A Rising Tide Lifts All Ships: Multilevel Team Resilience and Occupational Health in High-Stress Work Environments

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Abstract
Although multilevel theoretical frameworks for team and organizational resilience have increased in recent years, much less empirical research has examined how perceived resilience at multiple levels is related to employee health outcomes. Team resilience was conceptualized as a specific belief that the team is able to adapt well under adverse circumstances. The present study leveraged a unique dataset to examine how team resilience and work stress were related to indices of occupational health among U.S. Navy sailors (N = 10,546) embedded within departments (N = 725) that were embedded within ships (N = 101). Job stress and team resilience at the individual, department, and ship levels predicted individual physical and mental health outcomes. In addition, team resilience interacted with job stress to predict at least one health outcome at all three levels of analysis. Contextual effects also revealed that poor mental and physical health days were lower when sailors were embedded in departments reporting high team resilience. A cross-level interaction was also observed, where department-level team resilience reduced the magnitude of the individual-level relationship between job stress and mental health risk. Implications of the findings for a multilevel approach to resilience and occupational health are discussed.
Funding Information
  • Clemson University

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