The Study of a Firm Resilience - Research Paper Example

Research Report on Resilience Purpose of the Study Volatile market conditions and unstable world economy pose a threat to the survival of many firms unless they can adapt to changes, and recover from setbacks with agility. The ability of a business to recover from setbacks and continue in its previous state, or even grow as a result of the experience is highly dependent on a firm’s resilience. The resilience of a firm is the sum of the personal resilience of those in management and employees. This report determines the effect of hope, stress and adaptive humour on individual resilience, and makes recommendations on the steps that firms could take to improve and tap the resilience capacity of employees and their supervisors in order to increase its chances of survival despite market changes. Background Information Various studies indicate that people have three main reactions to shortcomings depending on their levels of resilience; first, they make breakdown psychologically, physically and emotionally, and lose their capacity to move ahead by accepting their poor predicament. Secondly, they may suffer a temporary setback, but recover later after a short period and continue as they were before the setback. In the last group and the most favourable, people suffer temporary setbacks, and use the lessons learnt from the shortcoming to advance in the area that was hit by the setback. It is this last group that benefits individuals, companies, communities and countries since not only does it recover from setbacks, but does so in a better state than the previous one. Studies have shown that this group uses various combinations of hope and adaptive humour to deal with stress, boost resilience and overcome any setbacks (Luthans, 2002; Abel, 2002; Zellars, Justice and Beck, 2011). Luthans (2002: 701) asserts that though confidence has been widely acclaimed as having a positive effect on resilience, hope also plays a central role in employee behavior towards challenges at the workplace. In the quest to achieve and sustain a competitive edge in a volatile market, the managements of firms should cultivate positivity at both micro and macro levels, to ensure that employee perceptions are in line with the general perceptions in the firm. The only way to encourage the adoption of positive organizational behavior in the firm is by instilling positive psychological approaches to employees and their supervisors. According to Luthans (2002), hope keeps the firm going even when market conditions seem so bleak that the firm is more likely to collapse than survive. This hope is what enables companies to carry on despite poor economic conditions, and the firms survive to thrive in times when the economy takes a turn for the better. According to Abel (2002), a person’s sense of humour plays a central role in determining one’s choice of coping strategies in response to stressful situations; a higher sense of humour recuses the perception of stress, and a person has the capacity to take a better approach to handle stress. Abel’s study (2002: 373) revealed that high humour individuals adopt constructive approaches to stressful situations including comfortive coping, distancing, seeking social support, self-control, planful problem solving and positive reappraisal. On the other hand, low humour individuals adopt destructive approaches that may end up aggravating the problem and its effects; these approaches include avoidance and escapism. Therefore, the writer illustrates that a high sense of humour is a preferable trait in employees since it gives them a higher resilience to stressful situations and gives the firm better chances of bouncing back. Zellars, Justice and Beck (2011: 21) recommend that managements should stop ignoring the research that links humour to development and sustenance of individual and group resilience. The authors assert that humour plays a central role in sense-making, allowing employees to make sense of their roles at the workplace, and encouraging creativity and innovation, mainly in problem solving. Moreover, humour enables employees to overcome destructive emotions as it can overcome threatening emotions that result due to devastating conditions. Finally, according to Zellars, Justice and Beck (2011: 21), humour promotes individual and group identity, both of which are indispensable in maintaining cohesion among colleagues. Hypotheses The study had four hypotheses, all of which focused on the relationship of various coping strategies and approaches to a person’s degree of resilience; the approach to individual coping strategies is because a company’s resilience is the total of the resilience of its internal stakeholders. The hypotheses included: A person’s approaches to coping with stressing situations are independent of one’s age, gender and other differentiating factors. A more hopeful person is more resilient that a less hopeful person in a similar situation. A person who uses humour as a coping strategy has a reduced perception of the extent of a stressing situation, and more resilient than a person with a low sense of humour. Stress levels are inversely proportional to the level of resilience in an individual. Methodology Participants The study subjects were 182 students doing Organizational Behavior in the Campbell town and Parramatta campuses of the University of Western Sydney. 47.3 (86 students) percent of the subjects were male, and 52.7 (96 students) percent were female. Materials The hope scale discussed by Snyder et al. (1996) was used to estimate the subject’s level of hope using a 7-point Likert scale in which the numbers 1 to 8 indicate the subject’s agreement to a statement’s description of self. The scale includes 1 = Definitely False; 2 = Mostly False; 3 = Somewhat False; 4 = Slightly False; 5 = Slightly True; 6 = Somewhat True; 7 = Mostly True; and 8 = Definitely True. The levels of perceived stress by subjects was analysed using the scale developed by Cohen, Kamarck and Mermelstein (1983), which involves answering of general questions and using a 5 point Likert scale of 0 to 4 to indicate the number of times a subject felt a certain way. The scale includes 0 = Never; 1 = Almost never; 2 = Sometimes; 3 = Fairly Often; and 4 = Very Often. The scale developed by Thorson and Powell (1993) has a 5 point Likert scale like that for measuring stress discussed above; has 24 questions that the subject answered to reveal their humour ‘strengths’, and identify the circumstances in which they would apply humour for coping purposes. Perceived levels of resilience among the subjects were analysed using the Connor-Davidson Resilience Scale as discussed by Campbell-Sills and Stein (2007). This scale is 5 point Likert like the one for hope discussed above and uses statements to analyse a subjects feelings over a period of one month. Procedure The students were given questionnaires to fill during in one session, and the questionnaires collected for further analysis. Data sets were first separated into two groups depending on the gender of the respondent; this was to identify for trends in perceptions in case they depended on the gender of the subject. The data was analysed with the objectives of identifying the effects of hope and coping humour on stress and resilience. T-tests were used to determine the statistical significance of the data. Results Table 1: Means of t-test results on levels of perceived stress, humour, hope and resilience. Variable Male Female Mean SD Mean SD Sign. Stress 35.83 7.08 38.19 7.57 * Humour 19.84 3.85 17.75 3.63 *** Hope 35.62 5.82 34.23 6.60 ns Resilience 37.72 6.54 35.04 6.52 ** NB. * = significant at the .05 level, ** = significant at the .01 level, *** = significant at the .001 level. Means and standard deviations for resilience, hope, stress and humour on the Connor -Davidson Resilience, The Hope, Global Measure of Perceived Stress, and The Coping Humour subscale of the Multidimensional Sense of Humour Scales respectively. The similarities of data for both males and females show that gender does not play a determinant role in resilience. Table 2: Correlation factors for stress, humour, hope and resilience, and the statistical significance of the correlations at different levels Variables 1 2 3 4 1. Stress 1.00 2. Humour -.20* 1.00 3. Hope -.36*** .16* 1.00 4. Resilience -.34*** .32*** .47*** 1.00 High positive correlation between resilience, humour (.32, p Read More