Reconceptualising workplace resilience - A cross-disciplinary perspective

Stressful situations, performance pressure, and setbacks are part of contemporary organizational life. The dynamic nature of technological advances and globalisation of business leads to tougher competitive pressures and constant change. People’s responses to these challenging circumstances vary widely. Some bounce back and adapt to increasing challenges and adversity, others’ healthy functioning is significantly impaired. Even though resilience is recognised as a crucial issue in the workplace, the rates of new cases of work-related stress and depression have remained broadly flat for more than 10 years. Resilience research within Applied Psychology typically focuses on the psychological domain of a person’s functioning. This means that also resilience trainings or interventions focus on only one area. The present paper aims to build a comprehensive conceptualization of workplace resilience ultimately to assist in informing targeted intervention and in developing a model to move the research area forward as a whole. A cross-disciplinary understanding of and approach to individual resilience in the workplace would allow to better understand the mechanism of why some people bounce back from adverse events whereas others’ well-being declines. We propose a resilience framework with antecedents considering psychological (cognitive and emotional) and physiological correlates (cardiovascular, gastrointestinal and metabolic).