Why Resilience Managers Aren’t Resilient, And What Human Resource Management Can Do About It.

Abstract

Prior resilience research typically focuses on either the individual or the organizational level of analysis, emphasises resilience in relation to day-to-day stressors rather than extreme events, and is empirically under-developed. In response, our study inductively theorises about the relationships between individual and organizational resilience, drawing upon a large-scale study of resilience work in UK and French organizations. Our first-hand accounts of resilience work reveal the micro- processes involved in producing resilient organizations, and highlight the challenges experienced in doing resilience work in large organizations. We show that these micro- processes have significant implications for resilience at both individual and organizational levels, and draw implications for how HRM interventions can help to promote individual, and thus organizational, resilience.