Developing The Psychological Capital Of Resiliency

The authors present proactive and reactive human resource development (HRD) strategies for its
development.

The proactive HRD includes:

 Increasing Psychological assets

 Decreasing Risk Factors
 & Facilitating processes that allow human resources to enhance their resilience.

The reactive HRD :

 It largely draws from a broaden and build model of:

1. positive emotions
2. self enhancement (improving onself).
3. external attribution (interpreting the causes of behavior-and blamed due to situational
causes rather than individual traits).
4. &hardiness. ‫الصالبة‬

-The development of resilience is crucial for individuals and originations to survive in difficult times.

What is POB?

 Psycap stands for Psychological Capital; and Is the outgrowth ‫ ثمرة‬of positive psychology.
 We should look on what is right with people instead if what is wrong.
 PsyCap=
1. Having Confidence (Efficacy) ; take and put effort to succeed in a challenging task.
2. Optimism: Making Positive Attribution (Interpretation) about succeeding now and in the
future.
3. Hope: Setting a goal, and achieving it and if all ways to achieve this goal fails , we change
the whole goal.
4. Resiliency: When surrounded by problems, you maintain , become strengthened by it,
you bounce back and hence succeed.
 PsyCap is not about your knowledge, skills, or the network of relationship but is who you are
and what you can actually become.
 In the HRD arena, resiliency has been only indirectly addressed.
 When applied to the workforce, it is called Positive Organizational Behavior or POB.
 POB Is : the study and application of : positively oriented human resources strength +
+psychological capacities.
 It can be measured, developed and effectively managed.
 To achieve it, The following criteria must be met:
1. Positive, strength-based, and relatively unique to the organizational behavior field
 2. Theory and research based with valid measures.
3. State like and thus open to development.
 Resilience has been determined to meet these POB criteria, and for HRD, is considered to be
state like and thus open for development and change.

Resiliency:

 Although resiliency has traditionally been considered as trait like (fixed) , but still can be
developable.
 There are multiple of methods for building resiliency +develop it as well in employees who
actually have .
 These methods includes both: PROACTIVE AND REACTIVE APPROACH.

Theoretical Underpinnings and Meaning Of Resiliency:

 Resilience develops based on an individual's existing internal ability to adapt, external support

available and positive experiences.
 A recent metatheory of resiliency identified 3 waves of inquiry and analysis:
1. Identifying resilient qualities of individuals and support systems that predict social and
personal success.
2. Understanding the process of coping with stressors, adversity , change, or opportunity
resulting in the identification , fortification, and enrichment of protective factors.
3. Identifying the motivational forces within individuals and groups and the creation of
experiences that foster the activation and use of these forces.

 Positive psychologists have embraced (hold closely) resiliency as a prime example of what is
right and good about people.

‫ • تبنى علماء النفس اإليجابي (تمسكوا عن‬

‫كثب) المرونة كمثال رئيسي لما هو صواب‬
.‫وجيد في الناس‬
 Resiliency is the developable capacity to rebound or bounce back from adversity, conflict, etcc..

Ann Masten: Psychologist

 Focuses on the proactive (planning ahead of time) assessment of risks and personal assets that
affect employee outcome.
 Any predictor that leads to undesirable outcomes while having no effect if there is no
occurrence.
 Pure risks could include MACROLEVEL EXTERNAL THREATS: EG: ECONOMIC INSTABILITY.
 OR MICROLEVEL INTERNAL THREATS EG: HARRASSMENT.
 These risks are certainly real but may never directly affect certain individuals because their
environment may not be affected by such risks.
 Personal assets are defined as any predictor that leads to positive outcomes while having no
influence if they are absent.
 Eg: promotions , bonuses, recognition , etcc….
 If organizational members do not receive the benefit of a pure personal asset, their resilience is
not affected.
 These risks and assets are an extension of human and social capital (increasing employees
access to information , or strengthening social network) risks are decreased and personal assets
are increased.
 Another important dimension is performance boundary. Some researches suggest that
resilience leads return to normal functioning after an adverse event whereas others indicate
that there may be increase in performance. In addition, the severity of the adverse event may
help determine the performance boundary. The less traumatic an increase in performance will
result and the more traumatic a normal performance will result.
 Another theoretical issue is how we converge and differentiate resilience to other Psycap
factors.
 Other factors may act as pathways to resilience and they can moderate the relationship
between resilience and outcomes such as performance.
 Resilience is reactive and does have an intense stressor antecedent or intense positive event in
order to activate the resiliency process.
 So resiliency is, antecedent (cause)to other positive outcomes of psychological capital because it
restores confidence, hope , optimism after a challenging experience.

how resiliency differs from Hope:

 Hope is the willpower , by setting goals and way power by setting alternatives to achieve those
goals and when necessary redirecting paths to goals in order to succeed.
 Flexibility is a component for both , but what differentiate them is that resiliency is triggered by
a disruptive event.

How do resiliency differs from Optimism:

 Optimism is more closer to resiliency than hope.

 It is defined as expecting that one will receive positive outcomes in life, which lead them to
insisting to achieve the goal and having a positive attribution that they will succeed now and in
the future.
 It differs from resiliency by , resilient people are more prepared than optimists because an
optimist because they have a positive attribution they don’t actually face troubles but they
actually ignore it.
  Resilient people take a more strategic and pragmatic approach to dealing with stress than an
optimist and thus be better suited to adapt and overcome it and this will lead in increase in
performance.

How resilience differs from confidence?

 efficacy is the belief that an individual has to successfully perform a specific task and having
confidence to take on and put in the necessary effort to succeed at challenging tasks.
 The more confident people are in task accomplishment, the more likely they have a pathway to
resilience in which they frame a negative event or failure as a learning experience and restore
their self-efficacy even after it has been challenged.

Resilience as an Overlooked Opportunity for Human Resource Development:

Examples of stress:

 Downsizing which results in layoffs tend to put more stress on people

 Increasing use of laptops, cell phones, and PDA’S which adds stress by decreasing the
amount of downtime an employee has when they are away from work.
 Taking less off, leads to increase level of stress and decrease amount of recovery time.

Because all of the above reasons and stressors, resilience is crucial.

1. So again, resiliency is positive adjustment to adverse conditions.

2. It is state like and open to development.
3. The resilience of workers is related to their performance.
4. Also from an HRD perspective, it is important to note that a bad experience of failure on a task
in an individuals organizational life does not have to be a reason for career derailment , but
actually these employees will use adverse experience to increase performance after a task-
they become more adaptable during uncertainty.

We propose two approaches HRD can use to develop resilience.

The 1st is proactive approach:

1. Risk focused strategy: relies on prevention and reduction of risk or stress.

2. Asset focused strategy: relies on enhancement of personal and available organizational
resources.
3. Process focused strategy: that relies on the cognitive ability of employees.

The 2nd is reactive approach:

  It draws from broaden and build model of positive emotions.
 This research suggest that it is important to constantly remind people to think positively and to
find meaning when negative events occur to individuals or organizations.
 Although organizational members may have been trained to do so, but still look for reassurance
or reminders from their leaders to think positively during tough times.
 Also the term reactive should not carry a negative connotation as an HRD strategy for resiliency
development.
 Rather, this approach is simply reactive as it is how an individual responds to a negative or
positive event.

The PROACTIVE APPROACH:

1. Risk Focused Strategy:

 This development strategy aims to proactively + aggressively avoid circumstances and reduce
the risks that may cause an adverse events.
 Although it is not always possible to foresee external or environmental indicators that may lead
to adversity in an organization , but a strong organizational culture can help in deterring internal
lapses. (prevent internal failures)
Internal Lapses Eg:
Ethical crises (eg. Toxic workplace culture)
Sexual harassment
Employee misconduct (eg. Theft -fraud …)

How to develop this culture?

Thru trust and reciprocity between the organization and its leadership and the individual
employees by fostering a positive employee employer psychological contract which includes
implicit exchange between employee-employer of factors such as:
1. Social support ( instrumental or practical – like financial support or practical help)
2. Promotion
3. Job satisfaction in return for organizational commitment
4. Positive organizational socialization (Organizational socialization is a dynamic process by
which newcomers learn and adjust to attitudes and behaviors needed to assume their
new organizational roles).

Because of downsizing --- > employees feel that they should not show loyalty to their organization
because the organization will not be loyal to them

Because of ethical meltdowns---- employees faith in the organization and its leaders has been shaken.
To counter this lack of faith, the employer must continually foster an environment of social support .

Eg: promotion , promotion feedback are offered so that they can regain organizational commitment.

 Conclusion : managing risks by creating an ethical and trust worthy culture.

The 2nd proactive approach is asset focused strategy:

 These assets include:

1. Human Capital: knowledge , skills, …
2. Social Capital: Social network of support .
 It enhances the employability of people through:
1. paying for continued educational expenses
2. promoting developmental workshops (warshet 3amal la tetwir mwazfin).
3. rewarding those who are seeking to improve themselves.

Conclusion : increase education of employees, leads to increase resiliency

Example : Contingency planning , by educating employees , back up plans , etcc.. to prepare employees.

The 3rd proactive approach is the process focused strategy:

 it can be employed at an attempt to influence the manner in which one interprets events and
experiences.
 Self-efficacy may have a mediating effect on resiliency.
 Widely recognized methods of self efficacy development include:
1. Mastery and success experiences.
2. Various learning and modeling
3. Persuasion and positive feedback
4. Psychological/ physiological arousal and well being
 Above methods are combined into job trainings and mentoring relationship .
A reactive approach to develop resiliency: (Developing individual level resliency)

 Even in the absence of a proactive strategy , people can still find ways to be resilient.
 Until now, little attention has been given to how people develop resiliency in themselves or
others.
 For eg: repressive coping (kame3 or kabet el mashe3er el salbiye in work for eg )and self
enhancement are commonly observed in resilient people.
 4 distinct personality dimensions:
1. Positive emotions
2. Self enhancement
3. Attribution or locus of control(ade nes bt3t2d fiya tt7akam b mawe2ef w tajerob el
hayet).
4. Hardiness

Strategies Using Positive emotions:

 Positive emotions may take the form of laughter and smiles and such emotions may reinforce or
strengthen resiliency.
 Though these types of positive emotions seems very simple, their effects may be great.
 Eg on that is bereaved individual exhibiting laughter and smiles when referring to their loss had
better adjustment during several years of bereavement.
 So positive emotions - assist in quieting or undoing negative emotion
 Positive emotions are increased by continued contact with and support in the person’s social
environment.
 A particular relevant positive emotional strategy for HRD in building resiliency in today’s
employees can be found in the broaden and build model (Fredrickson 2001).
 we propose that this strategy is reactive in nature because the development of coping tactics,
such as though action repertoires, is developed along with the experience of stress or trauma.