Bouncing Back Together: Toward a Theoretical Model of Work Team Resilience

Abstract

In today’s turbulent business environments, work teams frequently face a variety of adverse conditions and, as a result, can experience process breakdowns and performance declines. Despite existing research on team effectiveness, we know very little about what enables teams to “bounce back” from adversity-induced setbacks. This is problematic because such negative experiences can lead to team failure. In response to this, we draw from conservation of resources theory to develop a comprehensive theoretical model of work team resilience that clarifies the meaning of the work team resilience construct and illustrates both how it emerges in an interdependent fashion via critical team-level resources and how it unfolds over time through team processes. In doing so we highlight the compelling phenomenon in which energetic, interdependent team member activity leads to goal attainment during challenging circumstances. We further theorize that work team resilience strengthens over time through mastery experiences, functioning as a self-reinforcing gain spiral. We contribute to the management literature by highlighting the key antecedents and processes that distinguish resilient work teams from brittle ones, including those teams that are merely adaptable and those that excel in stable environments but falter under adversity. We inform practitioners about how to build and sustain resilient work teams.