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How Much Do We Really Know About Employee Resilience? More, If We Include the Sport Psychology Resilience Research

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 July 2016

Elizabeth L. Shoenfelt*
Affiliation:
Department of Psychological Sciences, Western Kentucky University
*
Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Elizabeth L. Shoenfelt, Department of Psychological Sciences, Western Kentucky University, Bowling Green, KY 42101. E-mail: betsy.shoenfelt@wku.edu

Extract

Britt, Shen, Sinclair, Grossman, and Klieger (2016) present an argument for consolidation and conceptual unification of the resilience research. As one of the few industrial–organizational (I-O) psychologists who regularly work in the sport psychology field, I was compelled to note the omission by Britt et al. of any reference to the resilience research in the sport psychology domain. As an I-O psychologist practicing sport psychology, I have stood on the shoulders of giants in applying with athletes and coaches our I-O theory and knowledge in areas such as motivation (e.g., Locke & Latham, 2002), training (e.g., skill acquisition, automaticity, deliberate practice, expertise, adaptive expertise, error based learning; e.g., Chen, Thomas, & Wallace, 2005; Ericsson, Krampe, & Tesch-Romer, 1993; Ericsson, & Lehmann, 1996; Logan, 1988; Lorenzet, Salas, & Tannenbaum, 2005), leadership, and group and team dynamics (e.g., Colquitt, Noe, & Jackson, 2002; Salas, Cooke, & Rosen, 2008). I-O psychology tends to be on the vanguard in these areas, whereas sport psychology lags somewhat behind (compare Locke & Latham, 2002, with Gould, 1993, and Weinberg & Weigand, 1993; compare Vroom & Yetton, 1973, with Chelladurai & Haggerty, 1978). However, resilience has been a central research focus for sport psychologists for some time; it is a relatively recent area of interest for I-O psychologists. Interestingly, Britt et al. did not include even a single reference from the sport psychology literature. I strongly encourage I-O psychologists studying resilience to review, borrow, and build on the sport psychology research in this area.

Type
Commentaries
Copyright
Copyright © Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology 2016 

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