Weathering the Financial Storm: A Professional Forecaster Team’s Domain Diffusion of Resilience

ABSTRACT

This project explores how team resilience enacted in the work domain shapes and is shaped by resilience practices in the non-work domain – a process we label, domain diffusion of resilience. Weather forecasters’ team, organizational, and professional work give rise to a resilient mentality, which then tends to manifest in their own non-work contexts. Qualitative data collected from a National Weather Service (NWS) forecaster team revealed that a strain created by a U.S. Government shutdown, which resulted in a five-week stoppage in compensation, was absorbed with minor disruption to both team (work) and family (non-work) functioning. This study draws upon high-reliability team (HRT) and organization (HRO) theory as well as the communicative theory of resilience (CTR) to describe the diffusion of resilience across domains. Implications for cross-boundary theorizing of resilience conclude the article.

KEYWORDS:

• Resilience
• organizational resilience
• disruption
• high-reliability teams
• high-reliability organizations
• team communication

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Correction Statement

This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Notes

1. The authors would like to thank an anonymous reviewer for offering this important point about forecasters’ professional socialization.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Arden C. Roeder

Arden C. Roeder is a doctoral candidate at the University of Oklahoma. Her research explores how resilience processes are cultivated, enacted, and embodied through communication in organizations and teams.

Ryan S. Bisel

Ryan S. Bisel (Ph.D., University of Kansas) is Professor of Organizational Communication in the Department of Communication at the University of Oklahoma. His research interests include leadership communication, organizational culture change, and behavioral ethics.

Brittney S. Morrissey

Brittney S. Morrissey is a doctoral student at the University of Oklahoma whose research centers on family, health, and organizational communication. Specifically, her research examines the intersections of concepts such as gender and culture within each context.