Resilience: A Review Using a Grounded Integrated Occupational Approach

Abstract

Resilience, the ability to adapt to adversity and endure job demands, is growing in prominence in the management literature with limited regard to occupational influences. Often examined at the individual level with fragmented conceptualizations, it can be a trait, capacity, or a process. We conduct a review of (1) management studies and (2) content from O*NET for 11 occupations and disciplinary studies taking a grounded approach to synthesize themes to develop an integrated occupational resilience framework. Our review suggests that resilience is individually and occupationally determined as part of a multi-level system. Our review shows that specific occupational tasks and contextual demands imply different connotations of what exactly “resilience” means and how contexts may constrain or foster resiliency. Occupational resilience involves (1) multiple conceptual strands related to accessing resources (trait, capacity, and processes); (2) positive and negative triggers that are occupationally distinguished; (3) different resilience types (cognitive, emotional, and physical) that vary in need, breadth, and importance across occupations; (4) a dynamic phenomenon that occurs within and across career stages; (5) both content-general, and job-specific occupational tensions; and (6) work and nonwork domains. Multi-level occupational-specific and comparative studies, adaptive performance and risk taking across the work–nonwork interface are highlighted areas for future research.

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank Mike Campion for comments on a very early version of this paper. Some of the ideas in this paper were presented in a symposium entitled “Work-Family Conflict in the era of Globalization: Where do we go from Here?” James Quick, Chair, 2015 National Academy of Management meetings, Vancouver, Canada. We also thank the Krannert School of Management at Purdue University for providing a doctoral graduate assistantship to support this research.

Notes

1. We point out here that this portion of our review is intended primarily to introduce occupational distinctions into the literature on resilience, using O'NET data, While O*NET data were plentiful, some occupations had less available relevant literature to include in our review below as compared to others. We highlight sections where we felt the literature was less developed as fruitful areas of investigation for future research.

2. https://www.O*NETonline.org/find/descriptor/browse/Work_Styles/