What does resilience really mean ? What does resilience really mean ?

Abstract

THE term resilience is appearing increasingly in articles in specialised journals, covering anything from psychology to management and strategy. The very word resilience is worthy of a moment’s consideration because of the issues it raises, and also to examine why it has become so fashionable. It comes into the language, probably via French, from the Latin verb resaltare, which means to rebound or bounce back, to get moving again or to result from, or possibly from the verb resilire, with the literal meaning to jump backwards. In modern language, however, the word is used in a number of contexts with nuances of meaning, most of which boil down to the notion of adapting to circumstances in the face of some shocking event.