Team Resilience at Work: A Multilevel Conceptualisation and Measurement

Abstract

Team resilience has been introduced as a psychological construct that may explain how teams collectively withstand or bounce back from adverse events at work. Since the research is in the early stages, current understanding of the conceptual nature of team resilience and its position in the nomological network of workplace resilience is still limited. Inconsistent conceptual approaches and an overreliance on poorly validated measures have impeded advances in this line of research. This research argues that team resilience is best conceptualised as an emergent team state which emerges from preparative, adaptive, and reflective team processes, and is demonstrated as a team’s functioning trajectory following adversity. Adopting a multilevel perspective, this thesis aimed to develop a multilevel framework that clarifies the conceptual elements of team resilience and its relationship with resilience at the individual level. This research aimed to address the shortcomings of previous measures of team resilience by developing and validating a new measure of team resilience emergence based on best practices for test construction. This thesis comprises three research papers that address the overarching research aims and objectives. The first research paper aimed to clarify the conceptual nature of team resilience and to integrate diverging conceptual approaches. To this end, a systematic review and narrative synthesis of previous conceptualisations of team resilience was conducted (N= 35 articles). The study presents a new multilevel model of workplace team resilience and provides new insights into the conceptual relationship between resilience at the individual and team level. The second research paper presents the findings from a longitudinal, qualitative event-contingent diary study which sought to explore empirically the multilevel nature of team resilience emergence in work teams over time. This study identified key multilevel antecedents and processes of team resilience emergence and proposes different pathways for team resilience emergence in the Team Resilience Inhibitor-Enabler Model. The third research paper utilised the conceptual insights from the previous studies for the development of a new 14 dimensional, 56-item Team Resilience Emergence Scale (TRES). This paper presents the item generation process and evidence for psychometric properties across three empirical studies. TRES showed good reliability, adequate factor structure, and some evidence for discriminant as well as convergent properties with related team constructs and team performance outcomes.

Date of Award	16 Jul 2021
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	The University of Manchester
Supervisor	Sharon Clarke (Main Supervisor) & Sara Willis (Co Supervisor)