Notion Of Resilience Research Articles

Assessing organizational resilience: an interactionist approach

This article addresses the issue of organizational resilience in a structural context marked by complexity, change and distribution of activities between interdependent occupational groups. We adopt an interactionist approach, relying mostly on the works of E. C. Hughes and A. Strauss to show how articulation within and between groups can affect the achievement of organizational goals (safety and production) in the face of unexpected events. The paper is based on an empirical study of teams involved in major modernization projects of the rail transport system and facing critical, risky and very constrained work situations. Our empirical results describe in depth the nature of arrangements and negotiations made within and between occupational groups to articulate the work. We show how organizational conditions affect these arrangements and finally the resilience of the project organization and groups within it. We then discuss our results in four main points, aiming to give a more general scope to our results. Our first two points demonstrate how professional rivalries and asymmetric relations lead to a displacement in organizational goals and affect resilience. Our third point assesses the role and the limits of both informal and formal arrangements in articulation and resilience. We finally show how adopting an interactionist perspective questions the notion of resilience for an organization as a whole.

Photography after the Incidents: We’re Not Afraid!

Photography after the Incidents: We’re Not Afraid!

Photography after the Incidents

Photography after the Incidents

Innovation projects need resilience

In this paper we examine what enables (or hinders) innovation project to create innovation whilst being part in a system of innovation. By using complexity theory and the notion of resilience, we show that the complexity in innovation projects stems from being knowledge intensive, having multiple stakeholders involved, and that time lags occur during the project. To handle these constant challenges, there is a need of supporting resources that enable projects to be resilient, i.e., able to respond constructively without cracking under the pressure. Our conclusion is that key, and external, actors should strive to create an environment that enables resilience.

Special Section: Cases That Have Taught Me a Lot

After first considering the different mechanisms of learning, this article presents several cases that have had a decisive influence on the author, providing inspiration for his theoretical perspective on the relational basis of psychopathology and, particularly, the more severe disorders: depression, borderline states and psychosis. The author also recounts a life story that helped him considerably in understanding the notion of resilience, before it had become more widespread in the therapeutic field. The special cases that feature in the practice of every professional ensure that learning will take place and help prevent a routine approach from being taken, provided that the work setting is conducive to team work, supervision, or involvement in a teaching context.

A Cultural-Historical Interpretation of Resilience: the implications for practice

Recent attempts at preventing the social exclusion of vulnerable children in England have been driven by notions of resilience which centre primarily on changing children so that they may be better able to cope with adversity. Drawing on the concepts of Cultural Historical Activity Theory (CHAT), we suggest that the idea of resilience should be expanded to include developing a capacity to act on and reshape the social conditions of one’s development. We use evidence from two studies of practices in recent re-configurations of children’s services in England to examine whether practitioners are seeing resilience in these terms. We present examples of work which embody these views but suggest that they are not easily incorporated into practices where expertise is centred on care and clear communication. The care and communication model of practice reflects the emphases given to evolutionary notions of child development while a CHAT view of resilience reflects Vygotsky’s concerns with a dialectic between individuals and the social situations of their development.

Conceptualizing Trauma and Resilience Across Diverse Contexts

This paper offers a multicultural understanding of trauma and resilience as experienced in the lives of individuals from diverse cultural and racial backgrounds. The research and clinical literature on resilience has focused largely if not exclusively on individual personality traits and coping styles, and has neglected to explore all possible sources and expressions of resilience in individuals and groups. For many ethnic minorities, traditional notions of resilience, shaped largely by middle class European and North American values, may not capture culturally more familiar modes of positive adaptation to adverse and traumatic experience. This paper explores the concept of resilience as a multidetermined phenomenon, and considers the implications of this perspective for clinical research and intervention with ethnic minorities.

The Rise of the Phoenix: Methodological Innovation as a Discourse of Renewal

The imperatives on contemporary organizations to adapt to an increasingly uncertain and turbulent environment are intense. The pace of change is at least as great in the public as the private sector, with technology being integral to the UK government's modernization agenda. Resilience refers to the ability of individuals and organizations to cope with change through a continuous process of renewal. Much research on resilience is uncritical, normative and written from a detached perspective that emphasizes the agency of senior management. In contrast, this paper provides an ethnographically based account of resilience at the middle level of a large, public sector bureaucracy. Finding itself under increasing pressure to move away from its traditional, technically oriented role, the IS function sought to reinvent itself as a strategic driver of business transformation. The development of a business process reengineering methodology was seen as the key to operationalizing this new role. Although innovation in IS methodology can be problematic, here it was brought off successfully. This was attributed to several factors, including the adoption of a participative action research approach and the commitment of IS management. Above all, the sense of crisis prevailing at the outset of the initiative was decisive. Crises present a major challenge to organizational sense-making; here, a resilient ‘discourse of renewal’ was kindled with the impending threat interpreted positively as a proactive opportunity to develop the new strategic identity. The paper concludes with some critical reflections on the limits of managerial agency and the notion of resilience as a designable capacity.

Monoparentalidade, pobreza e resiliência: entre as crenças dos profissionais e as possibilidades da convivência familiar

O presente artigo apresenta um estudo comparativo entre as crenças de agentes comunitários de saúde sobre possibilidades de resiliência em famílias monoparentais e de baixa renda e as estratégias de enfrentamento das adversidades que emergem nas histórias de vida destas famílias. Tomou-se como base a noção de resiliência aplicada à Psicologia, que se refere aos processos que explicam a superação de adversidades. Foram entrevistados quatro agentes comunitários de saúde e quatro famílias monoparentais. As estratégias metodológicas foram: entrevistas semi-estruturadas, histórias de vida, entrevista reflexiva e a análise dos dados através da grounded-theory. Os resultados revelaram crenças pessimistas dos agentes comunitários sobre o funcionamento das famílias pobres, em contraposição aos fatores indicativos de resiliência constatados nas histórias de vida destas famílias. Os resultados sinalizam para a necessidade de transformar e adequar as percepções dos agentes sociais acerca de grupos que vivem situação de pobreza.

Focusing the Meaning(s) of Resilience: Resilience as a Descriptive Concept and a Boundary Object

This article reviews the variety of definitions proposed for within sustainability science and suggests a typology according to the specific degree of normativity. There is a tension between the original descriptive concept of resilience first defined in ecological science and a more recent, vague, and malleable notion of resilience used as an approach or boundary object by different scientific disciplines. Even though increased conceptual vagueness can be valuable to foster communication across disciplines and between science and practice, both conceptual clarity and practical relevance of the concept of resilience are critically in danger. The fundamental question is what conceptual structure we want resilience to have. This article argues that a clearly specified, descriptive concept of resilience is critical in providing a counterbalance to the use of resilience as a vague boundary object. A clear descriptive concept provides the basis for operationalization and application of resilience within ecological science.

GROUPING OR GANGING: THE PSYCHODYNAMICS OF BULLYING

abstract This paper considers the notion of resilience in the context of the psychodynamics of bullying. It draws a distinction between the role and function of group membership on the one hand and of gang formations on the other. The ‘safety in numbers’ mentality establishes a false sense of integration and identity, especially attractive to those whose early experiences have undermined their resilience as a result of insufficient containment, of aggressive and hostile impulses above all. The paper argues that resilience is the capacity to withstand destructive impulses and experiences and that that capacity is lodged in very early development. It draws on Bion’s theories in particular, and offers examples from infant and young child observations.

MOTHER COURAGE: REFLECTIONS ON MATERNAL RESILIENCE

abstract This paper attempts to develop a psychoanalytic perspective on maternal resilience. It argues that notions of resilience have been largely focused on the development of resilience in children, with the mother being viewed as a key figure in understanding its success or failure. However, the development of maternal resilience – the capacity for mothers to survive the vicissitudes of the parenting experience itself – has received less attention, occluding an important aspect of maternal subjectivity. Drawing on recent work on maternal ambivalence, this paper explores the relation between ambivalence and resilience, and provides clinical material from a two‐year slow‐open analytic group for mothers at the Maya Centre to illustrate our view that maternal resilience may usefully describe the aspect of ambivalence that entails bearing and accepting ourselves as mothers as well as our ambivalent feelings about our children.

Resilience: research evidence and conceptual considerations for posttraumatic stress disorder

The growing recognition and occurrence of traumatic exposure in the general population has given increased salience to the need to understand the concept of resilience. More than just the "flip side" of a risk factor, the notion of resilience encompasses psychological and biological characteristics, intrinsic to an individual, that might be modifiable and that confer protection against the development of psychopathology in the face of stress. In this review, we provide some perspective on the concept of "resilience" by examining early use of the term in research on "children at risk" and discuss the relationship between risk and resilience factors. We then review psychological and biological factors that may confer resilience to the development of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) following trauma, examine how resilience has been assessed and measured, and discuss issues to be addressed in furthering our understanding of this critical concept going forward.

Assessing the positive influence of music activities in community development programs

This article describes a framework for assessing the positive influence of music activities in community development programs. It examines hybrid music, health and rich media approaches to creative case study with the purpose of developing more compelling evidence based advocacy that examines the claims of a causal link. This preliminary study examines the problems with the research methods and seeks to design a more media inclusive approach that allows music experience to be heard in more compelling ways than text alone. The framework outlined in this paper provides a measure of effectiveness for community development programs that integrates social and cultural aspects. The framework connects notions of resilience as a fundamental building block for healthy communities with indicators of musical meaning and engagement. These indicators have previously been used individually in evaluating the effectiveness of music experience. This article reports on an exploratory research project that utilises this framework across a series of case studies in several culturally diverse Australian communities. The relevance of the research is that it seeks to identify the critical components of music education that have significant transferable implications for community development programs.

Information Transmission in Coalitional Voting Games

A core allocation of a complete information economy can be characterized as one that would not be unanimously rejected in favor of another feasible alternative by any coalition. We use this test of coalitional voting in an incomplete information environment to formalize a notion of resilience. Since information transmission is implicit in the Bayesian equilibria of such voting games, this approach makes it possible to derive core concepts in which the transmission of information among members of a coalition is endogenous. Our results lend support to the credible core of Dutta and Vohra (2003) and the core proposed by Myerson (2003) as two that can be justified in terms of coalitional voting.

Information transmission in coalitional voting games

A core allocation of a complete information economy can be characterized as one that would not be unanimously rejected in favor of another feasible alternative by any coalition. We use this test of coalitional voting in an incomplete information environment to formalize a notion of resilience. Since information transmission is implicit in the Bayesian equilibria of such voting games, this approach makes it possible to derive core concepts in which the transmission of information among members of a coalition is endogenous. Our results lend support to the credible core of Dutta and Vohra [Incomplete information, credibility and the core, Math. Soc. Sci. 50 (2005) 148–165] and the core proposed by Myerson [Virtual utility and the core for games with incomplete information, Mimeo, University of Chicago, 2005] as two that can be justified in terms of coalitional voting.

Multiple Perspectives on Educationally Resilient Immigrant Students

This study explores in an innovative manner the notion of resilience in a group of immigrant students. Structured interviews were used to explore resilience issues with immigrant students enrolled in university. Two interviewers collected and recorded data together, but conducted separate and independent analyses to explore differences in results due to their own cultural backgrounds. Findings suggest that the traditional concept of resilience - one based on studies of students from lower socioeconomic classes in school in inner-city neighborhoods that identify social competence, problem-solving ability, autonomy, and satisfaction with school as significant resilience factors - is limited. The findings in this study suggest that immigrant students represent a different pattern of resilience related to a strong cultural belief in the value of education and the support, often financial, provided by their families. Interesting differences in interpretation related to the first culture of the researches suggest that "mirrored reflections" offers one way to capture differences in data interpretation resulting from researchers' backgrounds.

Dealing with it: Black Caribbean women's response to adversity and psychological distress associated with pregnancy, childbirth, and early motherhood

This paper focuses on Black Caribbean women's ideas about perinatal depression and the ways in which these are linked to coping with personal adversity. An epidemiological survey found that despite higher levels of social risk among Black Caribbean women living in the UK, they were no more likely than White British women to record above-threshold depression scores postnatally and were significantly less likely to have done so during pregnancy. In-depth interviews were undertaken to illuminate the models, experiences, and meaning of perinatal depression held by Black Caribbean women. Women's narratives suggested that they rejected ‘postnatal depression’ as a central construct for understanding responses to psychological distress associated childbirth and early motherhood. Rejection of depression as illness was associated with imperatives to normalise distress and a self-concept which stressed the importance of being ‘Strong-Black-Women’ for maintaining psychological well-being. This identity served to reinforce notions of resilience, empowerment, and coping strategies characterised by the need to problem-solve practically, assertively, and materially. The study questions the utility of attaching psychiatric labels to the emotional and psychological distress experienced by Black Caribbean women around the perinatal period.

Prevention Principles for Practitioners

SUMMARY The social work profession has sought to eliminate, or at the very least, ameliorate those social ills that were believed to contribute to severe social and personal dysfunction. Prevention programs have been a primary factor in this endeavor. Prevention programs have addressed a vast array of difficulties including adolescent suicide, youth violence, teenage pregnancy, home visiting programs for families at high-risk for neglect and abuse as well as out-of-home placement. This paper addresses the concept of prevention and incorporates the notion of resilience in eight (8) prevention practice principles. Case examples are provided as well as a discussion for future directions for prevention in the field of social work.

The Network Orientations of Highly Resilient Urban Minority Youth: A Network-Analytic Account of Minority Socialization and Its Educational Implications.

In this article the authors present a critical assessment of existing characterizations of resiliency and help-seeking behavior in light of their relevance to issues of minority youth socialization and schooling. In this effort, they reconceptualize the notion of resiliency within an analysis that highlights the more contextual aspects of how minority adolescent cope with structural forces that threaten healthy development. They show how key developmental transitions are thwarted by social forces that undermine the development of supportive relationships across multiple institutional sites (e.g., family, neighborhood, school). They also explain how resiliency is associated with egocentric networks that exhibit key structural characteristics. The authors conclude by discussing the implications of a critical network-analytic model of minority socialization in the development of future educational and youth mediations and reforms.