How Much Do We Really Know About Employee Resilience? More, If We Include the Sport Psychology Resilience Research

Abstract

Britt, Shen, Sinclair, Grossman, and Klieger (2016) present an argument for consolidation and conceptual unification of the resilience research. As one of the few industrial–organizational (I-O) psychologists who regularly work in the sport psychology field, I was compelled to note the omission by Britt et al. of any reference to the resilience research in the sport psychology domain. As an I-O psychologist practicing sport psychology, I have stood on the shoulders of giants in applying with athletes and coaches our I-O theory and knowledge in areas such as motivation (e.g., Locke & Latham, 2002), training (e.g., skill acquisition, automaticity, deliberate practice, expertise, adaptive expertise, error based learning; e.g., Chen, Thomas, & Wallace, 2005; Ericsson, Krampe, & Tesch-Romer, 1993; Ericsson, & Lehmann, 1996; Logan, 1988; Lorenzet, Salas, & Tannenbaum, 2005), leadership, and group and team dynamics (e.g., Colquitt, Noe, & Jackson, 2002; Salas, Cooke, & Rosen, 2008). I-O psychology tends to be on the vanguard in these areas, whereas sport psychology lags somewhat behind (compare Locke & Latham, 2002, with Gould, 1993, and Weinberg & Weigand, 1993; compare Vroom & Yetton, 1973, with Chelladurai & Haggerty, 1978). However, resilience has been a central research focus for sport psychologists for some time; it is a relatively recent area of interest for I-O psychologists. Interestingly, Britt et al. did not include even a single reference from the sport psychology literature. I strongly encourage I-O psychologists studying resilience to review, borrow, and build on the sport psychology research in this area.