CAREER: Broadening Participation in Resilience Education, Research, and Practice by Leveraging Organizational Resources to Address Racial Identity Threats

由于种族身份威胁与个人的自我意识有着千丝万缕的联系，了解领导者和组织如何帮助解决这些问题将使许多人受益。当资源（如时间、精力、金钱、尊重）受到威胁或失去时，个人就会感到压力，当员工在管理与身份相关的威胁时，团队生产力和组织效率就会受到影响。本项目探讨组织资源与个体弹性之间的关系。研究者揭示了组织在员工弹性过程中所扮演的角色，并确定了在存在种族身份威胁的情况下有效地支持员工安全和健康的特定组织资源。该奖项产生的知识为组织科学和劳动力多样性和绩效提供了见解。威胁到个人资源的经历会导致消极的组织结果。当威胁与某种身份（如种族）联系在一起时，它们可能导致不平等和进一步的群体差异。种族身份威胁以多种形式发生，从环境威胁（例如，大型威胁：负面的、大规模的、与多样性相关的事件，受到媒体的大量关注）到人际关系威胁（例如，微侵犯：日常言语或行为侮辱，诋毁少数种族群体的个人）。组织在支持员工在逆境中继续追求行为和心理目标方面对种族身份威胁所起的作用尚不清楚。因此，本项目确定了组织的主动资源（在威胁之前持续可用的资源，例如基于种族的员工资源小组）和保护性资源（在威胁之后提供的旨在减少压力反应的资源，例如付费治疗），这些资源形成了预测员工弹性的关键心理机制：身份安全（即，感觉自己的身份不会引起伤害）和情感枯竭（即，情感枯竭的感觉）。研究者定性地（研究1：深入的、结构化的访谈）和定量地（研究2：纵向的、每周的调查）评估了组织资源在培养被污名化的种族群体的员工弹性方面的作用。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

As racial identity threats are inextricably linked to individuals’ sense of self, understanding how leaders and organizations can help to address these experiences will benefit many. When resources (e.g., time, energy, money, esteem) are threatened or lost, individuals experience stress, and when employees’ struggle with managing identity-related threats, team productivity and organizational effectiveness suffer. This project examines the connection between organizational resources and individual resilience. The investigator uncovers the role that organizations play in the employee resilience process and identifies specific organizational resources that are effective at bolstering employee safety and health despite the presence of racial identity threats. Knowledge generated from this award offers insights for organizational science and for workforce diversity and performance.Experiences that threaten one’s resources contribute to negative organizational outcomes. When threats are tied to an identity (e.g., race), they can lead to inequality and further group disparities. Racial identity threats occur in multiple forms, ranging from environmental (e.g., mega-threats: negative, large-scale, diversity-related episodes that receive significant media attention) to interpersonal (e.g., microaggressions: daily verbal or behavioral indignities that denigrate individuals from racial minority groups). The role that organizations play in supporting employee resilience—continued behavioral and psychological goal pursuit despite adversity—to racial identity threats is unknown. Thus, this project identifies the organizational proactive resources (continually available resources present before a threat, e.g., race-based employee resource groups) and protective resources (resources made available after a threat that are meant to diminish strain responses, e.g., paid therapy) that shape key psychological mechanisms that predict employee resilience: identity safety (i.e., feeling like one’s identity will not evoke harm) and emotional exhaustion (i.e., feelings of being emotionally drained). The investigator qualitatively (Study 1: in-depth, structured interviews) and quantitatively (Study 2: longitudinal, weekly surveys) assesses the role of organizational resources in fostering employee resilience among employees who belong to stigmatized racial groups.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.