Organizational Resilience despite Chronic Adversity: A Fragile Balance

The goal of this research was to investigate organizational resilience, namely how an organization that has effectively managed chronic adversity for many years – including employees being exposed to severe, often aggressive, conflicts on a daily basis – maintains its effectiveness without impairment while also supporting employees’ well-being. To explore these questions, a qualitative study was conducted based upon the principles of grounded theory within a police services organization in Canada that has proven to be effective with few stress-related employee leaves. The results of the in-depth coding process revealed the existence of several dualities in the management of resilience throughout the organization. In particular, there were competing forces that created tensions around several work processes at the organizational, team and individual levels, including: (1) individual well-being versus team operational readiness; (2) support for wellness versus cynicism and stigma; (3) accountability versus surveillance; (4) identification versus disidentification; (5) meaningful work versus compassion fatigue; and (6) team camaraderie versus organization blame. These results point to the need for organizations to actively manage – and accept – these dualities as inherent in the process of coping with chronic adversity.