Individual resilience and sensemaking: Traumatic life experiences and employee creativity at work

Abstract

Traumatic life experiences occur when individuals experience life-threatening or other similarly dis-stressful events in life. The extant literature focuses on the negative implications of traumatic life experiences. I theorize, in contrast, that individuals can demonstrate resilience toward traumatic life experiences by performing creatively at work in some situations. Integrating the research on individual creativity and the research on trauma coping, I articulate mechanisms by which employees can be motivated and enabled to demonstrate creativity at work when under the impact of traumatic experiences in other aspects of life. Drawing from a sensemaking perspective, I discuss conditions that increase the likelihood of a positive linkage between traumatic life experiences and employee creativity. The conceptualization in this paper contributes to a better understanding of the anteceding factors to workplace creativity as well as why traumatic life experiences lead to higher levels of employee creativity in some situations but not others.