First, we must understand the many ways in which the word resilience is utilized. With this in mind, perspective, or context, is important. Therefore, the following ideas and definitions are offered to highlight the variety of ways in which resilience has been described by others (in alphabetical order):
• Community Perspective: One of the most important community resilience factors is “fostering community cohesion and support” (Berger, 2016, p. 5). Berger continues by explaining that “community cohesion, sense of belonging, as well as trust in the government and local leadership, predicts the probability of developing stress-related symptomatology following exposure to political violence,” and that “an important factor… is the community’s ability to create a shared meaningful narrative that allows that traumatized community to transform a traumatic experience into a renewal and rebuilding story” (p. 6). Furthermore, as Shaw, McClean, Taylor, Swartout, and Querna note, “The full utility of resilience is often not realized when only conceptualized at the individual level, without attention to its role at the community or system level in trying to promote well-being through research or intervention” (2016, p. 35).
• Cultural Perspective: Dr. Panter-Brick describes, “For me, what makes some families more resilient than others is their ability to hang on to a sense of hope that gives meaning and order to suffering in life and helps to articulate a coherent narrative to link the future to the past and present. That hope or ‘meaning-making’ is the essence of a cultural perspective on resilience (Panter-Brick & Eggerman, 2012)” (Southwick, Bonanno, Masten, Panter-Brick, & Yehuda, 2014, p. 6).
• Ecological Perspective: C.S. Holling, Canadian ecologist, argues that there are two different ways to look at natural systems—as either stable or as resilient. This perspective implies that resilience is inherently linked to change. Holling refers to the view of systems termed resilience as “a measure of the persistence of systems and of their ability to absorb change and disturbance and still maintain the same relationship between populations or state variables” (Rodin, 2014, p. 48).
• Economic Perspective: Rose and Liao (2005) described economic resilience as the “inherent ability and adaptive response that enables firms and regions to avoid maximum potential losses” (p. 76).
• Emotional Resilience: Jane McGonigal, game designer, outlined four types of resilience during her 2012 TED talk, one of which was emotional resilience. In a blog post, Howe Wallace, Chief Executive Officer of PalletOne, expanded upon the concept of emotional resilience by explaining that individuals who are emotionally resilient “engage in regular reflection on things beautiful, fanciful, visionary” (2015, para. 3). Furthermore, “Emotional resilience exercises our capability to imagine, dream, plan, and create. It fortifies the soul. Emotional resilience allows us to find positive things even when circumstances stay grim” (para. 3).
• Engineering Perspective: Youn, Hu, and Wang (2011) describe engineering resilience as “the degree of a passive survival rate (or reliability) plus a proactive survival rate (or restoration). Mathematically, the resilience measure can be defined as the addition of reliability and restoration…” (p. 101011–3).
• Mental Resilience: Wallace (2015) describes mental resilience by stating, “You are mentally resilient if you test your brain. Do puzzles. Play board games. Try new hobbies. Read new books. Stay engaged in work. Grow a garden. In short, mentally resilient folks stay challenged” (para. 3).
• Organizational Perspective: The resilience of an organization can be defined as the inherent ability to keep or recover the steady state, thereby allowing it to continue normal operations after a disruptive event or in the presence of continuous stress (Sheffi, 2005, as cited in Hosseini, Barker, & Ramirez-Marquez, 2016, p. 48). Others have defined organizational resilience as “the maintenance of positive adjustment under challenging conditions such that the organization emerges from those conditions strengthened and more resourceful” (Vogus & Sutcliffe, 2007, p. 3418) or “to convey the properties of being adapted to the requirements of the environment, or otherwise being able to manage the variability of challenging circumstances the environment throws up” (McDonald, 2010, p. 156). Sheffi further defined resilience for companies as “the company’s ability to, and speed at which they can, return to their normal performance level (e.g., inventory, capacity, service rate) [followed by a] disruptive event” (as cited in Hosseini et al., 2016, p. 48). Furthermore, “a resilient organization is a hopeful system because hope is a confidence grounded in a realistic appraisal of the challenges in one’s environment and one’s capabilities for navigating around them (Groopman, 2004). Hope helps insulate from the vagaries of unexpected events by instilling a belief in the value of constantly updating and refining one’s appraisal of the environment and in the organization’s ability to use this knowledge effectively in the face of unexpected events” (Vogus & Sutcliffe, 2007, p. 3420).
• Physical Resilience: McGonigal (2012) and Wallace (2015) also discussed the physica...