Resilient personality : Is grit a source of resilience ?

Abstract

Resilience, the ability to function under adversity, is important in most aspects of life, but especially so in organizations (Britt et al., 2016; Caza and Milton, 2012). Workers face mounting stress from chronic issues such as employment uncertainty, growing work demands, 24/7 connectivity, and blurring work boundaries (Ashford et al., 2018; Kolb et al., 2012; Kossek and Perrigino, 2016). Moreover, acute workplace crises may be increasing in severity and frequency (Williams et al., 2017). As a result, it seems hard to overstate the importance of being able to recover from challenges at work. Indeed, resilient individuals have been found to enjoy many positive outcomes, including greater wellbeing, better mental health, higher life satisfaction, and more self-efficacy (Lee et al., 2013; Liu et al., 2017; Mayordomo et al., 2016). Resilience is also positively associated with important attitudes and behaviors such as job satisfaction, engagement, organizational commitment, and job performance (Elitharp, 2005; Kossek and Perrigino, 2016; Cooke et al., 2016; Wang et al., 2017).