Abstract
This project is conceived as a first step in a broader aim to develop a more fine-grained understanding of what constitutes workforce resilience and the role of workplace social capital therein. Workforce resilience is understood as the collective capacity to maintain workability when striving for system continuity. With workplace social capital, we refer to the relational conditions supporting collective action. The ultimate goal is to use this knowledge to develop a methodology for (self) assessment and reflection in various settings. However, as we understand organisations to be social systems that are at the same time open and closed, we expect the shaping of workforce resilience to be at least in part system dependent. Therefore, this project focusses on healthcare, a sector under pressure, where issues of workability, well-being and continuity are especially salient.
Research on organizational resilience has expanded rapidly in recent years, yet it remains marked by conceptual fragmentation and limited integration across disciplinary perspectives. Resilience is most often conceptualized either at the individual level, as a psychological capacity, or at the organizational level, as a structural or strategic property. What is largely absent is a meso-level perspective that situates resilience where it becomes empirically observable: in the everyday interactions between workers, their social resources, and the conditions under which work is organized. This project addresses this gap by conceptualizing workforce resilience as the collective capacity of a workforce to sustain workability, psychosocial well-being, and continuity under conditions of persistent strain.
This perspective is grounded in insights from the safety sciences, particularly theories emphasising that organisational breakdowns rarely result from sudden shocks but rather emerge through prolonged incubation processes in which pressures accumulate, communication gradually deteriorates, and adaptive capacity erodes. In this project, these mechanisms are mobilized to examine how everyday workplace stressors incrementally undermine the workforce's capacity to maintain workability and continuity over time.
Within this dynamic, workplace social capital is examined as a crucial yet bounded social resource. Defined by trust, reciprocity, cohesion, and shared norms embedded in workplace relations, workplace social capital can facilitate cooperation, information exchange, and mutual support, thereby temporarily buffering psychosocial strain. At the same time, workplace social capital itself is shaped by accumulating pressures and latent conditions and may erode when adverse contexts persist. Workforce resilience is therefore understood as an emergent phenomenon arising from the interaction between accumulating stressors and the social resources available within the workforce.
The project investigates these dynamics empirically in the healthcare sector, where high complexity, structural workforce shortages, and sustained psychosocial pressure converge. Methodologically, the study adopts an iterative and abductive mixed-methods design, combining two waves of qualitative case studies with a targeted survey. The project is guided by the central research question: How do workplace social capital, as a key social resource, and the contextual conditions in which it is embedded shape the workforce's capacity to sustain workability, psychosocial well-being, and continuity of care under persistent strain? By integrating social systems theory, safety science perspectives, and insights from research on workplace social capital, the project develops a coherent meso-level analytical framework for workforce resilience that bridges individual and organizational approaches to resilience.
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