Organizational Resilience Complex, Multisystemic Processes During Periods of Stress - SAGE11ch

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The SAGE Handbook of Organizational Wellbeing
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Author: Michael Ungar

Pub. Date: 2021
Product: Sage Reference
DOI: https://doi.org/10.4135/9781529757187
Keywords: organizational resilience, organizations, resilience
Disciplines: Business & Management, Organization Studies, Organizational Behavior, Organizational
Culture, Stress in Organizations
Access Date: March 3, 2024
Publishing Company: SAGE Publications Ltd
City: 55 City Road
Online ISBN: 9781529757187
© 2021 SAGE Publications Ltd All Rights Reserved.

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© Tony Wall, Cary L
Organizational Resilience: Complex, Multisystemic

Processes during Periods of Stress
Michael Ungar
Introduction
There are multiple (and competing) ways to describe resilience, with scholars from different disciplines still
largely siloed from one another. A recent network citation analysis by Xu and Kajikawa (2017), for example,
identified 10 clusters of research that refer to resilience, among them business systems and engineering,
telecommunication systems, psychology and social science and ecological and environmental science. There
was, however, very little overlap in the patterns of citations. An emerging interest in multisystemic resilience is
challenging this disciplinary pattern of research, showing instead that there are a set of principles common to
biological, social, institutional, built and natural systems when experiencing adversity (Biggs et al., 2012; Un-
gar, 2018). Arguably, a transdisciplinary, multisystemic understanding of resilience provides a better means
for modeling the complex processes that explain why organizations can endure challenges, whether internal
or external, continuing to function optimally and even grow through the experience. To explain these patterns
of development under stress, one has to account for multiple systems and multiple scales of each system.
With regard to organizations, that means understanding how the resilience of a workforce depends on the
quality of their social relations in the workplace, leadership, the physical environment in which they work and
external stressors in the community and wider economy, as well as the built and natural environment in which
an organization conducts its affairs. A multisystemic conceptualization of resilience highlights the reciprocal
interactions between each system.
Resilience is, therefore, not a trait of an individual or an organization, but is better described as the process of
systems interacting in ways that support positive functioning and preferred outcomes. Though these process-
es vary, in general they can be grouped under two broad categories: those that help individuals or groups
(e.g., an organization) navigate to the resources required for sustainable recovery, adaptation or transforma-
tion, and those that reflect an individual or group's ability to negotiate for the resources that are provided to
match the needs of individuals and groups that need them (Ungar, 2011). In this sense, resilience is a dynam-

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ic model of complex relationships that shows both equifinality (many means to a single end) and multifinality
(many means to many different ends, all of which are seen as successful). These processes can be found oc-
curring at the level of individuals inside organizations, as well as at the level of the organizations themselves,
their communities, and more broadly at the level of the surrounding communities, governments and natural
environments. The more that one nested system achieves resilience, the more likely co-occurring systems
will as well.
This, then, is the focus of this chapter, to explore a multisystemic understanding of resilience in the context of
organizations, whether that is a government service or institution providing health care, a for-profit business,
a community of individuals who interact face-to-face or online, or a social ecological system where humans
and the natural environment are mutually dependent. Each organization (i.e., system) is bounded by a set of
relationships, though, as the research shows, these boundaries are highly permeable, creating the opportuni-
ty both to experience external threats that challenge an organization's sustainability while providing access to
the resources required for optimal functioning under stress (i.e., resilience). The chapter begins with a discus-
sion of the seven principles common to systems that show resilience, applying each principle to organizations
at the level of the people in the organization, the organization itself and the external environments that shape
the organization's functioning. The chapter then applies these principles to a rural community (a complex set
of interdependent organizations) that depends on oil and gas extraction and the problems that dependency is
causing individuals, families, businesses and governments when the price of oil remains low.
Principles for Organizational Resilience
There have been many efforts to compile a list of principles that explain the functioning of systems that show
resilience. For example, Biggs et al. (2012) identified a set of seven principles that govern the functioning of
social ecological systems (those in which human social systems and the natural environment interact, such
as the management of a natural resource like a fishery; recovery from a natural disaster; the preservation of
a spiritually meaningful natural feature of the landscape; etc.). These policy-relevant principles to enhance
resilience of ecosystem services include processes such as: maintaining diversity and redundancy; managing
connectivity; managing feedbacks; fostering an understanding of social ecological systems as complex adap-
tive systems; encouraging learning and experimentation; broadening participation; and promoting polycentric
governance systems. A very different approach to organizational resilience is reflected in the development of

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the Flourishing at Work Scale (FAWS), which assesses 10 factors that relate to emotional wellbeing and func-
tioning on the job (Rothmann et al., 2019). These include positive affect, low negative affect, job satisfaction,
autonomy, competence, relatedness, engagement, meaningful work, learning and social wellbeing.
Though concerned with very different systems, assessments of systemic wellbeing are typically composed of
a shortlist of factors associated with coping under stress. What is less clear is how stressors like workload,
economic conditions and family demands (e.g., an ill child) can change the amount of positive influence any
single factor will have on outcomes. This notion of differential impact (Ungar, 2017) as it relates to resilience
suggests the need for a list of guiding principles that explain resilience in ways that remain responsive to
changing environments and the risks and advantages they bring organizations. A comprehensive list of princi-
ples which are an amalgamation of concepts from diverse disciplines, including biology, psychology, econom-
ics, sociology, management, computer science and ecology, has been recently suggested by Ungar (2018).
Each of these resilience-related principles is discussed below with reference to organizational processes.
Principle #1. Resilience occurs in contexts of adversity. The study of resilience is distinguished by the pres-
ence of stressors. Positive psychology, for example, has focused on character traits and other aspects of opti-
mal function that are generic across populations. The study of resilience, however, focuses on what happens
when systems are under stress and the specific processes employed to sustain or grow systems in subopti-
mal conditions. In this sense, the study of resilience is the study of how resources are matched to stressors,
in much the same way that Jonge and Dormann (2006) propose a matching hypothesis which moderates
the impact of specific stressors like job demands or physical strain with resources tailored to those problems
(e.g., flexible work hours; occupational health and safety rules). While all employees benefit from similar in-
terventions by a responsible employer, it is the employees in organizations who are exposed to the most
risk and adversity who benefit a disproportionate amount. There are, however, at least two problems with the
matching hypothesis. First, the factors that predict successful coping with on-the-job stress are seldom as
one-dimensional as the matching hypothesis suggests. In a complex system like an organization, strain in
one area can also be influenced by indirect support from other parts of the organization. For example, Boyer
and Bond (1999) compared the rates of burnout and employee dissatisfaction among case managers provid-
ing two different kinds of services in the community to patients discharged from hospital with severe mental
illnesses. Employees who provided traditional case management (TCM) reported far higher rates of negative
emotions than those who were part of work teams delivering assertive community treatment (ACT). TCM is
structured in ways that gives individual workers responsibility for a large number of clients whom they then
have to surround with networks of support. The work is isolating and frequently frustrating as patients tend

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to exhibit many problem behaviors and experience high rates of readmission to hospital. ACT, meanwhile,
is organizationally very different. It is delivered by a multidisciplinary team that usually includes a nurse, a
psychiatrist, two case managers and other allied health professionals like an occupational therapist. The ACT
model emphasizes low client–staff ratios, flexibility in where services are delivered (in the patient's home, or
at the manager's office), a team approach with shared caseloads, and plenty of flexibility for workers to de-
cide how long they will offer services to their patients. In this case, the factors making staff more resilient to
the stress of working with a difficult-to-engage population are more organizational (and multisystemic) than
individual. These include support from team members, collective efficacy, and the ability to sustain long-term
relationships with patients.
The second problem with the matching hypothesis is that, while the intensity or chronicity of a stressor may
be quantifiable, stressors are experienced in qualitatively different ways depending on the meaning that indi-
viduals and organizations attach to their experience of the stress. For example, increasing workload demands
may be experienced positively or negatively depending on whether they are the result of a business flour-
ishing (and an employee feeling part of a team that is valued for its contribution) or the result of layoffs and
resulting work redistribution. Both increases in workload are quantitatively the same, but only the first instance
provides a meaning system which makes employees more resilient during a period of increased workload.
The distinction between positive and negative experiences of stress requires that research on organizational
resilience distinguishes between stressors that are harmful and those that are positive, what Selye (1975)
referred to as ‘eustress'.
All of this means that organizations and their constituent parts will be triggered by the adversity. At the level of
individuals, these triggers produce protective strategies ranging from hyperarousal to hypoarousal, depend-
ing on genetic predispositions and experiences of past trauma which shape the body's stress response sys-
tem (Ellis and Del Giudice, 2014). Metaphorically, organizations (as examples of complex systems) can also
experience stress as positive or negative, spurring innovation through reorganization and expansion, or be-
coming overwhelmed and functioning poorly during a crisis. Clearly, the context in which the stressors occur
and what they mean to the organization will shape the organization's ability to respond. For example, large
corporations may not be able to adapt as nimbly as smaller businesses when confronted by a paradigm-shift-
ing change in technology, as the photographic products giant Kodak discovered in the early 2000s when over
a period of just a few years the industry went digital. Ironically, Kodak actually invented digital photography in
1975 but held it back from being marketed for fear of hurting its lucrative film business. Under the stress of
digitalization by its competitors, Kodak was unable to display the resilience required to restructure. As always,

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resilience is the process of overcoming a non-normative stress, but that stress and the resources required are
contextually sensitive to both the opportunities present in the environment (like a technological development)
and the meaning attached to these changes which label them as helpful or unhelpful.
Principle #2. Resilience is a process. While systems have characteristics that make them more likely to ex-
perience resilience, the presence of these characteristics is, in itself, not resilience. Resilience is always a
process whereby a system interacts with other systems to optimize its functioning (Masten, 2014; Ungar,
2018). In practice, this means that a business with an excellent human resources department, funding for
innovation, health and safety procedures and a culture of safety is positioned better than its competitors to
withstand external stressors (like a change in market). The concept of resilience, however, does not describe
the company in its static state of readiness. We could say the company is well-resourced, well-prepared, or
organizationally agile but its resilience is only evident when these resources are used to deal with an atypical
threat. The result is typically a change to how the system functions, demonstrating the capacity of the system
under stress to achieve a new level of behavior (e.g., increased production of goods or services), return to a
previous state (e.g., profitability), or transform itself and another system to achieve a new equilibrium (e.g., a
merger occurs between two competitors to reduce conflict and improve capacity for innovation) (see Gunder-
son and Holling, 2002). Resilience is, therefore, not a trait of the company, but a description of the company
as it takes action to overcome adversity. When engaged in processes that promote the organization's sustain-
ability or protect the company from external threats, we say the company shows resilience. Without the pres-
ence of adversity (see Principle #1), the company is simply well-functioning, well-managed or equipped to be
responsive, but it is not in and of itself resilient. This semantic distinction is critical to understanding resilience,
as without it resilience becomes another ambiguous synonym for successful, or capable, traits that can apply
to any system under any condition (good or bad). Resilience, by contrast, is only found when systems engage
in processes that help them deal with unusual stressors. These processes can look very different depending
on the resources available and the context in which organizations function. Five processes are found in the
resilience literature:
Persistence. The least dynamic process related to resilience is persistence. A system remains in a state of
apparent calm despite serious threats to its survival, but that calm is only possible because other co-existing
systems protect it from having to change. One can think of well-subsidized industries that are protected by
governments through tariffs as one example of resilience as persistence. Towns that are no longer econom-
ically viable, but whose infrastructure is maintained, are another example of the process of persistence in a
context where failure should be the result. To persist, a system must receive the support it needs to continue

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to function, though the nexus of control resides with the surrounding structures and their willingness to en-
gage in protective processes.
Resistance. A system that shows resistance when under threat is actively maintaining its functioning. Organi-
zations that resist change respond to external threats but are not seeking substantive changes in what they
do or how they do it. Instead, their strategy is to employ their resources to resist disruption. For decades,
tobacco companies resisted the science that showed their product caused cancer, with remarkable success.
Even when many high-income countries restricted access to tobacco products, they resisted the threat by
diversifying their markets, expanding into low- and middle-income countries with less restrictive public health
legislation. These strategies are typical of a system that maintains its equilibrium by exerting just enough influ-
ence over its environment to sustain a previous regime of behavior. The strategy may bring temporary relief.
When rural communities lose their main industry (e.g., a fishery closes due to the collapse of the fish stock),
these communities often will resist government-mandated closures of local infrastructure like schools and
hospitals. The strategy of resistance keeps the community viable until new economic activity can be found.
Resistance, however, need not involve all levels of an organization or system. Resistance by a single level
may protect the entire system from threat. For example, maintaining a community school has the potential to
keep the population and tax base stable until new industries can be found to replace those that closed.
Recovery. An organization's ability to recover, or bounce back (Zolli, 2012), implies a return to normative func-
tioning prior to exposure to an atypical stressor. The notion of recovery, however, is ontologically flawed as
systems that are disrupted are changed by that disruption and never return to the same previous state. Re-
covery is, instead, a process of finding a new regime of behavior that integrates lessons learned during the
period of disruption. For example, a power company that experiences a major disruption in service may cor-
rect the problem and recover to a previous level of functioning, but its resilience is most likely to be reflected
in new procedures or changes in equipment to prevent the same problem from occurring in the future (Kruk
et al., 2015). The experience of stress improves the system's functioning even though the system looks, at
least superficially, to be doing the same things it did at the same level of efficiency.
Adaptation. An organization that adapts to non-normative stress shows the capacity to learn in order to main-
tain its sustainability. Adapted systems will look different, or behave differently, but they do not necessarily re-
move the threat which caused them to change in the first place. These changes often occur at multiple scales
within a system. For example, health care organizations are always responding to changing population health
trends including accessibility. Health care reform, however, has typically resulted in adaptation of systems to

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meet people's needs. For example, changes to the law in the United States required every citizen to purchase
health care by adapting the rules to suit a private health insurance model. The fundamental conditions which
continue to provide unequal care to all US citizens, or bankrupt families with large deductibles and poor-quali-
ty insurance plans, have not been fundamentally changed. Adaptation means accommodation to the stressor
but may not result in the stressor (i.e., the need for equitable access to health care) being removed.
Transformation. Transformation results when a system (or organization) changes the conditions that put it at
risk and, as a consequence, improves its capacity to cope under stress (its resilience). Transformations typ-
ically occur at one or more scales, or across multiple systems, simultaneously. For example, technological
breakthroughs, changes in licensing, and emergence of the ‘gig economy’ have threatened the viability of the
taxi industry. While the system that imposed strict controls over taxi licenses is coming to an end, a potentially
more sustainable model of urban transportation is being created by ride-sharing services like Uber and Lyft.
The taxi system as it was had reified into an antiquated system highly resistant to change despite the potential
to have self-disrupted before Uber made taxis obsolete. This same process of transformation leading to re-
silience appears at other systemic levels too. For example, a business unit with exploitive management may
be a catalyst for workers to protect themselves by threatening to unionize, which in turn forces a business to
address the concerns of its employees, making the organization more resilient through a process of transfor-
mation. The workers, in this case, did not persist, resist, recover or adapt (though they may have tried each
of these resilience strategies previously). The basis for their resilience is the transformation of their workplace
and the conditions in which they carry out their employment.
Principle #3. There are tradeoffs between systems when a system experiences resilience. When organiza-
tions engage in processes associated with resilience, not all parts benefit equally even if the organization as
a whole becomes sustainable. In this sense, where one part of a system experiences the ‘steeling effect’ that
results from dealing with manageable amounts of risk and innovating new solutions (e.g., that part of the sys-
tem grows), other parts of the system may find new regimes of behavior threaten their viability. Returning to
the example of a health care system, whereas a publicly funded health care system tends to be associated
with national health outcomes and costs less per capita, those with the most money and the private health
care providers lose in the transformation to a single-payer system. This pattern of winners and losers is typ-
ical of strategies that produce resilience as change necessarily disrupts established regimes that privileged
some systems or individual parts of systems over others.
Principle #4. A resilient system is open, dynamic and complex. A system that shows resilience tends to be

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open to new information that informs functioning. Concepts like balance and equilibrium are only temporary
states, snapshots of dynamic processes that make organizations more complex, and therefore give them
more options for transformation. Systems that show more heterogeneity (e.g., a diverse workforce, interdis-
ciplinarity in work teams, or vertical integration of the means of production) are likely to be better able to
withstand unpredictable sources of stress like a product failure or natural disaster. These changes help orga-
nizations modify their practices for the better when resilience is the goal. For example, large manufacturers of
personal care products have been accustomed to selling their goods by the pallet, large volumes distributed
to warehouses where they are then broken into smaller batches and sent to individual stores. Every phase of
production and distribution relied on large-volume shipping and sales. This model, however, has been chal-
lenged by online marketers and on-demand delivery of product to warehouses that charge the supplier for
storage. In this context, traditionally profitable businesses are having to rethink the way they produce and
ship product, selling smaller-sized lots more frequently while maintaining their traditional business model for
other retailers. In this sense, these businesses are becoming more complex and dynamic, integrating new
technology and opportunities as they become available.
Principle #5. A resilient system promotes connectivity. Whether it is interactivity through social media or the
forming of industry associations, resilient systems tend to promote connectivity as a means for solving intran-
sigent problems. Within systems, across scales, and between systems, connectivity gives systems the benefit
of better access to resources when needed. Immigrant communities, for example, often create for themselves
tight-knit diaspora with cultural and religious institutions as places for networking. These networks serve many
functions, from being a source of information about government programs and policies, to offering the social
networks required to find employment or engage in the informal economy.
Connectivity can, however, also threaten resilience if it leads to exploitation. After all, ecosystems can be de-
stroyed by an invasive species released into the environment through human activity like shipping. Patent
infringement can occur when researchers move from one employer to the next, unintentionally, or intention-
ally, sharing proprietary information. Like all aspects of resilience, any principle may be beneficial or a threat
to functioning depending on the value proposition that shapes its application. If, for example, we think of a
disease like Ebola which has thus far infected mostly people in some extremely poor nations, the availability
of treatments from western pharmaceutical companies is too disconnected to have a positive impact on the
spread of the disease. This changes, however, if government or international organizations step in, increasing
the connections between the developers of a drug and those who need it, while monetizing that connection
in a way that ensures the patent holder still benefits (i.e., maintains its ability to conduct research and future

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product development). When connectivity increases exploitation, or makes one or more systems less viable,
then the resilience of a single system may not be sustainable even if it appears to benefit temporarily.
Principle #6. A resilient system demonstrates experimentation and learning. Organizations that show re-
silience learn from experience and integrate learning into future efforts to resist, recover, adapt and transform
(for organizations showing persistence, the learning takes place in the systems that protect it from disturbance
rather than the focal system itself). These characteristics of systems, however, depend on the quality of the
supports available to the system. In the case of businesses or government agencies, for example, a culture
that encourages innovation and leadership that supports experimentation is likely to keep an organization
functioning during economic and social upheaval. This has been the catalyst for the technology sector, which
has created incubators for innovation, though many other industries are seeing similar efforts to place re-
searchers side-by-side, and to integrate disciplinarily diverse teams under one roof in order to ensure one
system learns from the other. For example, the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) in Ashburn, Virginia,
is an endowed research facility that brings together leading-edge researchers with computer technicians and
developers of innovative research equipment, grouped into small working groups that are co-located and en-
couraged to share ideas through informal lunchtime chats and seminars. Such innovation has led to a num-
ber of critical break throughs (intended and unintended), including Eric Betzig's Nobel-prize-winning develop-
ment of super-resolved fluorescence microscopy which has made it possible to study the nanodimension of
substances. Even much smaller-scale organizations like a restaurant may find itself more resilient by adapt-
ing menus or changing hours as the demographic characteristics of the surrounding community changes. In
every case, including HHMI, experimentation leads to many failures, but each failure informs better decisions
for the future (Pahl-Wostl, 2009).
Principle #7. A resilient system includes diversity, redundancy and participation. The more parts of a system
available to support a system maintain its functioning, the more likely the system is to remain sustainable.
Resilience is, therefore, about diversity (many different parts of a system bringing many different resources
to solve problems), redundancy (more than one part of a system can fulfill the same functions) and partic-
ipation (as many parts of a system as possible engaged in making the system successful; Crane, 2017).
These principles are routinely applied to complex engineered systems like airplanes where multiple systems
are designed to take over when one system fails. They also characterize resilient nations, with processes like
immigration producing net long-term economic and social benefits (Hiebert, 2017). Organizations that resist
diversifying, overly specialize roles, or discourage participation (e.g., misunderstand the value of whistleblow-
er legislation and the need to keep the names of those who come forward confidential) will in the long run

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disadvantage their organizations by discouraging innovation or dampening the motivation of organizational

stakeholders to correct the course of the organization when it is threatened. The willingness to engage in an
organization and maintain its resilience has much to do with the value placed on participation by stakeholders
(Usdin, 2014; Wessells, 2015). Employees, for example, will likely assess what is in it for them personally if
they take the risk of naming a problem. The individual may feel that their personal resilience is better served
by a change of job rather than risking angering management in an organization that is unpredictable in how
it handles conflict. Governance structures and the checks and balances on how systems operate are another
set of systems that make participation of potential benefit to an organization under stress.
All three traits of organizations, however, must be matched to the context in which they appear. For example,
the nuclear disaster that occurred in northern Japan following the 2011 tsunami was the result of the back-up
generators meant to power the plants after a power outage being on the ground rather than on the roof of
the facilities. While the positioning of the back-up power made sense during an earthquake, it failed during
a tsunami, becoming flooded and malfunctioning. How diversity, redundancy and participation occur will in-
fluence the resilience of the systems involved. Riccardo Patriarca (in press), for example, reviewed aspects
of organization that produce safety, concluding that safety of a socio-technical system (one in which people
and machines operate together) is not a resident quality of either the people or the machines, but instead a
constantly changing quality of how those elements interact and the demands placed on both by the environ-
ment. In general, a system is more resilient to disturbance when more elements are engaged in keeping that
system functioning.
Individuals and Organizations: The Multiple Systems that

Predict Resilience
Each of the seven principles implicates both the individuals inside an organization as well as the technical,
policy and leadership resources of the organization that are available to maintain an organization's resilience.
These internal resources, in turn, depend on the vast networks of external factors that either support an or-
ganization's longevity or threaten it with obsolescence or dysfunction. Despite the need to consider all these
intersecting dimensions of an organization, the most common focus for studies of resilience remains individu-
als and the interventions intended to help them adapt better to a demanding workplace. This section reviews
what individuals do to maintain their personal resilience or accommodate themselves to excessive on-the-job

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demands. It then focuses on the resources individuals need to succeed, and finally shows that individuals are
only one of many systems interacting in ways that make organizations more resilient under stress. Through-
out this discussion, concepts related to the seven principles are discussed.
Rugged individuals. Approaches to worker resilience in organizations have mostly focused on individual fac-
tors that make workers better adapted to stressful situations. For example, soldier fitness programs are de-
signed to make armed forces personnel capable of withstanding operational stressors (Reivich et al., 2011)
without necessarily challenging the systems that create stress in the first place. For example, much of what
is known about post-traumatic stress suggests a relationship between exposure to an external stressor and
access to future supports to debrief that stress and support a traumatized individual's reintegration back into
social networks that can be supportive. For soldiers, the network of Legions and other meeting spaces once
served the role of providing structured environments that promised routine and security, along with access
to people with shared histories (many of these have been closed in recent years as the number of veterans
declines). Online meeting spaces have helped fill the void. Leadership, too, is implicated in the ability of a
soldier (or any employee) to function well in a context of unusual stress (Sinek, 2018). The need for both in-
dividual hardiness and the sources of support to sustain resilience requires a more complex model to explain
the resilience of individuals in organizations. Ungar (2019) has shown through a review of resilience science
that being both rugged and resourced is more likely to produce individuals with the capacity to withstand
stress than when attention is focused exclusively on promoting personal change through self-help or other
individualized interventions. Organizational resilience means changing individuals and changing their envi-
ronments at the same time. The myth of the rugged individual and the subsequent psychologizing of human
experience has, however, over-emphasized individual responsibility for coping. This neo-liberal perspective
has meant that organizations developing programs for workplace wellness have placed too much responsi-
bility for worker health on workers themselves. This is especially noticeable in the recent emphasis on mind-
fulness-based stress reduction training and other third-generation cognitive therapies that promote self-reg-
ulation. As Ronald Purser (2019) explains, the approach to these practices has turned spiritually grounded
practices into consumable mind games with little chance of them sustaining long-term change without diligent
practice regimes and a community of support. A more progressive workplace assesses the sources of stress
and available supports that exist across multiple systems within an organization and external to it and their
potential positive impact on worker and organizational success. These factors can be grouped broadly under
the categories of rugged and resourced. This R2 model of resilience includes the factors listed in Table 10.1.

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Table 10.1 R2: Rugged qualities and supportive resources associated with organizational resilience
Rugged qualities Resources
Gratitude Structure
Self-confidence Accountability
Optimism Supportive relationships
Problem-solving A powerful identity
Mindfulness Experiences of control
Sleep Fair treatment
Nutrition Culture
Physical activity Basic needs
The eight rugged characteristics reflect much of the writing on self-improvement which is common in the hu-
man resources and career development literature (e.g., Diener and Biswas-Diener, 2008). Studies of grati-
tude, for example, have shown many positive individual and relational benefits. For example, in an experiment
which asked couples to make random expressions of gratitude to their partners, there was an overall benefit
for the relationship, though the impact was greater when the partner receiving the expression of gratitude was
more responsive (Algoe and Zhaoyang, 2016). Likewise, individual workers that demonstrate self-confidence,
optimism and good problem-solving skills tend to outperform their colleagues (Salanova and Ortega-Maldon-
ado, 2019). Mindfulness and other strategies to deal with anxiety or workplace stress have shown moderate
effect sizes on outcomes (Goldberg et al., 2018), though it is unclear at what level of risk exposure these in-
terventions work best or for which people from which contexts and cultures. The final three aspects of rugged
individualism are related to physical health, with sleep, nutrition and physical activity well-validated factors
that contribute to employees functioning better psychologically and physically (Dowlati et al., 2017; Felder et
al., 2017; O'Brien et al., 2018). While all eight factors have an evidence base that shows they are effective
at increasing the resilience of individuals inside organizations, they all reflect a highly individual paradigm
for success. Each is a trait of the individual and interventions, whether referral to a therapist or enrolment

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at a gym, position the locus of change within the individual. This notion of individual motivation and sole re-
sponsibility has been critiqued as excessively narrow and therefore unable to account for the many complex
systems which interact in people's lives (Ehrenreich, 2009; Purser, 2019). It is these other systems and the
processes whereby they interact that improve the odds that individuals and organizations both succeed in
mutually dependent ways.
Resourced individuals and their organizations. In contrast, a complementary set of resources are also likely
to influence the wellbeing of workers, though in this case it is organizations themselves which share respon-
sibility with employees to ensure that interventions to increase accessibility to each resource are successfully
implemented. Among the most common factors that improve resilience is structure, which implies reasonable
expectations of employees to perform their duties, as well as systems of accountability which make work-
places predictable environments in which to operate and be rewarded for one's efforts. Leadership plays a
large part in making these and other resources available. And yet the discourse regarding employee wellbe-
ing tends to emphasize what employees can do to better their situation rather than the minimum standards of
supervision and care that organizations need to provide to make their employees, and their organization as a
whole, resilient (Sinek, 2018). For example, flexible work hours can help parents of young children establish
a better work–life balance, with women who have responsibilities for children reporting the greatest increases
in organizational commitment and job satisfaction when they are given the ability to adapt their work hours
to their families’ needs (Siegel et al., 1997). When employers build in sufficient safeguards for redundancy,
or encourage more women in senior management (the principle of diversification), their businesses are likely
to experience improved workplace communication and employee engagement in decision-making processes
(Melero, 2011).
The remaining six resources in the R2 model continue these same trends, with supportive relationships being
facilitated by organizations to create opportunities for employees to maintain continuity in their attachments
with colleagues and build a sense of belonging within the organization. Likewise, an organization that creates
opportunities for employees to use their skills provides the means for individuals to develop powerful identities
and experience control, or self-efficacy, in regard to the decisions that affect their work. These qualities of a
workplace facilitate experiences for employees which promote individual resilience and organizational growth
and sustainability, encouraging people to be both selfish and selfless at the same time (Sober and Wilson,
1998). In each case, it is the environment and the many systems which interact within and between organi-
zations which create the opportunities for these aspects of resilience to be realized. For example, sense of
self-efficacy is not an individual set of cognitions, but the result of experiences in which individuals are provid-

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ed the opportunities to make a difference in the world around them, whether that is planning their workday or
shutting down a car assembly line when an irregularity is detected.
Fair treatment, the sixth resource in the R2 model, occurs in contexts where there is respect for human rights.
This includes a harassment-free environment in which to function, as well as the procedural safeguards need-
ed to address concerns when they arise. It is ironic that resilience has for so long been discussed with rarely
a mention of social justice, even as human rights legislation has expanded and popular movements, whether
the fight to close the gender gap in pay scales or the #metoo movement, have shown that a more sustainable
workforce is one that has access to fair treatment. While there will always be a few individuals who survive
abusive treatment inside organizations, far better to create the conditions for all organizational stakeholders
to succeed when there are potential threats.
Culture, too, is reinforced by organizations, for example, by helping individuals maintain their heritage culture,
or promoting an organizational culture which provides the building blocks and accommodations necessary
for resilience (e.g., a culture of respect that becomes institutionalized – for example, maternity and paternity
leaves are sufficiently long to help new parents adapt to their role and return to work with the supports they
need in place). Facilitating continuity of culture may also mean that organizational leadership ensures toler-
ance for different dress or flexibility in scheduling and holiday time.
Finally, workplaces that pay sufficient wages and governments that emphasize occupational health and safety
practices are, together, likely to contribute to meeting the basic needs of employees while maintaining the
profitability of the the business and avoiding unintended harm in the workplace. (Levine et al., 2012).
This list of factors demonstrates that organizations which are complex need to address concurrently the re-
quirements of their employees/residents/participants at multiple systemic levels. Individual change is seldom
enough if people are to navigate and negotiate effectively for the internal and external resources they and
their organization need for success, especially when exposed to a non-normative stressor like an economic
recession, an act of violence in the workplace, or more chronic exposure to stress through excessive de-
mands on employee time or a lack of personal boundaries as a result of round-the-clock electronic communi-
cation that obligates employees to respond.
This list is not unique in the field of organizational resilience, though the distinction made in the R2 model be-
tween helping individuals and organizations become both rugged and resourced brings clarity to an otherwise
complicated body of research and practice. Among the models which support this view of organizations as

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a setting for complex processes of navigation and negotiation is Crane's (in press) Resilient Work Systems
Framework (Figure 10.1). Though slightly less of an integration of individually focused initiatives to make em-
ployees more resilient, Crane's model focuses on eight dimensions of work that promote or inhibit worker
resilience scored from low to high. All eight dimensions can be influenced by an organization or the other sys-
tems with which an organization interacts, with the expectation that a change at the organizational, team or
individual level will directly or indirectly result in changes in other dimensions of the Framework as well. In this
sense, the model is complex, with many combinations of factors producing contextually specific results that
ensure the sustainability of the organization. For example, there is attention to the culture of the organization
and its provision of opportunities for training, supervision and structure, as well as team communication, effi-
cacy, workload, shared mission (also a function of good leadership), relationships with colleagues, opportuni-
ties for skill development (and the powerful identities that follow) and the time away from work to adequately
recover and prepare for future demands.

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Figure 10.1 The Resilient Work Systems Framework for assessing organizational contribu-
tors to resilience (Crane, in press)
The following case example reflects both the seven principles discussed earlier and the list of rugged and
resourced factors associated with resilience as they apply to a community as a whole (the organization).
Example: Maple Ridge. Maple Ridge1 is a community (in this instance, the organization which is the focus of
this case study) of 7,000 that is highly dependent upon the extraction of oil and gas for its economy. A review
of the world price for crude oil shows a direct link over time to the economic boom-and-bust cycles of the
community, with boom times bringing a rapid expansion in new housing, decreases in undeveloped land such

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as wetlands used by migratory birds, and large increases in household income, along with serious pressures
on families as primary earners (usually adult males) work long hours to meet the demand for labor. As a con-
sequence of the town's attraction as a place to find work, it also has struggled to deal with large numbers of
transient workers, the availability of alcohol and drugs and a lack of other economic choices beyond employ-
ment in the oil and gas industry.
While these pressures put the population under continuous stress during both economic boom-and-bust pe-
riods, the town has developed plans to cope. Prior to 2014, amid a stronger economy, the town implemented
a number of strategies to attract and retain families, including building an award-winning daycare, a small
number of subsidized housing units to make rents more affordable for young families, improving the schools,
improving the recreational paths outside the town and encouraging investment in its downtown core of ser-
vices for young workers like a gym and coffee shops. These efforts had a positive impact on the wellbeing of
individuals and the community's sense of social cohesion until the price of oil tumbled in 2014 and a declining
tax base put pressure on the municipality to stop funding anything but core services. Those initial adaptations
to make the town more resilient to boom-and-bust economic changes were replaced with resistance strate-
gies that mobilized support for the building of pipelines and insisted that government support the oil industry
through legislative and taxation means.
More recently, a small but growing number of people are pushing for a transformation of the local economy,
exploiting new opportunities in the production of hemp and legalized marijuana, revisiting its agricultural and
forestry industries, encouraging small businesses and focusing on the production of ‘clean’ energy solutions
for the use of oil and gas. They have also worked at addressing the alcohol and drug problems in the com-
munity and keeping the schools and other infrastructure functioning well to ensure the community remains an
attractive place to settle.
At the level of individuals, however, mounting stress related to the economic downturn continues to put eco-
nomic pressure on households, with employment shortages and pressure to be on-call around the clock for
available shifts. This pressure is dealt with through the use of substances (a negative solution) or by build-
ing stronger connections with family and community (a positive solution). In the community, there are also
opportunities for self-improvement, including access to outdoor recreation, sports centers and a private gym.
Equally important, the town through its Department of Family and Community Services has initiated a series
of monthly dinners to create a sense of community cohesion, built a skateboard park to give youth in the com-
munity a place to be, and offered a number of supports to parents of young children, seniors and those with

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mental and physical health challenges. All of these strategies have supplemented the efforts by individuals to
find the resources they need for wellbeing through the town's municipal programs and by addressing prob-
lems in the broader economy through labor mobility and economic diversification.
Implications for Interventions to Improve Organizational

Resilience
Given the complexity of organizations and the multiple intersecting systems that they interact with, interven-
tions that are intended to improve resilience need to address multiple systems simultaneously. As Russell
Ackoff (1999) observed, it is often better to achieve partial solutions to many different parts of a complex prob-
lem than to seek complete resolution of a single problem affecting one part of a system (leaving the rest of the
system vulnerable). More commonly, however, resilience is addressed at the level of individuals (Robertson
et al., 2015), providing personal training in problem-solving or emotional regulation through interventions like
mindfulness-based stress reduction or workplace wellness programs. When it comes to building psychologi-
cal capital, there is a common argument that, as employees acquire more, they will be able to be more pro-
ductive and engaged. This psychological capital includes qualities like self-confidence and efficacy, optimism
and a positive attitude towards success in the future (Luthans et al., 2015). While the list is intuitively obvious,
the research to support such claims has avoided the issues raised by the study of resilience: at what level
of risk exposure do these individual attributes produce the required change? Remarkably, studies of these
psychological constructs have often been done with the highly selective sample of university students under
laboratory conditions, making the application of such findings to contexts like boom-and-bust economies diffi-
cult to know.
For these reasons, strategies for organizational resilience that put responsibility for change on individuals
within an organization rather than on the organization as a whole are largely untested, especially in contexts
where employees are experiencing atypical amounts of stress. By contrast, more holistic approaches (in
many cases also untested) consider the changes systems need to make to help employees and other orga-
nizational subsystems (e.g., computer networks, human resources, production lines) perform optimally. For
example, human burnout in the workplace should not be described as a failure of the individual, but as the
dysfunction of systems that put individuals at risk. Future research needs to examine both individual and or-
ganization-wide resilience and the factors and processes associated with positive outcomes at different levels

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of stress.
This emerging multisystemic focus is evident in some approaches to worker wellbeing such as Cusack et al.'s
(2016) Health Services Workplace Environmental Resilience (HSWER) model, which promotes nurses’ re-
silience by addressing the multiple environmental factors that influence performance on the job including both
nursing staff support (such as workplace climate, respectful communication and access to timely consultation)
and nursing staff development (such as good leadership, opportunities to advance skills and mentorship).
Though Cusack et al.'s work is specific to nurses in clinical settings, such efforts reflect systemic responses
to organizational stress by addressing the needs of multiple systems all at once, from the personal to the pro-
fessional. This means understanding both the capacity of organizations to facilitate employee resilience and
the broader social constructions of the meanings people hold that decide which sources of support they value
most. As Curt Coffman and Kathie Sorensen write (based on a comment by management consultant Peter
Drucker), ‘culture eats strategy for lunch’ (2013). Efforts to improve resilience that are not properly negotiated
and culturally relevant in a specific organizational setting are likely to experience resistance during implemen-
tation.
Conclusion
A focus on organizational resilience and the processes that promote and sustain wellbeing shifts attention
from the study of breakdown and disorder to the conditions that make success possible under stress. This
shift in perspective creates a learning environment in which organizations (from the smallest workplace team
to entire governments) can be studied to better understand the mechanisms that promote and protect systems
when they are exposed to non-normative stress. Organizational resilience, however, is much more compli-
cated than assisting employees to develop their capacity to ‘think positively’ or ‘feel motivated'. Beyond these
individual qualities associated with ruggedness, an organization that shows resilience needs to resource the
many systems upon which it depends. Adaptation to stress is only one way that organizations and their em-
ployees/residents/participants/citizens accommodate to stress. Depending on the quality of the threat expe-
rienced by an organization, and the resources that are available and accessible, organizations will employ a
number of different strategies to cope, from resisting change altogether to transforming the environment sur-
rounding the organization to make the organization and the people who are part of it more resilient.

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Note
1 The name of the community has been changed to protect the identity of study participants.
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• organizational resilience
• organizations
• resilience

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