Abstract for:Exploring the Infusion of Individual and Organizational Resilience into Management Courses

Future business leaders and managers must learn to see themselves, organizations, and the world from a dynamic systems perspective, and to adapt to an ever-changing world. This can feel overwhelming to students, who face increasing challenges to their personal well-being, as well as demands from the larger organizational systems of which they are a part, which like themselves, must also be resilient and adaptable. To help, we have begun to infuse the literature of resilience into our management courses.  Coursework on organizational resilience gives students understanding of what makes an organization resilient and how to strengthen these characteristics. Even more impactfully, materials and learning activities on individual resilience help students develop the personal skills needed to be more resilient. Though our efforts are in the nascent stages, our intent is to better equip our students to cope with the nature of the reality they encounter in their daily work.  Our initial searches have revealed little published research in this area, and none specific to pairing the resilience literature with systems theory in management studies.  The work of Luthans (2010, 2012) explores how psychological capital, including resilience, improves student and manager performance; this work may be informative to our own.