Organizational resilience and employee work-role performance after a crisis situation: exploring the effects of organizational resilience on internal crisis communication

ABSTRACT

The purpose of this study is to explore the positive outcomes of organizational resilience to see how resilient employees can support an organization by adapting to and initiating changes during the recovery process following a crisis. This study focuses on organizational resilience generated by employees, as a resilient system, through their psychological ability and positive communication behaviors. Resilient employees can help their organization bounce back to normal functioning following a crisis. A nationwide survey (N = 830) was conducted among full-time employees in the U.S. to examine the positive effect of organizational resilience on employee work-role performance. The results indicate that organizational resilience was positively and significantly associated with: employees’ intentions for proficiency, adaptivity and proactivity of organizational members, thus contributing to organizational effectiveness after a crisis situation.     

Resilience for gender inclusion: Developing a model for women in male-dominated occupations

What is resilience in the context of work environments where women face barriers as significant as career discrimination and harassment? In such a context, is resilience an individual responsibility? How can organizations contribute to and support employee resilience? And where is gender in this equation? This conceptual paper explores these questions using aviation, the skilled trades (i.e., carpentry, welding, plumbing) and the military as case studies to understand how gender inclusion could be better supported by resilient organizations. The barriers for women in male-dominated industries include social exclusion, marginalization, discrimination, harassment, and other forms of social closure. How these barriers can be overcome is not well understood. We argue that individual resilience plays a part in women thriving and developing enduring careers but can only occur in combination with support from gender inclusion strategies and organizational resilience. We have developed the Resilience for Gender Inclusion (RGI) model combining gender inclusion strategies with organizational resilience strategies. The RGI model demonstrates how employee and organizational resilience intersect and may lead to the transformative potential of inclusive cultures of diversity. This will improve employee wellbeing and self-efficacy and create a much needed sense of belonging and social inclusion for women in male-dominated occupations.     

Resilienz im Arbeitsleben – Eine inhaltliche Differenzierung von Resilienz auf den Ebenen von Individuen,Teams und OrganisationenResilience in the workplace – A conceptual distinction of resilience on different levels: Individuals,teams, and organizations

The ability to recover from adverse events (“resilience”) is crucial in coping with increased demands in the workplace. Resilience facilitates adaptation and development even under demanding conditions and hence ensures psychological well-being. The notion of resilience has not only been used on the level of individuals, but also applies to teams and organizations. Despite its importance for well-being and effective functioning of teams and organizations, the concept of resilience has not yet been sufficiently clarified. In order to deepen the understanding of resilience on different levels, the present article describes and distinguishes individual, team, and organizational resilience. Finally, the article describes guidelines for an organizational resilience management system.     

Does Guaranteed employment promote resilience to climate change? The case of India's Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA)

India's Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) is the largest labour guarantee scheme in the world, offering 100 days of paid labour to every rural household. This article reviews the growing evidence base, assessing the extent to which the scheme can be said to contribute to resilience to climate change, based on its effectiveness as a safety net and driver of household accumulation, its ability to create assets which build collective resilience, and its support for transformations of exploitative social relations. The article concludes that the MGNREGA has already made a major contribution to resilience, but requires improvements in governance and state capacity to maximize its contribution.     

Measuring adolescent resilience: An examination of the cross-ethnic validity of the RS-14

Wagnild and Young's brief 14-item Resilience Scale (RS-14), derived from the widely used RS-25, offers potential for measuring adolescent resilience. However, there is minimal research on its psychometric strength with adolescent populations and no research on its applicability to early adolescents. This study assesses psychometric properties of the RS-14 with a large, ethnically diverse sample of early and middle adolescents. Principal component analysis finds a single factor structure. Cronbach's α for the aggregate sample was .91, ranging between .88 and .92 across racial/ethnic, gender, geographic, and age subgroups. Convergent validity is demonstrated with measures of both adolescent social self-efficacy and academic self-efficacy. Findings support the RS-14 as a useful instrument for assessing trait-like resilience in diverse early and middle adolescents. Brevity and ease of administration support its utility for resilience assessment in research and clinical settings.     

Organizational and health performance in small enterprises in Norway and Sweden

This article focuses on relationships between organizational factors such as leadership, learning, psychosocial work environment and quality aspects as they relate to organizational and health performance outcomes in 42 small enterprises in Norway and Sweden. A rather explorative analysis model was created using indicators that were based on theoretical concepts from a literature review and questionnaire data, concerning 988 employees and leaders. These indicators were then used for correlation analysis. The enterprise is the unit of analysis. Some strong links between organizational factors and organizational and health performance were found. There was also a strong relation between health performance and sickness absence. Using structural analyses, a structure containing six general components, and strong interrelationships between some indicators of organizational performance and health performance were found. It was also possible to position the enterprises according to two general dimensions. As a general guideline for action, the results tend to support the perspective that positive organizational development is related to health performance and a lowering of absence due to sickness. The findings support the strategies of practitioners who use a concept-driven or holistic approach that integrates several facets of workplace development.     

Enhancing Wellbeing in Social Work Students: Building Resilience in the Next Generation

The need for social workers to be resilient is widely emphasised. Although enhancing resilience in social work trainees presents a challenge to educators, they are nonetheless responsible for developing professionals who are able to cope with the emotional demands of the job. This paper argues that building resilience in the future workforce should be a key element of social work education. However, as little is known about the competencies and support structures that underpin resilience or the extent to which resilience protects the wellbeing of trainees, an evidence-based approach is required to inform curriculum development.

Recent research conducted by the authors of this paper has highlighted the protective nature of resilience in social work trainees. Emotional intelligence and associated competencies, such as reflective ability, aspects of empathy and social confidence, were found to be key predictors of this important quality. The important role played by social support from various sources was also emphasised. The present paper summarises this research, and presents interventions based on the findings that have the potential to promote resilience and wellbeing in social work trainees. Also considered are ways in which the curriculum might be further enhanced to provide trainees with an internal ‘tool-box’ of strategies that will help them manage their wellbeing more effectively in their future career.     

Child resilience in out-of-home care: Child welfare worker perspectives

The study of resilience and its associated factors is highly applicable to the child welfare population as children living in out-of-home care have often experienced much adversity and are particularly vulnerable to the development of problems in numerous domains of functioning. The use of qualitative research in this area is scarce, and the majority of such studies have been based on the U.K. or U.S. child welfare systems. Therefore, the goal of the current study was to gain child welfare workers' perspectives on resilience and to explore the factors that they believe might influence resilience. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 11 child welfare workers from Ontario (Canada) to accomplish this goal. The interview was developed using an ecological perspective that inquired about possible sources of resilience from within children themselves, their family, their community, and the child welfare worker and agency. The workers identified a number of factors associated with resilience (e.g., child intelligence, worker communication skills); however, the critical importance of a child's relationships and social support from others underpinned all factors discussed. The findings highlight the importance of including the perspectives of all those involved in the child welfare system in assessing the well-being of children in out-of-home care. In addition, the dynamic interrelationships between the various levels of the ecological model and how these can impact on how a child is doing in out-of-home care were highlighted.     

A computerized system to monitor resilience indicators in organizations

The concepts developed by resilience engineering allow the understanding and monitoring the functioning of organizations and, particularly, to map the role of human activities, in success or in failure, enabling a better comprehension about how people make decisions in unexpected situations. The capture of information about human activities in the various organization levels gives managers a deeper real-time understanding of what is influencing the people performance, providing awareness of the factors that influence positively or negatively the organizational goals initially projected. The monitoring is important because the correct functioning of complex systems depends on the knowledge that people have to perform their activities and how the system environment provides tools that actually support the human performance. Therefore, organizations should look forward through precursors in operating signals to identify possible problems or solutions in the structure of tasks and activities, safety, quality, schedule, rework, and maintenance. We apply the concepts of resilience engineering to understand the organization by the analysis of cognitive tasks and activities. The aim is the development of a computerized system to monitor human activities to produce indicators to access system resilience. The validation of the approach was made in a real organization and the results show the successful applicability of the system. Based on findings obtained after the experiment of the system in a real organization, and managers and workers opinions, it was possible to show that the use of system provided an anticipated (real-time) perception about how activities are effectively being performed, allowing managers and workers to make decisions more consistent with daily problems, and also to anticipate solutions to cope with unexpected situations.     

Rescuing gender: An exploration of embodied resilience-making in the Chilean miners' catastrophe

In this paper, we explore the theoretical and empirical links between gender and resilience within the context of crisis management by developing a theoretically oriented analysis of the iconic case of the 33 Chilean miners rescue. Analytic focus is placed on the capacity of resilience-promoting actors to embody and transform the discursive and practical dimensions of gendered regimes that predominate at an organizational level. As a result, we can distinguish four distinct modalities—normative redefinition, emotional reaccommodation, resistance, and affective affirmation—through which the gendered dimension of resilience becomes undone and redone, based on the action of alternative rationalities and affects. Overall, our findings indicate that resilience cannot be made possible without effectively disputing the norms that dispose how bodies, in all their diversity, are able to be recognized and socially experienced to face and manage crises effectively.     

Growth and resilience of pioneering nonprofit human service organizations: a cross-case analysis of organizational histories

Knowledge of organizational history is important for recognizing patterns in effective management and understanding how organizations respond to internal and external challenges. This cross-case analysis of 12 histories of pioneering nonprofit human service organizations contributes an important longitudinal perspective on organizational history, complementing the cross-sectional case studies that dominate the existing research on nonprofit organizations. The literature on organizational growth, including lifecycle models and growth management, is reviewed, along with the literature on organizational resilience. Based on analysis of the 12 organizational histories, a conceptual model is presented that synthesizes key factors in the areas of leadership, internal operations, and external relations that influence organizational growth and resilience to enable nonprofit organizations to survive and thrive over time. Both cross-sectional and longitudinal examples from the organizational histories illustrate the conceptual map. The paper concludes with a discussion of directions for future research on nonprofit organizational history.     

May the force be with you: Looking for resources that build team resilience

The aim of this study is to analyze team resilience as a collective psychosocial construct in the framework of the conservation of resources theory. Specifically, the authors hypothesize that (a) team-level resources and (b) organizational-level healthy practices would be positively related to team resilience. Multilevel regression modeling was conducted, using data from 1,167 employees nested in 194 work teams (team level) from 38 organizations (organizational level). Results confirmed the hypotheses having team-level resources and organizational-level healthy practices significant relationships with team resilience. This study provides evidence that team and organizational resources have a strong relationship with team resilience. Practitioners and managers must take these results into account for planning how to manage their resources within the organization. This article found what resources are required (at the team and the organizational level) to help work-team resilience.     

Ich – wir – meine Organisation werden das überstehen! Der Fragebogen zur individuellen,Team- und organisationalen Resilienz (FITOR)I – we – my organization will survive it! The questionnaire to measure individual,team and organizational resilience (FITOR)

Resilience is defined as the capacity to bounce back from failures, setbacks or other potentially threatening situations. Moreover, resilience enables employees, teams, and organizations to thrive when facing situations of change or adversity. Despite the theoretical discussion of the importance of resilience at different levels (i.?e., individual, team, and organizational level), previous research has mainly focused on individual resilience at work. This may be due to a lack of options to measure resilience in an efficient and reliable way simultaneously at all three levels. The purpose of this study is therefore to develop an instrument to assess resilience in parallel at the individual, team, and organizational level. Applying interviews and two questionnaire studies, we introduce a new instrument which enables researchers to analyze how these different levels of resilience are linked to each other. Furthermore, this instrument offers practitioners a deeper insight in employees’ different perceptions of resilience, which may help to implement interventions at relevant levels.     

Predictors of secondary traumatic stress among children's advocacy center forensic interviewers

This study examined various predictor variables that were hypothesized to impact secondary traumatic stress in forensic interviewers ( n = 257) from children's advocacy centers across the United States. Data were examined to investigate the relationship between organizational satisfaction, organizational buffers, and job support with secondary traumatic stress using the Secondary Traumatic Stress Scale. The most salient significant result was an inverse relationship between three indicators of job support and secondary traumatic stress. Also significant to secondary traumatic stress were the age of interviewer and whether the forensic interviewer had experienced at least one significant loss in the previous 12 months. Implications for future research, training, program practice, and policy are discussed.     

My company or my career: managerial achievement and loyalty

This article examines the objective and subjective aspects of managerial careers in six large firms that have experienced organizational restructuring. We begin by assessing the dominant models of change in career structures, particularly those which emphasize the 'portfolio' route to career success. Although elements of the bureaucratic career remain, we find some evidence of the shift predicted by these models amongst the younger generation of managers. However, it is striking that not all young managers are able to take advantage of the opportunities offered by the new career model. Indeed, cultural capital has an increasing impact on career achievement. Younger managers are responding by reorienting away from organizational loyalty towards a concern with individual career projects.     

Conceptual problems of the monitoring and evaluation of qualitative objectives of rural development

Monitoring and evaluation are crucial aspects of all rural development projects in terms of ensuring that objectives are being met and assessing the impact of various interventions. Thus, monitoring and evaluation should be built into a project's organizational and implementation structure and constitute a continuous, systematic project activity. In need of further refinement, however, are techniques for monitoring and evaluating the nonmaterial, nonobjective dimensions of development projects such as community participation. Needed is an approach that is not based exclusively on the measurement of material impact, but is also able to explain what happens in a rural development project that seeks to promote participation. In dealing with participation, there is a concern not only with quantitative results, but also qualitative processes. Toward this end, project beneficiaries should have a role in describing the processes involved, analyzing the results, and making a judgment as to the outcome of project activities. The unmet need in this area is to devise indicators of economic, political, cultural, and vulnerable-group participation in rural development projects and to identify ways such indicators could be used to collect relevant data.     

Risk and resilience among young adults experiencing homelessness: A typology for service planning

PurposeThis study examined risk and resilience indicators in a sample of young adults experiencing homelessness to identify subgroups with different service needs.MethodsData came from a 2014 survey of homeless young adults (age 18–24) in Houston (n = 374). Participants self-reported risk and resilience indicators which were used to fit a latent class model.ResultsA four-class solution was the best fit. Group-1 (n = 73), had high adult support and low trauma. Group-2 (n = 60) had low trauma but low adult support. Group-3 (n = 151), had high trauma exposure, high rates of mental health problems and low substance use. Group-4 (n = 90), had high rates across all risk variables.ConclusionTrauma, adult support, and substance use were key distinguishing features to inform screening and service planning.     

Predictors of Secondary Traumatic Stress among Children's Advocacy Center Forensic Interviewers

This study examined various predictor variables that were hypothesized to impact secondary traumatic stress in forensic interviewers (n = 257) from children's advocacy centers across the United States. Data were examined to investigate the relationship between organizational satisfaction, organizational buffers, and job support with secondary traumatic stress using the Secondary Traumatic Stress Scale. The most salient significant result was an inverse relationship between three indicators of job support and secondary traumatic stress. Also significant to secondary traumatic stress were the age of interviewer and whether the forensic interviewer had experienced at least one significant loss in the previous 12 months. Implications for future research, training, program practice, and policy are discussed.     

Turning bad into good: How resilience resources protect organizations from demanding work environments

An organization’s survival and its performance are often connected to employees’ well-being, which in intensive work conditions can be compromised by employee exhaustion. To date, the last economic crisis has forced several companies to downsize and leave the remaining employees facing higher job demands and vulnerability toward job exhaustion. The present study investigates whether resilience together with other personal resources can function as a psychological shield through a mediation and/or moderation process that mitigate the emergence of burnout. Based on a sample of employees from three different Italian companies (N?=?208), our results confirmed that “resilience resources” (i.e., resilience, self-efficacy, self-regulation) mediated the relationship between job demands, exhaustion, and task performance (i.e., energetic process). These results suggest that organizational environments characterized by challenging demands are likely to foster the development of resilience resources to cope with the emergence of potentially harming processes.     

Ten years of experience from interactive ergonomics projects

This paper highlights experiences from ergonomics projects, applying an interactive research approach. The aim of this paper is to summarise experiences from seven interactive ergonomics projects with the aim to improve ergonomics and organizational performance jointly. Results from these seven projects were analysed with a model for assessing sustainable change, including the factors active ownership, professional management, competent project leadership, and involved participants. All factors were found giving support to impact and sustainability of the change projects. However, the role of the researcher is difficult and demanding.