The current economic climate has placed a tremendous amount of pressure on businesses and their staff to perform and as a consequence the number of lost workdays associated with work place stress is becoming a significant burden upon the UK economy. In order to improve and reduce the cost burden of lost workdays many businesses, and more specifically their leadership teams, have now started to look at non-business related environments in their search for success and ways in which to combat workplace stress. On such environment that business leaders have shown a growing interest in is that of sport and in particular the development and utilisation of mental toughness in order to achieve and sustain high performance. As a result there is a growing, if not an insatiable, desire to create mentally tough business professionals. However even though there are numerous books describing mental toughness to date no one has determine whether its ‘stress coping’ capability will actually benefit business professionals and whether the [sporting] definitions and frameworks are really appropriate for use in a business context. Existing examinations of sporting mental toughness have successfully adopted a qualitative approach in order to examine mental toughness. Similarly this research thesis adopted a qualitative approach using both Personal Construct Psychology and Appreciative Inquiry in order to capture business professional’s individual views, experiences, meanings, and perceptions of theirs or other people’s responses to events and situations in order to describe and characterise business mental toughness. Twelve business professionals participated in the study from which a definition of business mental toughness was developed and the attributes of the ideal mentally tough business person documented. The findings suggest that business mental toughness does exist but is different to that observed in sport and draws on our own values, beliefs, motivations and emotional intelligence and a set of coping mechanisms that enable business professional to cope with the stress and pressure of the work environment whilst maintaining emotional control and delivering on their objectives. This thesis provides the basis for further empirical research into business mental toughness, as well as providing guidance as to some of the conceptual and practical implications for the use of mental toughness techniques within a business environment. Given that £25.9 billion is lost due to work place stress in the UK alone, there is sufficient demand and reason to further the research into the stress coping capabilities of mental toughness and ensure that the correct type of mental toughness is developed within business.

Background: Community resilience to a disaster is a complex phenomenon studied using a variety of research lenses, such as psychological and ecological, resulting in a lack of consensus about what the key factors are that make a community resilient. Formally representing this knowledge will allow researchers to better understand the links between the knowledge generated using different lenses and help to integrate new findings into the existing body of knowledge. Objective: Using ontology engineering methods to represent this knowledge will provide a tool to aid researchers in the field. Methods: An ontology is a structured way of organizing and representing knowledge in the field of community resilience to a disaster. The model created using this method can be read by a computer, which allows a reasoner to manipulate and infer new knowledge. Results: When using these methods to structure community resilience knowledge some of the complexities and ambiguities were identified. These included semantic ambiguities, such as two distinct factors being used interchangeably or two terms being used to describe the same factor, making the distinction between what are the factors and the characteristics of those factors, and finally, the inherited characteristics and relationships associated with hierarchical relationships. Conclusions: Having the knowledge about community resilience to a disaster represented in an ontology will aid researchers when operationalizing this knowledge in the future.

Approximately 200 people, mostly Dukhas of Tuvan ancestry, live nomadically with reindeer, horses, and dogs as ‘Tsaatans’ in the taiga of northern Mongolia. How do they effectively realize their livelihoods? Does qualifying corporeal manners, or bearings, in which livelihood practices are performed in the moments of actualization offer insight into ways in which longer-term decision-making processes like nomadic settlement and livestock management are embodied? Informed by a phenomenological approach in anthropology during nearly four months of cooperative co-habitation with Tsaatan mentors, I argue that Tsaatans effectively realize livelihood practices as they cheerfully embody poised improvisation and acrobatics in both skillful discernment and movement. Simultaneously anticipating and performing diverse tasks in playful cooperation with friends, family and other animals along nomadic lifestyles in a wilderness habitat involves persistent, sensory-rich, versatile manipulation of environmental materials, as well as extensive geographic knowledge and frequent experiences of risk in remote, rugged terrain and powerful meteorological conditions impossible to completely avoid. These lifestyles catalyze the development of quick-witted and materially sensitive resilience with which people are capable of corresponding with beings, materials, and situations, and thereby of continuing to develop ancestral traditions of reindeer husbandry in a rapidly changing social, economic, technological and geo-political context.

The positive association between income and subjective well-being (SWB) is undisputed; there remains scope, however, to expand our understanding of the explanatory mechanisms at work. The theoretical framing is formed from economics and psychology which have been the traditional homes of happiness research. However, the stance taken here is sociological in its attention to social networks and social status. I also emphasise psychological benefits as an explanatory mechanism for the money-happiness relationship. Following Layard (1981) and Easterlin (2001), it is posited that above the level at which basic needs are met, higher SWB results from the higher rank in society that money brings. I argue that rank and status inform how individuals feel about themselves (self-esteem, self-worth) and their environment (perceived control) and that it is these factors that bring about SWB. Furthermore, social connectedness is an alternative source of these benefits and it is thus hypothesised that connectedness will intervene in the money-happiness relationship. Secondary or “weak” ties are expected to have an additional and separable effect to close ties alone. I use the term resilience as a framing concept as it allows the stressor (financial situation) and outcome (SWB) to be discussed in a single term. The thesis has three empirical aims. The first is to determine whether connectedness influences the money happiness relationship, where ‘money’ refers to household income, perceived financial situation and being worse off than the previous year. Secondly, I aim to separate the effect of connectedness from the effect of personal characteristics by observing outcomes before and after a change in connectedness. Third, I aim to unravel the potentially paradoxical role of networks for those on low incomes as both a resilience resource and therefore greater happiness, and as a source of wider social comparison and therefore greater unhappiness. I use data from seven waves of the British Household Panel Survey. A latent class analysis establishes a measurement schema of connectedness based on strong and weak ties. Growth curve models are used to measure the effect of money on SWB and differential effects by connectedness are demonstrated with interaction terms. Resilience before and after network changes are explored using multiple group linear regression at two time points, and neighbourhood social comparison is examined in multilevel models. The findings are that income has no bearing on the SWB of the socially-integrated (those with both strong and weak ties) while the isolated have a lot to gain. The SWB of the integrated does suffer in difficult financial circumstances as subjectively reported but less so than the isolated or those with only strong ties. Further, when individuals expand their network it is accompanied by a decrease in the importance of income for SWB. These patterns can in part be explained by the fact that the SWB of the well-connected is less influenced by their position relative to those living around them, at least where the income gap is not too large. Therefore, the assumption of happiness as a zero-sum game is mistaken; social comparison is not inevitable and SWB can be maintained through social integration providing the level of inequality is not too high.

This study is a critical analysis of the discourse on childhood resilience and the politics of teaching resilience to "kids at risk" in inner-city schools. Resiliency research is rooted in the early psychology studies of children's coping and competence. By the 1970s, researchers were observing children who appeared invulnerable to traumatic events. These children were later described as resilient, and resilience was defined as bouncing back from adversity. Today, resilience has become an ideological code for social conformity and academic achievement. My analysis problematizes "childhood resilience" and "teaching resilience" and examines two dangerous shifts in the mainstream resiliency research over the past several decades. In one shift, resilience slipped from an anomaly in the context of complex trauma to being claimed as the social norm of the dominant society. In another shift, the context of resiliency research slipped from traumatized to disadvantaged populations. Consequently, teaching resilience in inner-city schools is a popular topic among professional child and youth advocates in BC. But these two shifts manifest as teaching socioeconomically disadvantaged children to conform to the social norms of the dominant society and as rationalizing social and educational programs that help children and youth at risk overcome obstacles. Such programs do not work to challenge systemic inequalities. I undertook a discourse analysis and an interpretive inquiry in identifying three resiliency discourses: the first is a dominant expert discourse based on quantitative studies; the second is a subordinate experiential discourse based on qualitative stories; and the third is a professional advocacy discourse that includes expert and experiential knowledge. The expert discourse derives from psychometric studies of resilient-identified children, and the experiential discourse emanates from the psychotherapeutic narratives of resilient-identified adults. The advocacy discourse emerges from educators, psychologists, and social workers who advocate on behalf of children and youth at risk. The data include resiliency texts, focused interviews, and relevant fieldnotes. I developed criteria for critiquing and recognizing resilience, explored potential intersections between the expert and experiential discourses, and interpreted risk and resiliency themes in the advocacy discourse. In challenging the dominant discourse, I argue that resilience is not a fixed set of traits that can be reified and replicated. Moreover, I argue that complex trauma and trauma recovery are essential to any construct of resilience and that resilience is pluralistic, contingent, and always in process. My study recommends collaborative resiliency research that focuses on trauma and that values experiential knowledge and attends to class and cultural diversity. It also recommends that the professional advocacy community re-focus on risk and work toward developing social programs and critical pedagogies that challenge structural oppression and systemic discrimination. / Education, Faculty of / Educational Studies (EDST), Department of / Graduate

La resilience dans l’humanitaire. Un concept pour penser autrement la gouvernance des catastrophes socio-climatiques. Le concept de resilience integre l’espace humanitaire au debut du XXIe siecle. Il a pour point de depart l’ambition affichee par les ONG d'ameliorer l’impact de leurs activites sur les populations les plus vulnerables. Si le concept de resilience est ne dans les sciences physiques, son integration au milieu du XXe siecle dans de multiples domaines de recherche : environnement, economie, psychologie et politique, le dote aujourd’hui de diverses interpretations et definitions. Au travers de ses racines multiples, cette integration est, par deduction, limitée par la complexite a trouver une definition, des indicateurs et une methodologie satisfaisante permettant de mesurer et donc d’ameliorer l’aide apportee aux victimes. En nous focalisant sur la gestion des catastrophes socio-climatiques, a savoir celles liees aux activites humaines sur les ecosystemes et aux phenomenes climatiques extremes, nous avons fait le choix d’interroger le sens et la portee de ce concept dans l’humanitaire. En d’autres termes, aux cote;s de ses aspects theoriques, comment apprehender la resilience pour penser autrement la gouvernance des catastrophes socio-climatiques ?Notre etude en 2014 sur l’evolution des trajectoires de vie de 144 foyers dans le Delta des Sundarbans au sud du Bangladesh, met en lumiere une typologie de ces differentes capacites, suite aux cyclones Sidr 2007 et Aila 2009. Par ailleurs, nos resultats avancent l’idee que, si la resilience est une capacite endogene, elle interagit avec deux autres termes complementaires et polemiques qui ont integre l’espace humanitaire entre le milieu et la fin du XXe siecle : la vulnerabilite et l’adaptation des societes. Nous soutenons que, si ces trois termes sont dissociables et parfois meme contradictoires, leur chevauchement permet une analyse plus fine des capacites des foyers au sein des collectivites et des services ecosystemiques locaux. Ce qui nous permet de mettre en avant que le concept de resilience s’apprehende dans l’humanitaire comme une notion integratrice vulnerabilite, resilience et adaptation au service d’une approche systemique de la gouvernance des catastrophes.Nous defendons que la resilience puisse aussi etre apprehendee comme une approche systemique qui bouscule le modele humanitaire, puisqu’il ne s’agit plus seulement pour repondre aux catastrophes de s’inspirer du modele classique urgence, rehabilitation et developpement mais bien de gerer tout au long du cycle d’un projet la confusion et les perceptions contradictoires de la crise et des risques. L’integration de la resilience concourt ainsi a; une modelisation de l’aide basee sur les aspects fonctionnels, structurels et operationnels de l’organisation avec une vision plus integree des systemes socio- ecologiques, a savoir la capacite des foyers a rebondir couplee a celle des services ecosystemiques locaux.Au travers des multiples polemiques qui traversent l’idee de resilience, nous assistons, si ce n’est a un bouleversement profond du paradigme humanitaire, a un enrichissement de la pensee sur la gouvernance des catastrophes et sur les modeles de l’aide qui les accompagnent. Des lors, nous posons notre question de recherche, en quoi le concept de resilience s’apprehende dans l’humanitaire a une approche systemique et a des modeles complementaires de l’aide integres dans la relation durable societe-environnement ? / Resilience in humanitarian. A concept to think differently about the governance of socio-climate disasters.The concept of resilience integrates the humanitarian space in the early 21st century. Its starting point is the ambition of the NGOs to improve the impact of their activities on the most vulnerables populations. If the concept of resilience was born in the physical sciences, its integration in the mid 20th century in multiple research areas: environment, economy, psychology and politics, endows it today with various interpretations and definitions. Through its multiple roots, this integration is by deduction, limited by the complexity to find a definition, indicators and adequate methodology to measure and therefore improve assistance to victims. By focusing on managing socio-climate disasters, namely those related to human activities on ecosystems and extreme climate events, we have chosen to question the meaning and scope of this concept in humanitarian. In other words, the side of its theoretical aspects, how to understand resilience to think differently about the governance of socio-climate disasters?We put forward the idea that resilience is a concept. In the sense that resilience is a general idea that helps to organize knowledge on multiple and complex rebounds capacity of an entity following a shock. Our study in 2014 on the evolution of life histories of 144 homes in the Delta of the Sundarbans in Southern Bangladesh highlights a typology of different capacities following the cyclones Sidr 2007 and Aila 2009. Furthermore, our results argue the idea that if resilience is an endogenous capacity, it interacts with two additional terms and controversies that have integrated the humanitarian space between the middle and late 20th century: the vulnerability and adaptation of societies. We argue that if these three terms are severable and sometimes contradictory, their overlapping enables a more detailed analysis of issues and local socio-ecological dynamics. This allows us to point out our first hypothesis: the concept of resilience is apprehended in humanitarian as an integrating concept serving a systemic approach to disasters governance.Finally, we defend that resilience can also be seen as a systemic approach that challenges the humanitarian model. Since it is not only taking inspiration from the classical model like planning, development, and quality control to answer to disasters, but to be able to model the confusion and conflicting perceptions of the crisis and risks. The integration of resilience contributes to a modeling aid, based on functional, structural and historical aspects of the organization with a more integrated vision of the socio-ecological systems.Through many controversies that cross the idea of resilience, we are witnessing, if this is not a profound change of paradigm in humanitarian, to an enrichment of the thought on governance of disasters, and the models of helps that goes with them. Therefore we ask our research question, how the concept of resilience is apprehended in humanitarian to a systemic approach and innovative models of assistance that emphasize an integrated relationship society-environment?

Coral reefs and the ecological, social, and economic benefits that they provide are seriously endangered by a colossal number of threats. This study was conducted in marine protected area (MPA) in the Mexican Caribbean. The purpose of this study was to provide results that can be directly applied by MPA managers to improve coral reef conservation and management. Characterization of four coral reef sites and stressors described in a proxy map were integrated into a comparative resilience assessment. Sites ranged from 16.5% to 3.5% coral cover and 47.5% to 12% macroalgal cover. Stressor distribution and intensity was highest near the Puerto Morelos town center and followed general water current patterns. Fishing, tourism, and pollution were identified as major stressors on which management can positively influence. The results of this study provide managers throughout the Caribbean a managerial tool chest to improve management efficacy and bolster conservation initiatives.

This study investigates the resilience of coffee cooperatives and producer organizations in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic and explores their adaptations to the context in relation to their livelihood capitals. The changes to their operations are analyzed through the contexts of shocks, trends and stresses and how they perceived these threats. The topic of research is relevant given the economic and social importance of cooperatives in these communities and potential impacts to their operations during COVID-19, which is likely to have long-term impacts locally and within the global setting.There is a lack of consensus regarding the classification of cooperatives as resilient organizations, with much of the previous research focusing on financial crisis or natural disasters. Furthermore, the COVID-19 pandemic has been an unprecedented event on a global scale with far-reaching impacts into social, economic and political spheres, and examining these effects is still a developing realm within academic research. The relationship of coffee producers and their organizations within the global commodity chains renders such organizations particularly vulnerable to the effects of COVID-19 and government policy interventions. Investigating how coffee cooperatives in Honduras have been operating throughout the COVID-19 pandemic assesses their potential capacity for resilience by examining how they have been impacted and the manners in which they have overcome these challenges. This further allows for increased understanding of cooperative resilience and ways in which cooperatives’ capital have the potential to impact their resilience.This research follows an abductive qualitative case study and utilizes semi-structured interviews from various coffee cooperatives and organizations in Honduras as primary sources with existing literature as secondary sources. The interviews were conducted remotely. The findings include accounts from cooperatives and producer organizations, which focus primarily on coffee production, in addition to reports from a privately owned coffee production enterprise and a cooperative member. The Vulnerability Context and Asset Pentagon, components of the Sustainable Rural Livelihoods Framework as described by the Department for International Development, were used to analyze the data, along with variables to assess organizational resilience. The study finds that investments to organizations’ human and social capital were prioritized and heavily relied upon during this crisis and the more established organizations had a larger range of resources from which to draw upon. Nevertheless, by continuing to develop and expand on human and social capital, cooperative organizations can increase their capacity for resilience.

Spirituality is a multidimensional construct that refers to the experience of self-transcendence and connection with a higher sacred reality. Previous research has demonstrated that spirituality represents a consistent resilience factor for stress and a range of stress-related mental disorders, but neural mechanisms by which spirituality confers resilience are unknown. This paper focuses on intrinsic spirituality, or the extent to which spirituality functions as a master motive in one’s life regardless of religious affiliation, and reviews the research literature on behaviors and brain structures and functions related to intrinsic spirituality. Additionally, literature is reviewed on adaptive and maladaptive functions of the stress response, its relationship to psychopathology, and its underlying neurobiology. To understand neural responses underlying the link between intrinsic spirituality and stress, the current study utilized a script-guided imagery task to assess brain activity during a stress exposure. Results showed that during a stressful experience higher intrinsic spirituality is associated with greater deactivation in the hippocampus, brain stem, ventral striatum, thalamus, extending to the orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) and ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC), as well as in another cluster comprising of the posterior cingulate cortex (PCC) and right inferior parietal lobule. These regions are implicated in stress responsiveness, emotional and cognitive processing, and self-referential processing. While preliminary, results provide a potential neural substrate for how spirituality may influence stress processing. Moreover, they suggest a role for spirituality in attenuating neural responses to stress responsivity, regulating emotion during exposure to stress, and preventing and treating stress-related psychopathology.

[pt] No contexto atual, as mudanças cotidianas cada vez mais rápidas e profundas exigem que os indivíduos estejam capacitados a enfrentar e vencer situações adversas e delas saírem fortalecidos. Esta competência, denominada resiliência, é o tema deste trabalho que tem como objetivo analisar como as características de resiliência identificadas em lideranças organizacionais favoreceram a implantação de uma nova estratégia de comunicação corporativa. Para o estudo da questão foi feita uma pesquisa descritiva e analítica aplicada ao caso de uma empresa de mídia e entretenimento que passou recentemente por um processo de evolução em sua estratégia de comunicação corporativa. Foram realizadas entrevistas em profundidade com oito líderes da área de comunicação corporativa da empresa analisada. Nessas entrevistas foram avaliadas a resiliência organizacional da área, com base no construto de Hamel & Välikangas (2003), e os níveis de resiliência individual, através da aplicação de questionário desenvolvido por Wagnild & Young (1993, 2011) em sua versão traduzida e validada para o português (PESCE et al., 2005). Os principais resultados da pesquisa sugerem, em linha com os referenciais de Wagnild (2011), Ojeda (1997) e Lengnick-Hall et al. (2011), entre outros, que diversas características de resiliência identificadas nas lideranças - notadamente perseverança, iniciativa, capacidade de se relacionar e flexibilidade - facilitaram o desenvolvimento e a implantação do novo modelo de comunicação corporativa para a empresa estudada, através da criação de um ambiente propício à pesquisa, ao aprendizado, à criatividade e à experimentação. Esses resultados também indicam que o ambiente acima descrito permitiu à empresa enfrentar, com sucesso, os desafios cognitivo, estratégico, político e ideológico preconizados por Hamel & Välikangas (2003), podendo ser caracterizada como uma organização resiliente. Adicionalmente verificou-se que, tomando por base a escala aplicada, as lideranças apresentaram, em sua maior parte, níveis elevados de resiliência (WAGNILD, 2011). / [en] In the current context, where everyday changes are faster and deeper, individuals are demanded to be ready and show ability to deal and surpass adverse situations, becoming in the process stronger and more prepared than before. This competence, called resilience, is the subject of this research, which has the objective to analyze how resilience characteristics identified on organizational leaders facilitated the implementation of a new corporate communication strategy. To study this issue a descriptive and analytical research has been done, applied to a case of a media and entertainment company that recently has passed through an evolutionary process in its corporate communication strategy. Eight in deep interviews have been conducted with leaders of the corporate communication area at the researched company. Based on these interviews, the area’s organizational resilience has been evaluated using the Hamel & Välikangas (2003) construct as a basis. The leaders’ individual resilience level has been assessed by the administration of the Resilience Scale developed by Wagnild & Young (1993, 2011), in its version translated and validated to Portuguese (Pesce et al., 2005). The main results of the research suggest, in line with the Wagnild (2011), Ojeda (1997) and Lengnick-Hall et al. (2011) references, among others, that several resilience characteristics identified on leaders of the studied area – mainly perseverance, initiative, relationship ability and flexibility – facilitated the development and implementation of the new corporate communication model by fostering an environment favorable to research, learning, creativity and experimentation. These results also demonstrate that the above mentioned environment allowed the company to successfully deal with the Cognitive, Strategic, Political and Ideological challenges stated by Hamel & Välikangas (2003), and so could be considered a resilient organization. Furthermore, based on the resilience scale administrated, leaders of the researched area showed, in their majority, a high resilience level (Wagnild, 2011).