectories of
action come to the fore (Langley, 1999; Strauss, 1993). How is resilience constructed through
sequences of actions? How do prior actions effect later actions? How are these sequences of
action collectively shaped by people working together? More broadly, how does the process of
resilience unfold over time? And how is it related to other processes in organizations? There
has been some discussion of trajectories at the level of individual resilience (e.g., Bonanno and
Diminich, 2013), but scholars are only just beginning to explore questions related to temporal
patterns and trajectories of action at the dyadic, team, organizational and institutional level.
For instance, Olekalns, Caza and Vogus (2020) introduce the notion of trajectories of repair,
arguing that past literature on resilience has emphasized immediate, short-term repair efforts
and neglected the dynamics that might influence relationship repair and the emergence of
resilient relationships over time. In addition, Barton and Kahn (2019) have suggested that
adversity can set in motion trajectories of intergroup behavior in which adversity-triggered
anxiety is either acted out (brittle trajectory) or defused (resilient trajectory). In both these
examples, the authors have worked to elucidate the microdynamics between organizational
members that can determine the shape of resilience over time. However, further study of the
temporal patterns and trajectories is necessary to create a more comprehensive and dynamic
picture of resilience.
348 Research handbook on organizational resilience

Resilience does not occur in isolation. By studying how resilience develops and unfolds
over time, researchers can gain insight into how resilience relates to other simultaneously
occurring processes such as crisis management or organizational learning. For example, in
studying how the B&O Railroad Museum was able to cope with damage to their museum and
its collections during a severe snowstorm, Christianson and colleagues (2009) found that the
process of resilience was intertwined with the process of organizational learning. Specifically,
their findings showed that organizational routines for coping with interruptions that had been
learned and strengthened in earlier (smaller) disruptions allowed the organization to bounce
back when it faced a significant crisis. There is still much unknown about how resilience
occurs in relation to other organizational processes – we encourage researchers to broaden
their scope of inquiry to consider the larger organizational and temporal context in which
resilience takes place.
Finally, if resilience is framed as an outcome, temporal questions go beyond documenting
the correlation between the antecedents of resilience and the outcome of resilience. For
instance, what is the time frame in which resilience takes place? Is there a lag between the
antecedents of resilience and its occurrence? How enduring or impermanent is resilience?
When resilience is seen as an outcome, it’s tempting to assume that once resilient, always resil-
ient. But this may not be the case. Resilience is relative; it emerges and changes in transaction
with specific contextual circumstances. Resilience demonstrated in one situation may not be
sustained or transferred (Sutcliffe and Vogus, 2003). In some cases, positively adjusting in the
face of challenging conditions adds to the strength of the current entity and likely to that of
a future entity through processes of hierarchical integration and complexification of behavioral
systems (Sutcliffe and Vogus, 2003; Egeland et al., 1993). However, this doesn’t mean that
resilience is fixed or predicts later competence in a linear deterministic way. Recognizing the
potential for fallibility raises critical questions about the impermanence of successful coping.
Sometimes it is the impermanence of adversity, rather than resilience, that matters more.
The passing of time can be viewed as a latent resource. Moments come and go and things
are constantly changing. In fact, impermanence throughout the world is the same: leaves
fall, maidens wither, and kings are forgotten (Weick and Sutcliffe, 2006). Yet, when adver-
sity strikes, people often face the experience of impermanence – that everything is shifting,
dissolving, rising and falling. In some cases, this can lead to anxiety and fear. It can lead to
a clinging to what was, and blindness to what is – a blindness to the reality of what is in front
of us. In other cases, however, the passage of time (or even the recognition that time will
pass) can allow people to cope more effectively. An implication is that appreciation of and
awareness of impermanence, for example through mindfulness training or other meditative
techniques, can fuel resilience (Sutcliffe et al., 2016).
As evidenced in this section, many questions about the temporal dynamics of resilience
remain unanswered. By investigating these questions, scholars can break new theoretical
ground and build a more nuanced understanding of resilience.

Mechanisms of resilience
A second resilience frontier that needs greater exploration is understanding how and why resil-
ience develops and emerges. Organizational scholars are increasingly focused on mechanisms
that explain how and/or why one thing leads to another and identify relationships across levels
of analysis (Anderson et al., 2006). Davis and Marquis (2005) write, “If a regression tells
us about a relation between two variables – for instance, if you wind a watch it will keep on
 Resilience future directions 349

running – mechanisms pry the back off the watch and show how” (p. 336). Although scholars
are beginning to explore the mechanisms of resilience, there is much still to be learned about
“how” and “why” resilience takes place. Mechanisms driving resilience may include affective,
cognitive and/or behavioral factors that manifest themselves at different levels of analysis
in organizations. For example, Fredrickson (2004) suggests that positive emotions broaden
individuals’ thought-action repertoire, creating more behavioral response options in the face
of adversity. At the group level, Barton et al. (2015) argue that anomaly-seeking practices
(behavior) contribute to and enrich sensemaking (cognition) as a means of enacting precursor
resilience. While scholars are accumulating evidence for various possible mechanisms of
resilience, the field would benefit from an integrative and clear understanding of the key
drivers of resilience in organizations. To the extent that resilience is something we do, and not
just something we have, what does that process look like? How is resilience cultivated over
time? What resources are critical to this process? A deeper understanding of the mechanisms
could allow us to explore questions such as: can resilience be planned? If there is a process of
resilience, can organizational actors practice or train for resilience in meaningful ways?
A focus on uncovering key mechanisms can also shed light on how resilience unfolds across
levels of analysis. One new and potentially generative area of exploration involves considering
the relational mechanisms that not only enable individual growth after adversity (Maitlis,
2020), but also drive group resilience (Bowers et al., 2017; Gucciardi et al., 2018; Stoverink
et al., 2018). For example, Barton and Kahn (2019) suggest that as individual members share
their experience with adversity, they create an interpersonal space in which group-level
meaning making and learning occur, resulting in collective resilience. As such, interpersonal
spaces may be a type of latent resource that impacts the development of resilience at the indi-
vidual, relational and collective levels. Future research should focus on the development and
use of such spaces in the aftermath of both chronic and acute adversity.

The changing nature of work and resilience

A final frontier that resilience scholars should explore is the where of resilience. Context is
often treated as a boundary condition rather than an object of study. We argue that scholars
need to take into account context, especially how the changing nature of work and technology
impacts workers’ and organizations’ abilities to develop and manifest resilience. Davis (2016)
characterizes the new world of work as being one in which large corporations are in decline,
and without organizations at the center of their work, individuals’ careers have become
a game of “chutes and ladders.” Other scholars have similarly documented that factors such
as outsourcing, offshoring, and the rise of the shared and gig economies are fundamentally
changing the nature of work for workers and their organizations (Barley et al., 2017). This
raises a number of questions about how changes in context affect the nature, process and
measurement of resilience. First, what are the types of adversity and challenges that individ-
uals face in the new worlds of work and how are they different from more traditional work
contexts? Ashford et al. (2018) identified viability challenges, identity challenges, organiza-
tional challenges, emotional challenges, and relational challenges. The viability challenge
seems particularly salient as a new form of chronic adversity. Many workers and economists
talk about the “feast or famine” atmosphere of work in the gig economy. The instability and
unpredictability of both the feast and the famine means that workers are often teetering on the
edge of financial distress, even in very highly skilled professions like high-tech (Barley et al.,
2017). There is thus a growing population of precarious workers who do not necessarily have
350 Research handbook on organizational resilience

organizational or societal resources to develop resilience trajectories. As a result, this context

is ripe for understanding the psychological and behavioral resources critical for staying afloat.
A second question might be: what does positive adaptation look like in a world of work that
is characterized by frequent disruption, constant job-churn, and short-term contracts rather
than stable, long-term employment relationships? How do individuals “bounce back” when
there is nothing to bounce back to and what are the indicators of resilience? Without common
and standardized metrics for success, it is difficult to assess when an individual or organization
is doing well or not. Furthermore, if change is required and demanded by the environment, is
persistence even a meaningful concept?
Finally, a third important line of inquiry in the new world of work is: how does a lack of
organizational structure impact the process of resilience? When individuals work mostly alone
without organizational structure or team relationships (Ashford et al., 2018), what relational
mechanisms for resilience, if any, remain? Similarly, if organizational membership and loyalty
have been exchanged for worker flexibility (Spreitzer et al., 2017), how do organizations
convince internal and external stakeholders such as workers and customers to stand by and
help them to come back stronger?

CONCLUSION
The purpose of this chapter was to discuss key issues resilience scholars are currently facing
(conceptual clarity and empirical rigor) in a way that helps to identify a fruitful path forward in
the study of organizational resilience. Our goal was not so much to provide concrete answers
as to pose questions in a constructive way, and to suggest critical issues that scholars must
contend with as we collectively work to advance the study of resilience.

NOTE
1. All four authors contributed equally to the development and writing of this chapter. This project did
not receive any dedicated funding.

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Index

absorption resilience 61–3 ambiguity 137, 236, 275, 287

adaptability 14, 28, 34, 102, 104, 111–13, 340 American Psychological Association (APA) 215
tacit knowledge for 106 antecedent-focused emotion regulation 93
adaptation 2, 325–6 APA see American Psychological Association
adaptive coping 122, 125, 170 (APA)
collaboration 329–30 armed conflict 154–5
employee-centric orientation 328–9 artificial snowing systems 62–3
explicit cues for 105 attachment theory 219
feedback processes 309 Avey, J.B. 122–3
leadership 326–7 avoidance coping 73
learning 330–32
methodology 309 Bangladesh, small and medium-sized firms in 121
opportunistic mindset 309 Barton, M.A. 236, 240, 347, 349
sensing and 305, 308–9, 318 BCPs see Business Continuity Plans (BCPs)
situational awareness of leaders and behavioral systems 348
organizations 327 behavior as antecedent to resilience 214–15
adaptive organizations 327–9, 333–4 lostness see lostness
adaptive resilience 61, 63–5 and organizational lostness 215–16
adverse events 87, 242 behavior in organizations 39
emotional consequences of 96 behavior patterns 216–17
adversity 2, 10, 21, 25, 70–71, 86, 105, 123–4, Being-in-the-World 276–9
127, 132, 154, 167, 342–4 Bell, B.S. 237
adaptation 72 Biswas-Diener, R. 122
for additional growth 15 black ceiling 169
collective exposure to 41 Black social identity 172
conceptualization of 55 black women at work 5, 167
in content, timing, duration, consequences capability for 167
and interactions 59–60 discrimination 168–9
context-specific 345 emotional tax 169
digging in 72–3 experiences of 170–72
experience of 41–2, 343 racism 168
forms of 71 recommendations for resilience-building
instance of 343 interventions 173–4
intrapsychic sources of 71–2 trauma and adversity in workplace 167–9
levels of 10–12 well-being of 167
by major, minor and medium profiles 59 Blatt, R. 238–9, 241
maladaptive responses to 72–3 Boin, A. 16, 58, 61
in negotiation 73 Bonilla-Silva, E. 168
organizational system 20–21 Bowers, C. 14–15, 18, 239
perceptions of 71 Brett, J.M. 77
predictability and unexpectedness 58–9 Brickson, S.L. 149
self-reinforcing dynamics 72 Britt, T.W. 10, 12–13, 58, 96, 322, 334
situational sources of 71 broaden-and-build theory 42, 47–8
walking away 73 Bruneau, M. 15
in workplace 167–8 bureaucracy 247
affective team processes 42–3 Burke, C.S. 241
aid responsiveness 159 business continuity 156–7, 264, 272
Ainsworth, D. 299, 313 Business Continuity Plans (BCPs) 325–6
Alliger, G.M. 11, 13–14, 17, 233, 235–6

354
 Index 355

Cameron, K.S. 204 international efforts at encouraging 155–6

Canterbury earthquakes 320, 327 literature review 154–5
capacity for resilience 10–16, 18–20, 126, 250, NGO and GO responses 162–3
347 role of private and public sector actors in 158
career development activities 173 compensation 134–5
caregivers 219, 339–40, 344 competing values framework 261–3, 269, 271–2
Carmeli, A. 39, 43, 239 original formulation of 265
Cartesian dualism 106 competitive pressures 261
CCBs see compulsory citizenship behaviors compulsory citizenship behaviors (CCBs) 249,
(CCBs) 253
CEAI see Collaboration Effectiveness conceptual inconsistencies 338
Assessment Instrument (CEAI) conflict management 237
centralization 247 conscientiousness 34
change-oriented citizenship behavior 249 consistency 33–4
Chernobyl disaster 157 of effort 27
Christchurch 332 context-specific adversity 345
earthquake 322–3 “context-specific” knowledge 243
chronic adversity 35, 349–50 contextual differences 242
chronic stressors 137 contextual influences 19
civil emergency 325 continuous improvement 211
coaching 174 continuous learning 195–6
co-created episodes of resilience 150 conventional wisdom 327
co-created vision 308 coping 172
cognitive dissonance 95 abilities 222
cognitive psychology 220–21 core affect 87, 88, 94, 95
cognitive reframing 80 core self-evaluations (CSEs) 118–19
cognitive team processes 44–5 corporate philanthropy 157–8
Cohen, S. 106, 209 cosmology 275
Collaboration Effectiveness Assessment episodes 322
Instrument (CEAI) 302 cosmology episode 285
collaborative culture 265 concern for others 286
collaborative efforts 145–6 preoccupation with things 286
collective leadership 189, 192–4 temporality 285–6
collaborative relationships 330 counterfactual reasoning 278
collective debriefings 237 counterfactual thinking 277–8
collective efficacy 173, 239 co-workers 220–21
collective emotion regulation 237 creation of business 116
collective leadership 193–4 creativity 236
collective learning 332 crisis management 181
foundation for 331–2 CSEs see core self-evaluations (CSEs)
collective resilience 80, 171, 173, 238, 339, 349 culture 207, 261
collective sensemaking 44, 236, 240 of preparedness 159
commitment 304, 306–8, 312–13, 317 cumulative knowledge 53–4
enactment 306 cyclones 153
expectations 306
theme of 306 data collection 324–5
communication 97, 191–2, 195, 276 Davis, G. 349
community-based suppliers 150–51 de-escalation 71
community resilience 5, 54, 56, 98, 153–4, 159 demonstration of resilience 10–14, 18, 21
business continuity 156–7 Dengue fever 123
corporate philanthropy 157–8 Dennis Organ 250
definition of 154–5 deprivation 221
firm activity and 154 descriptive statistics 302
firm responses 156, 160–62 developing economies 116–21
on individual resilience 159–60 deviation 220–21
356 Research handbook on organizational resilience

disaster 155, 331 ending an emotion episode 92–3

literature on 203, 211 experience 86–9
philanthropy 157 incorporating time 96
and recovery 324 reactivating an emotion episode 93–5
response systems, failures of 153 and resilience 96
discriminant validity 28 response-focused strategies of 95–6
discrimination 168–9 social context 96
disorientation 217 social sharing 97
distinctions strategies 94
at employee level 11–13 emotions 132
at level of organization 15–17 emergence of 88
at level of team 13–14 in response 86–7
distress 12, 27, 92–3, 109, 121, 167–9, 174–5 empathy 240
diversity crisis 180, 191 employee assistance programs (EAPs) 97
organizational resilience in 192–4 employee behaviors 250
process-centered perspective of 180–81 employee-centric orientation 328–9, 332–4
diversity resistance 190–91 employee goodwill 131
dual pathway modelling public administration employee–organizational resilience interface
251–2 321–2
Duckworth, A.L. 28, 33–4 employee resilience
Dupuy, J.-P. 278, 285, 295 definition of 323
dyadic resilience 80, 340 multilevel considerations in 17–19
dynamic interactionism 42 energy sustainability 299
dynamic resilience 338 entrepreneurial resilience 5, 116–17, 126
antecedents of 118
EAPs see employee assistance programs (EAPs) comprehensive theory of 117
earthquake 275–6, 278, 320 conflict 125
Christchurch 322–3 control over circumstances 125
Haiti 322 economic conditions 124–5
ECA approach see ethnographic content analytic effects of 116, 122
(ECA) approach for entrepreneurs 121
ego resiliency 26, 345 for firm 121
emergence, stages of 204 illustrative model of 117
emergent resilience 343 impact of 121
emotional abuse 168 implications for research and practice 126–7
emotional dissonance 95 individual differences 118–20
emotional encouragement 144–5 mediators 122–3
emotional expression 91–2 moderators 123–4
emotional intelligence 240 for region 122
emotional labor 89, 91–2, 95, 329 social factors 120
emotional regulation 2, 91 traits of wealth creation 118
emotional support 17, 98, 210 entrepreneurial vision 118
emotion episode 87–8 entrepreneurs 121
depiction of 88 environmental dynamism 26
emergence and dissipation of 87 environmental pollution 154–5
ending an 92–3 episodic resilience processes 233
management of 87 ERPs see event-related potentials (ERPs)
negative 88–9, 93 escalation 71
psychological construction of 87 EST see event system theory (EST)
reactivation of 89, 93–4 ethical stewardship 196
transience of 87 ethic of care 339
emotion regulation 4, 86, 89–92, 97 ethnographic content analytic (ECA) approach
communities 98 189
and emotional labor 91–2 event-driven team resilience processes 235
emphasis on 86 event-related potentials (ERPs) 87
 Index 357

event system theory (EST) 242 estimated correlations 29–30

external adversity 41 findings 29–32
external regulation strategies 91–2, 95 vs. hardiness 29–32
Exxon Valdez disaster 157 measurements of 33
meta-analytic correlations with 31
family support 120, 124 not trait resilience 32–3
Feyerherm, A. 299, 313 relationship with resilience 32
financial service providers 325 trait 26–7, 32–3
firm activity 154, 158 Gross, J.J. 91, 93–4
firm involvement in community resilience 158 group norms 238
firm responses group resilience 192, 340
disasters 160–62 growth-based story-telling 75–6
during disasters 156 growth narratives 4, 73, 75–9
Fisher, D.M. 53, 57, 60 Gucciardi, D.F. 13–14, 17–18, 235–6, 238–40
flexibility 2, 70, 73–80, 210
incremental beliefs 78 Haiti earthquake 322
perspective-taking 77 hardiness 26–7, 33
flooding 153 grit vs. 30–32
focused action 210–11 meta-analytic correlations with 31
formalization 247 hardship 135
fostering resilience 271 experience of 137–9, 149
foster resilience, emotion regulation 86, 90 reframing of 146–7
communities 98 sample by experience of 134
and emotional labor 91–2 types of 137
emotion episode 92–5 Harvey, J. 251
experience 86–9 Haselhuhn, M.P. 78
incorporating time 96 healthcare
response-focused strategies of 95–6 environments 339
social context 96 organizations, resilience in 339–41
social sharing 97 Heidegger, M. 276–7, 295
fosters learning 2 high reliability organizations (HROs) 204, 206
foster team resilience 45–6 high-risk organizations (HROs) 157
Fredrickson, B.L. 12, 94, 339, 349 Hill, K.A. 216
Frese, M. 13 Historically Underutilized Business Zones
Frigotto, M.L. 4, 60 (HUBZone) program 135
Fukushima accident, management of 294 Hobfoll, S.E. 47
Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant 275–6 Holling, C.S. 154
functioning 11–14, 43–4, 47–8, 154, 159, 192, Holt, R. 276
195, 244, 249–51, 257, 263 HROs see high reliability organizations (HROs)
HUBZone program see Historically Underutilized
Galatzer-Levy, I.R. 12 Business Zones (HUBZone) program
general resilience 61 human agentivity 276
geographic lostness 220 human capital of individual employees 17
Giannoccaro, I. 45 human malfunction 203
Gittell, J.H. 17–18, 321–2 Hurricane Katrina 86, 153
Glowinski, D. 15 Hyogo Framework 154–6
goal-oriented behavior 237
governance doctrine 247 ICTs see information and communication
Grandey, A.A. 91 technologies (ICTs)
Gregory, D. 193 IDNDR see International Decade for Natural
Griffith, J. 347 Disaster Reduction (IDNDR)
grit 3, 25, 27–8 implicit microaggressions 168–9
approach 28–9 impression management 253
defined 33 improvisation 236
discussion 33–4 inability to reorient 217
358 Research handbook on organizational resilience

Inclusive Excellence framework 196 International Decade for Natural Disaster

incremental beliefs 78 Reduction (IDNDR) 155
indeterminacy, face of 277–8 international joint ventures 301
individual adaptability 112 international thinking around community
individual differences 6, 15, 75–6, 90, 180, 217, resilience 158
224, 328 inter-organizational diagnostic model 299
individual diversity 312 inter-organizational resilience, definition of 301
individual employees inter-organizational systems 299, 313
characteristics and competencies of 18 and diagnostic model 299–300
resilience 16 methods 301–2
individual learning 207–11, 225 resilience in 300–301, 303–6
as antecedent 203 commitment 306–8
description of 205 comparison with organizational resilience
importance of 209 312–13
processes 206 diagnostic model 310–12
individual learning routines 207–8 limitations and suggestions for future
behaviors and strategies 210–11 research 313
continuous improvement 211 significance 309–10
flexibility 210 vision 308–9
focused action 210–11 interpersonal process 237
learning identity 208–9 interpretation 44
openness to experience 208 inter-rater reliability 302
readiness 208–9 intersectional invisibility 169
supports 209–10 intertemporal effects 47–8
individual-level knowledge 106 intuition 44
individual level resilience 210 isolation 137, 147, 171, 175, 219–20, 225–8
individual performance, assessment of 253
individual resilience 17, 98, 159–60, 339, 346 James, E.H. 171
definitions of 13 JD-R model see Job Demands-Resources (JD-R)
importance of 250 model
individual resilience on organizational citizenship job demands 248, 252, 254
behavior classification 253
defining 249–50 pathway 253–4
dual pathway modelling public Job Demands-Resources (JD-R) model 248,
administration 251–2 251–3, 255–6
job demands pathway 253–4 job resources 248, 252, 254–5
job resources pathway 254–5 classification 255
opportunities for research 255–6 pathway 254–5
in public administration settings 247–9 jointness 132, 141, 147, 150
industry sector, interview participants by 324
inevitable disaster Kabongo, J.D. 5
concern for others 287–8 Kahn, W.A. 240, 347, 349
preoccupation with things 287 Kapoutsis, I. 78
temporality 287 Katz, D. 250
informal training 217 Kauffeld, S. 233
information and communication technologies Kayes, D.C. 205, 207
(ICTs) 250 Kay, S.A. 4
information sharing 17–18, 74, 77, 236, 331–2 Kennedy, D.M. 14, 233
input–mediator–outcome–input (IMOI) Khoshaba, D.M. 347
framework 233 Klein, K.J. 17, 19
institutional resilience 340 knowledge
integration 44, 48, 79, 155, 223, 263, 348 dimension of 112
interaction processes 42 forms of 104
internal regulation strategies 92 inscrutability of 106–7
lack of 189–91
 Index 359

substantial body of 232 Victoria Grover and Grand Staircase

transfer 80 Escalante Search 225–6
knowledge, skills, abilities and other Luthans, F. 13, 123
characteristics (KSAOs) 240
Kolb, D.A. 205 Maddi, S.R. 10, 347
Kossek, E.E. 53 Maitlis, S. 42
Kozlowski, S.W.J. 17, 19, 237, 241 Malhotra, D. 74
KSAOs see knowledge, skills, abilities and other Mallak, L.A. 15–16
characteristics (KSAOs) managers 150
collective experience of 147
Labov, W. 280 commitment 147
Lagadec, P. 58 strategies of 135
Lampel, J. 58 manifestation, moment of 58
Lavine, M. 204 man-made disasters 154
Law School Admission Test scores 34 marginalized groups 170
lead communities 160 marginalized individuals 168
leaders/leadership 266–7, 326–7, 332–3 marketplace, products and services to 116
competencies 272 Marks, M.A. 235, 237
empowered 331 Masten, A.S. 11
lack of 189–91 Masterson, S. 133
situational awareness of 327 Mauss, I.B. 90, 92
skills 118–19 MBSR see mindfulness-based stress reduction
learning 330–32 programs (MBSR)
collaborative and supportive of 333 McKnight, B. 5
community 196 mechanisms of resilience 90, 268–71
from disaster 330 mentoring 144, 174
identity 208–9 Merlo, K.L. 4
organizations 331 meta-analysis
positive aspects of 203 correlate groups used in 30
routines and organizational resilience 206–7 of grit 28–9
stages of 208 Mexico 120
Lefdal mine in Norway 65 Meyer, M.A. 54, 62
Lengnick-Hall, C.A. 15–16, 18 middle managers 194, 328–9
Levinthal, D.A. 56 Middleton, M. 194–5
Lewis, B. 78 Miller, G.E. 74
Lewis, P.S. 122 mindfulness-based stress reduction programs
Liberman, V. 77 (MBSR) 174
liminality 216, 223 mindful organizing 104
Linnenluecke, M.K. 5, 54, 344 Missouri, diversity crisis 194
Locke, E.A. 118 Mizzou
lost person behavior diversity crisis 181, 188–9, 191–2, 195–6
deprivation 221 leadership 190
deviation 220–21 organizational resilience at 189–96
geographic perspective on 216–17 racial events at 181
isolation 219–20 stakeholders 184, 186
and liminality 223 Moliterno, T.P. 18
and need for resilience 223–5 Morgan, P.B. 14, 40, 239
organizational life and resilience 228–9 Morris, M.H. 122
organizational perspective on 217–18 multilayered resilience 338
psychological state of 216 multilevel depiction of resilience 19–20
realization 221–2 mutual motivation 237
reunification, rebuilding and resilience 223 mutual support 266–7
separation and “point last seen” 219
stage of 224 Narayan, A.J. 11
natural disasters 87, 153–4
360 Research handbook on organizational resilience

firms in 153 literature from determinedness to

need for resilience (NR) 214, 223–4 indeterminateness 54–5
negative emotions 41 outcomes 61–2
crossover of 42 relativity 57, 65–6
episodes 93–4 relevance of 56
negative events 70 transformative resilience 64–6
exposure to 70 NPM movement see New Public Management
negative reciprocity 73 (NPM) movement
negotiation NR see need for resilience (NR)
flexibility 74
research on 72 OCB see organizational citizenship behavior
risks and unpredictability of 72 (OCB)
self-efficacy 78 O’Connor, K.M. 77
negotiation adversity 4, 71 offset latency 88–9
experiences of 75 O’Grady, K.A. 322
sources of 71–2 O’Neill, O.A. 43
negotiation resilience 70 ontology of possibility 339–40
adversity in 70–72 operational failures 339
capacity for flexibility 77–8 organizational adaptability 102–4, 111
costs and benefits of persistence 77 adaptability 104–6
enabling conditions for 76–7 attentiveness 104–6
flexibility 74–5 discussion 111–12
growth narratives 75–6 role of attention 103–4
initiation 79 tacit knowledge see tacit knowledge
interventions and training 80–81 organizational adaptation 223
laboratory for resilience research 80 organizational breakdown 203
maladaptive responses to adversity 72–3 organizational capacity 345
negotiator resilience 73–4 organizational change 250, 255
objective value 78 co-creation of 196
persistence 74 organizational citizenship behavior (OCB)
pursuit of growth narratives 76 249–51, 253, 255
strengthened efficacy 79 individual resilience on 256
subjective value 78 resilience and 254, 256
unfolding process of 73 organizational context of action 275
negotiator resilience 70 organizational culture 261, 272, 329, 332
behavioral manifestation of 75 anticipatory images 269–70
negotiators, divergence for 70 competing values framework 262–3
networking 330 components of 266–7
neuroticism 45 culture types 265–6
New Public Management (NPM) movement diagnosing and changing 265
247–9, 254 fundamental dimension of 261
New Zealand earthquakes 132 identity 270
Nils, F. 97 leadership 267
Nokia 66 mapping 263–4
normal adversity 80 mutual support 267
normalization 204, 284 organizational learning 268
Norris, F.H. 159, 321 policy and instruction 269
novelty and change, resilience on 53–4, 236 positive affirmation 270
absorptive resilience 62–3 positive relationships 270
adaptive resilience 63–4 practice, implications for 271
and adversity triggers 58–60 recovery from setbacks 268
awareness 57 research, implications for 271–2
definition of 57–8 resources and mechanisms 268–9
degree of 57 types of 264–5, 272
dimensions 56–7 vulnerability 271
 Index 361

organizational disaster, stages of 204 researchers 340

organizational effectiveness 251 shared passion for place 144
organizational failure 203 shared schema 144–5
organizational functioning, levels of 340 situational awareness of leaders and
organizational leaders 266 organizations 327
organizational learning 266, 268, 322, 327, 340, and social exchanges 132–3
346, 348 social media and escalating crises to tipping
conditions for 334 point 191–2
functions of 334 stakeholder strategies 141–4
realm of 104 supporting data for each second-order theme
organizational life 216 138–9
organizational lostness 215–16, 218, 225 types of hardship 137
organizational memory 64 understanding of 111
organizational psychology 53 University of Missouri 181–8
organizational resilience 5, 18–19, 102–3, 131, organizational scholars 263–4, 348–9
180–81, 301, 312–13, 320–21, 325, 340, organizational scholarship 334
346 organizational structure 140, 196, 350
adaptation see adaptation organization-related resilience research 232
analytic process 188–9 organization resilience 338
capacity for 15–16, 192–4 conceptual clarity 341–2
collaboration 329–30 in healthcare 339–41
collaborative efforts 145–6 multilevel considerations in 17–19
components of 261 positive adaptation 342–3
conceptual model 147–50 situational awareness of 327
data structure 135–6 study of 338
disaster and crisis 203–4 organizations, challenge and adversity in 102
employee-centric orientation 328–9 Orton, J.D. 322
experience of hardship 137–9
experiential learning-based approach 204–6 Parker, S.K. 125
implications and future work 150–51 path-goal theory 119
individual learning as antecedent 203, Penner, A. 251
207–11 performance-based routines 209
lack of knowledge and leadership 189–91 performance-protection strategies 252
leadership 326–7 Perrigino, M.B. 53
learning 206–7, 330–34 Perrow, C. 55
literature on 103, 321–2 perseverance of effort 27, 33–4
managerial pathways to resource persistence 74
regeneration 139 costs and benefits of 77
maturity model of 333 personal characteristics 307
measurement of 272 personal-level disruption 326
methods 181 perspective-taking 77
at Mizzou 189 Pettersen, K.A. 344
operational strategies 140–41 Philippine Nurses Association 120
organizational disaster 194–5 Philippines Business Referral Network 120
overview 135–7 physical abuse 168
positive adaptation and growth 195–6 physical infrastructure 321, 325
psychological strategies 139–40 psychological lostness 214, 216, 218, 223–4, 228
reframing of hardship 146 physical separation 219
transfer of constraints 146–7 Ployhart, R.E. 18
transfer of resources 146 PMR see progressive muscle relaxation (PMR)
research political competence 124–5
context and data 133–5 positive adaptation 13, 104, 321–2, 342–3
methods in disaster setting 323–5 assessing 343
program 322–3 and growth 195–6
quality of 340–41 positive adjustment 47
362 Research handbook on organizational resilience

positive affirmation 270 inclusion 307

positive attitudes, development of 248 people and 305–7, 317
positive emotions 47–8, 94, 339 persistence of 300
positive organizational resilience 204–7 positive 270
positive relationships 239, 270 quality of 307
post-disaster research 323 range of 329
post-disaster situation 326–7 trust 307–8
Powley, E.H. 204, 210, 322, 325–6, 328 types of 328
practice self-care 27 research, milestones 325
pragmatism 205 resilience 223, 265–6, 348
precursor resilience 346 activation 223
predictability of disturbances 61 among employees 10
predictable patterns 217 antecedents and outcomes 6–7
problem-solving approaches 27 approaches to 10–11
processes linking variables 10 capacity of 10–11, 14, 20
progressive muscle relaxation (PMR) 174 cases of 341
psychological adversity 76 changing nature of 349–50
psychological distress 168 characteristics of 204
psychological growth, possibility of 16 in collaborate quadrant 265
psychological isolation 219 in compete quadrant 265–6
psychological lostness 214, 223–4 components of 342
five-stage model of 214 concept of 271–2
phases of 224 conceptualization of 54–5, 86, 343
stages of 218 in control quadrant 266
psychological resilience 75 in create quadrant 266
psychological well-being 13 definitions of 2, 53, 215, 322
public sector 247–57 demonstration of 10
employees 248–9, 254 description of 321
development 321
quantitative surveys 324 distinctions see distinctions
Quarantelli, E.L. 58 dynamic nature of 42
Quinn, R.W. 295 elements of 342
evidence-based knowledge of 320
racism 168–71 foundations 76
radical indeterminacy 288–9 framework of 4, 58, 62–4
concern for others 291 inclusion of 117
preoccupation with things 290–91 mechanisms, effectiveness of 271
temporality 289–90 multilevel influences in 19–21
rational decision-making 118 multi-level messiness of 345
“raw” sensemaking 276–7 multi-level nature of 344
readiness nature of 3–4, 341–2
learning identity 208–9 in organizations 10
openness to experience 208 organization’s capacity and resources for 271
realization 221–2 process-based view of 321
reappraisal 80, 90, 92–4 processes and dynamics 4–6
rebuilding 154, 159–60, 223 relational resources 269
recovery 322 research 80, 345–6
from setbacks 267–8 respect to 265
relational dynamics 265 strategic resources 268–9
relational history 77 studies of 2, 340
relational pauses 109–10, 112–13 temporal dynamics of 348
relationships in theory and practice 2
collaborative 330 traditional approaches to 261
conflict 125 training 347
developing and maintaining 330 views of 346
 Index 363

resilience-building workplace interventions 173–4 sensemaking 55, 221–3, 275

resilient employees, personal characteristics of addressing radical indeterminacy 288–91
256 concern for others 284–5, 287–8
resilient inter-organizational diagnostic model context 281–3
actionable, co-created vision 311 cosmology episode 285–6
commitment 310 dimensions 277
constituency 311 in extreme situations 281–94
sensing and adaptation 312 last-chance actions 292–4
significance and breadth of the wicked literature on 276
problem 311 preoccupation with things 284
resilient negotiators 78 processes 236
resilient organizations 327 “raw” 276–7
resilient personality 25, 29, 32, 33 reduction of 276
resilient public sector employees 248, 253 research on 277
resource availability, potential impact of 124 situation types of 276, 280
resource regeneration 139, 147 temporality and 277–8, 284
operational strategies 140–41 sensing, and adaptation 305, 318
psychological strategies 139–40 sensory templates 107
stakeholder strategies 141–4 notion of 108
resources perceptually-broadening 110
sharing 332 share and examine 109–10
theory 47 services orientations 247
transfer of 146–7 setbacks, recovery from 268
retrospective–prospective sensemaking 277–8 sexism 168, 171
reunification 223 sexual abuse 168
“revisited” analytic induction 280 shape team resilience 239
Rimé, B. 97 shared mental models 239
Rioux, M. 251 shared problem-solving 240
risk management 272 shared schema 144–5
risk reduction 155 Shepherd, D.A. 322
Roberts, K.H. 204 “shift and persist” model 74
Roberts, L.M. 173, 204–5 Shin, J. 123, 256
shock 54–5
safety training outcomes 205–6 significance 309–10, 319
Salamon, S.D. 253 and breath 306
Salas, E. 243 expansive goal 310
SBW see Strong Black Woman (SBW) idea of 313
Schmidt, F.T.C. 28 wicked problem 310
scholarship 131 simulation-based training 236
Schraagen, J.M. 241 sister circles 173
Schulman, P.R. 344 situational adversity 71, 76
Schulte, E.-M. 233, 241 situational awareness 332–3
Schumpeter, J.A. 122 of leaders and organizations 327
search and rescue 214, 216 situation selection 91–2
seek assistance 27 Sloan, L.R. 174
self-confidence 249 smoldering 194
self-efficacy 25, 77–8, 118, 239 crisis 186
self-esteem 249 snowstorms 153
self-evaluations 118–19 social architecture, concept of 149
self-regulation 256 social capital 17
self-reinforcing dynamics 72 social cognitive theory 47
self-understanding 249 social competence 118–19
Semling, C. 240 social connections, development of 250
Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction social context 96, 150
2015–2030 156 social dynamics 265
364 Research handbook on organizational resilience

social exchanges 132–3, 141 Taylor-Powell and Renner’s approach 302

social isolation 219 team
social media 191–2 cohesion 239
role of communication through 191–2 composition 41
social sharing 97 context 46
social support 209–10 culture 238
perception of 19 diversity 41
social team processes 43–4 leadership 46, 239
societal marginalization 168–9 learning 209–10
Sonenshein, S. 42 member cognitions 236–7
Sonnentag, S. 13 performance 14, 46
specificability of disturbances 61 potency 239
specified resilience 61 psychological safety 238
Spector, B. 74 relationships 350
sponsorships 174 structure 41
Springborg, C. 108 task 243
stability, and resilience 300 team-based triggers 233
stakeholders 136–7, 247 team-level adaptability 112
commitment 147 team resilience 39, 239
group 181 affective team processes 42–3
Staw, B.M. 54 capacity for 45–6
Stephens, J.P. 5 cognitive team processes 44–5
Stoverink, A.C. 15, 233, 235–6, 238–9, 242 conceptual framework of 39–41
strategic options 236 conceptualizations of 39
stress 167 emergence of 238–9
reducing 160 experience of adversity 41–2
responding to 2 interaction processes 42
Strong Black Woman (SBW) 172 interactive underpinnings of 39
substantial divergence 53 intertemporal effects 47–8
suppression 95–6 multilevel considerations in 17–19
Sutcliffe, K.M. 58–60, 80, 204, 215–16, 236, 250, outcomes 46–7
341 processes 241
switching gears, analogy of 70, 74 social team processes 43–4
system functionality 299 team context 46
systemic racial diversity crisis 180 technology 243
temporality 292
tacit knowledge 104–6 and sensemaking 277–8
appreciation for 112 temporary holding space 325–6
behaviors based on 111 TEPCO see Tokyo Electric Power Company
challenges 107, 110 (TEPCO)
dimensions of 103 terrorism 154–5
extending reach of 112–13 theory development 2
ineffability of 105 TMT see top management team (TMT)
organizational action based on 110–11 togetherness 328–9
in organizational adaptability 103 Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) 280
place of 105 top management team (TMT) 239
presence of 102 trait resilience 26–7, 32–3, 125
preserving 106–7 transfer of constraints 146–7
qualities of 106 transformation 46, 54, 61, 65
share and examine sensory templates 109–10 transformational coping 13
surfacing 107–9 transformational leadership 119, 239
theorized process of 107 transformative resilience 61, 64–6
task 125 transformed resilience 55
task-based triggers 233 transorganizational diagnostic model 299–300
Tassullo 65–6 transorganizational resilience 301
 Index 365

Transorganizational System 299 voluntary behaviors, reciprocal obligation of 133

Transparency International 116 VUCA see volatility, uncertainty, complexity and
trauma 168–9 ambiguity (VUCA)
definition of 167–8 vulnerability 155
in workplace 167–8
Trist, E. 299 warning signals 93
Troy, A.S. 90, 92 Weick, K.E. 58–60, 204, 215–16, 221–2, 275
trust 300 well-being 40
tsunami 275–6, 278 wilderness 221
Tucker, A.L. 339 Williams, T.A. 12, 15–16, 53, 188–9, 249, 321–2
Tugade, M.M. 94 workarounds 339, 341–2, 344
Turner, B.A. 204 embedded nature of 340
turning points 71 example of 340
work, changing nature of 349–50
UM System 195 work environment 218
uncertainty 236, 261 workplace adversity 168–9
patient care 339 work-related attitudes 123
UNDRR see United Nations Office for Disaster work team resilience 232, 241–2
Risk Reduction (UNDRR) after an adverse event 237
United Nations Office for Disaster Risk before an adverse event 235–6
Reduction (UNDRR) 155 during an adverse event 236–7
unit resilience 340 capacity 232
University of Missouri 193 characteristics 238
diversity crisis 181–9 conceptualizations of 233
hunger strike 185 definition of 233
learning environment 192–3 dynamic process 232
public protest against 185 individual-level inputs 240
unpredictability 70–71 levels of analysis 240
multilevel framework of 232–4
vandalism 185 organizational-level inputs 240–41
Vietnam, economic growth rate 124 processes 235
Vigoda-Gadot, E. 253 team-level factors 238–40
violence 167–8 trigger and outcomes 233–5
virtual role system 239 World Trade Organization (WTO) 124
virtual workplace 180 WTO see World Trade Organization (WTO)
vision 305, 308–9, 318
into action 308 Yoshida, Masao 276, 279–80
co-created 308 ethical decisions 295
Vogus, T. 80, 250, 341 testimony 295
volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity
(VUCA) 247 zero correlation 33