This paper presents a critical appraisal of resilience, a construct connoting the maintenance of positive adaptation by individuals despite experiences of significant adversity. As empirical research on resilience has burgeoned in recent years, criticisms have been levied at work in this area. These critiques have generally focused on ambiguities in definitions and central terminology; heterogeneity in risks experienced and competence achieved by individuals viewed as resilient; instability of the phenomenon of resilience; and concerns regarding the usefulness of resilience as a theoretical construct. We address each identified criticism in turn, proposing solutions for those we view as legitimate and clarifying misunderstandings surrounding those we believe to be less valid. We conclude that work on resilience possesses substantial potential for augmenting the understanding of processes affecting at-risk individuals. Realization of the potential embodied by this construct, however, will remain constrained without continued scientific attention to some of the serious conceptual and methodological pitfalls that have been noted by skeptics and proponents alike.

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Testability and meaning

The Construct of Resilience: A Critical Evaluation and Guidelines for Future Work

December 1978, volume 23 This article describes the deficiencies of positivist science for generating knowledge for use in solving problems that members of organizations face. Action research is introduced as a method for correcting these deficiencies. When action research is tested against the criteria of positivist science, action research is found not to meet its critical tests. The appropriateness of positivist science is questioned as a basis for judging the scientific merits of action research. Action research can base its legitimacy as science in philosophical traditions that are different from those which legitimate positivist science. Criteria and methods of science appropriate to action research are offered.

An Assessment of the Scientific Merits of Action Research.

From a Logical Point of View

This research was supported by a Senior Fulbright Research Grant to R. P. Bagozzi and a grant to L. W. Phillips from the Distribution Research and Educational Foundation (DREF), National Association of Wholesale Distributors, Washington, DC. Special thanks go to Dirk Van Dongen, Executive Director of DREF, and Ron Schreibman, Director of Research, for their assistance throughout the project. The contributions made to the research by Louis W. Stern, Northwestern University, are gratefully acknowledged. Comments on an earlier draft by Claes Fornell, University of Michigan, Barbara Lawrence and Alvin Silk, MIT, and V. Srinivasan and Jeffrey Pfeffer, Stanford University, also contributed to ideas presented in this paper, as did suggestions made by the editors. A holistic construal is presented to represent and test organizational theories, using examples from contemporary organizational theory and data from a recent study of wholesale distribution companies. The methodology provides a mechanism for linking theory construction and theory testing in organization research by explicitly representing theoretical and empirical concepts, nonobservational hypotheses, and correspondence rules. Unlike traditional methods used for construct validation and hypothesis testing, the methodology permits the researcher to model the extent of random and systematic error in measures of theoretical concepts and to control these sources of error when testing substantive hypotheses. Comparisons made between the holistic construal and traditional procedures show how the latter can lead to inaccurate conclusions about the status of a theory's constructs, hypotheses, and measures.

Representing and testing organizational theories: A holistic construal.

1. The Nature of Learning Theory. I. BEHAVIORAL-ASSOCIATIONIST THEORIES. 2. Thorndike's Connectionism. 3. Pavlov's Classical Conditioning. 4. Guthrie's Contiguous Conditioning. 5. Hull's Systematic Behavior Theory. 6. Human Associative Learning. 7. Skinner's Operant Conditioning. 8. Este's Stimulus Sampling Theory. 9. Recent Developments in Behavioral Theories. II. COGNITIVE-ORGANIZATIONAL THEORIES. 10. Gestalt Theory. 11. Tolman's Sign Learning. 12. Information-Processing Theories of Behavior. 13. Recent Developments in Cognitive Theories. III. RELATED FIELDS. 14. Neurophysiology of Learning. 15. Applications to Education. Reference Section. Author Index. Subject Index.

Testability and meaning

Citations

The Construct of Resilience: A Critical Evaluation and Guidelines for Future Work

An Assessment of the Scientific Merits of Action Research.

From a Logical Point of View

Representing and testing organizational theories: A holistic construal.

Theories of Learning

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