Abstract
Job insecurity—seen in practices like temporary work, furloughs, and site closures—is an ongoing reality for increasing numbers of workers. While the communicative constitution of resilience in situations of job loss has received significant attention, we know little about how resilience is constituted in the face of ongoing job insecurity. This study explores that question by considering how a group of employees enacted resilience during the 22-month period between the announcement that their worksite would close and the actual closure. Based on in-depth interviews, this study considers how soon-to-be terminated employees created and maintained resilience by (de)centering themselves, framing the future optimistically, affirming their value, keeping work in perspective, and caring for one another. These findings point to the importance of sensemaking that enabled employees to hold conflicting emotions and interpretations in tension and meaningfully enact purpose, agency, and humanity. Specifically, the analysis suggests that maintaining dialectics and cultivating dignity are important for constituting resilience. This study contributes to our understanding of the communicative constitution of resilience by offering a sixth central process—maintaining dialectics—to the communication theory of resilience and suggesting that workplace interactions that cultivate dignity enable resilience.
We received the message at the cafeteria. We were 900 people sitting down and we understood after 30 seconds that this is really serious . . . . When he had told us that they will close our site in [22 months], it was absolutely quiet. Nobody was screaming or asking or showing some sort of anger. Just silence. Not a word. You could hear people breathing. (Olivia) Many people said, “Oh, working at SRI: That is safe.” And suddenly you just realize this isn’t safe. That the company, they don’t want to be in [city] anymore, we just close it. And almost 1,000 lose their jobs . . . . You realize no job is safe. It doesn’t matter how big or how small [of a] company you work at, anything could happen. (Emma) You need to adapt. You need to be flexible. Otherwise you will go around and feel really bad all the time having an ache in your tummy and your head. (Cristina)
This case study explores the experiences of Olivia, Emma, Christina, and their colleagues after their company—which I call the Swedish Research Institute (SRI)—announced that the local site of 900 employees would close 22 months later. From an organizational perspective, the advance notice enabled projects and knowledge to be transferred to other sites. From an employee perspective, it created a stressful temporary employment situation for an extended period of time. Based on in-depth interviews with employees throughout and after the closure, this study considers how employees constituted resilience throughout the closure as they navigated job insecurity.
I sought to study the site closure because of two related stressors facing SRI employees. First, I knew from my previous ethnographic research at SRI (Wieland, 2010, 2011) that most employees were quite loyal: As one participant noted, employees were very “devoted to their work” and saw it as more of a calling than a job. Further, as mentioned by Emma above, many stayed at the company both because of their commitment and the security that they believed SRI provided. Although workers remained employed for up to 22 months after the closure announcement, their positions were no longer presumed to be long-term, which moved them to the liminal “gray area” between permanent employment and absolute unemployment (Davies & Esseveld, 1989; see also Kalleberg, 2018). While participants were undoubtedly already aware of the eroding social contract (Buzzanell, 2000), the closure made it clear that they had to face it directly. I wanted to understand how they responded to this challenge.
A second stressor facing employees was that most continued working at SRI for an extended time after the closure was announced. The 22-month period between the announcement and what many called “the bitter end” was marked by uncertainty—about severance packages, end dates, and future employment. This situation struck me as particularly challenging to navigate. Receiving advanced notice of a closure—as participants did in this case—is not unusual and is often required by law (Thomson Reuters Practical Law, n.d.). Recently, Michelin and General Motors gave 20- and 12-months’ notice respectively (Boudette, 2018; Sucher & Gupta, 2018). Advance notice can enable a smooth transition for the company (Freeman, 2009) and typically increases the long-term wages of those who are dismissed (Blau, 2006). Yet advance notice also places employees in an extended period of job insecurity. At SRI, most employees remained at the company until their end dates in order to receive severance packages, but staying meant remaining in a period of liminality—”an experience of being betwixt and between” (Ibarra & Obodaru, 2016, p. 47)—during which they could not initially pursue new jobs. While there is significant research considering how those facing job loss and unemployment react (e.g., Beck, 2016; Buzzanell & Turner, 2003, 2012; Leanna & Feldman, 1992; Shoss et al., 2018), very little is known about how victims of closures navigate the liminal period of job insecurity between receiving advanced notice and the actual closure (Blau, 2006). Understanding how employees experience and respond to extended job insecurity is especially valuable in light of the recent COVID-19 pandemic because job insecurity is likely to be more widespread. Early estimates indicate that many workers will face job insecurity associated with furloughs and the ongoing threat of layoffs over the coming years (Smialek, 2020).
While I didn’t set out to study resilience—“the process of reintegrating from disruptions in life” (Richardson, 2002, p. 309)—what I learned from participants about how they negotiated these stressors indicated that they, for the most part, saw themselves as adapting and reintegrating successfully. Because of their positive interpretations, I began to focus my inquiry on how they communicatively constituted resilience (Buzzanell, 2010). In so doing, I take a phenomenological view of resilience that privileges participants’ collective judgments about whether their situation is interpreted as adverse and its outcomes are positive (Ungar, 2004). While I cannot make claims about long-term success, I can relay what participants reported about their ability to manage throughout the closure. Most reported coming to peace with the closure over the 3 years I conducted interviews. They reported letting go of SRI—for some this took significant time—and moving forward. For many, this letting go entailed focusing on the positive things they had gained from the company and moving beyond resentment. Many told me they shifted from an initial sense of rejection and uncertainty about the value of their work to developing confidence not only in their work but also in their ability to adapt and survive in a changing economy. Most participants ultimately interpreted the closure as a positive thing for them, and many even talked about it in such terms 3 months after the announcement. In this paper, I consider what interviewees told me about what enabled them to successfully adapt despite the site closure and concomitant job insecurity.
The Communication Theory of Resilience
Resilience is “the process of meaning making through everyday messages and stories that enable reintegration from life’s disruptions” (Lucas & Buzzanell, 2012, p. 190). Reintegration implies that those enacting resilience not only recover from adversity but productively move forward by growing and adapting (Agarwal & Buzzanell, 2015; Buzzanell, 2017). Communication scholars have examined how this occurs in a variety of situations that disrupt the status quo such as death, disaster, unemployment, financial hardship, divorce, and illness (Afifi & McManus, 2006; Agarwal & Buzzanell, 2015; Beck, 2016; Lucas & Buzzanell, 2012; Pangborn, 2019).
From a communication perspective, resilience is an ongoing, intersubjective process that unfolds through a series of responses rather than a single event (Buzzanell, 2017). Describing this process as intersubjective points attention to its social accomplishment, involving coordination between multiple actors (Buzzanell et al., 2009). Thus, resilience does not reside within individuals but is “situated in human interaction” (Buzzanell, 2017, p. 98). Communication scholars typically distinguish resilience, a process, from resiliency, a trait or set of traits individuals possess that enable resilience. Viewing resilience as communicative asserts that it is accomplished through communication—“developed, sustained, and grown through discourse, interaction, and material considerations” (Buzzanell, 2010, p. 1).
The Communication Theory of Resilience identifies five communicative processes that constitute resilience: (1) crafting normalcy, described as establishing a sense of ordinariness through interactions and routines; (2) affirming identity anchors, described as drawing upon established discourses to maintain one’s sense of self; (3) maintaining and using communication networks by cultivating and drawing upon social capital; (4) employing alternative logics to reframe situations or act on them in ways that carve out space for transformation; and (5) foregrounding productive action while backgrounding negative emotions (Buzzanell, 2010, 2017). Buzzanell (2010) suggested that future research should build on this theory by identifying additional communicative processes constituting resilience.
Constituting Resilience in the Face of Job Insecurity
In cases of job insecurity, psychology research has demonstrated that resiliency buffers individuals from emotional exhaustion, cynicism, and counterproductive interpersonal behaviors in the workplace (Shoss et al., 2018). While communication scholars have not studied how resilience is constituted in situations of job insecurity, the communicative constitution of resilience among those facing job loss has received significant attention (e.g., Beck, 2016; Buzzanell & Turner, 2012). Research on coping with job loss emphasizes the value of problem-based coping (actions taken to remove the source of the stress such as job searching) over symptom-based coping (behaviors that seek to address the negative emotions associated with job loss) (Leanna & Feldman, 1992). Job insecurity differs from unemployment in that it involves prolonged rather than acute uncertainty; thus, eliminating the stressor through problem-based coping is not usually possible (Afifi et al., 2012). In cases of job insecurity, adaptation becomes central because the stressor is ongoing. At SRI, for example, the majority of employees stayed throughout the closure, placing them in a position of prolonged job insecurity for more than a year.
Communication studies demonstrate the centrality of social networks to resilience processes, especially in the face of unemployment (Buzzanell, 2010). Much of this research has focused on family communication contexts. Buzzanell and Turner (2003, 2012) illuminated how the families of unemployed male breadwinners collaboratively accomplished resilience through emotion work, the affirming of traditional sources of identity, and the co-construction of normalcy through narrative. Lucas and Buzzanell (2012) demonstrated that family communication constitutes resilience over the lifespan by showing how memorable messages communicated in childhood influenced the resilience practices of adult children. Related research considers other aspects of family communication—including partnership, tension release, and respect—that enable relational resilience in the face of unemployment (Beck, 2016).
While scholars have documented the complex ways those facing job loss constitute resilience within family contexts, we know less about how resilience is constituted in workplaces, in large part because those experiencing job loss are typically unemployed. However, scholars have demonstrated that workplace interactions significantly affect the practice of resilience more generally and beyond situations of job insecurity (Buzzanell, 2018; Meneghel et al., 2016). A supportive climate and workplace relationships are crucial for enabling resilience (Luthans et al., 2008; Powley, 2009). An important direction for research is a consideration of how workplace interactions facilitate resilience (Buzzanell et al., 2009; King et al., 2016).This study seeks to better understand the role of workplace communication in constituting resilience during a period of job insecurity.
Focus of Present Study
Following Afifi (2018), in this study I explore how members of SRI created and maintained resilience. To do so, I focus on participant sensemaking, in part because Buzzanell’s (2017) five communicative processes of resilience all ultimately involve making sense—of contexts, identities, relationships, rationales, and emotions. Sensemaking is also appropriate for framing my analysis because interviewees indicated that colleagues together interpreted the closure in ways that enabled adaptation. Sensemaking is a process by which we enact contexts, by attending to particular elements of the environment and ignoring others, and select meanings, by choosing particular interpretations of those enacted contexts as most plausible (Kramer, 2017). Sensemaking is especially prevalent during disruption because loss and trauma threaten “our sense of self-worth and our most fundamental beliefs or assumptions about how the world works” (Davis & Nolen-Hoeksema, 2001, p. 727). When studying sensemaking during disruption, it is valuable to understand the meanings produced through communication and how those meanings enable and constrain identity and action (Weick et al., 2005). In this study, I argue that participant sensemaking enabled participants to develop nuanced interpretations that maintained dialectics and cultivated dignity. Because dialectics and dignity emerged as central for constituting resilience at SRI, I will briefly introduce each concept here.
Dialectics are opposing discourses that intersect and play off of one another in social life (Baxter, 2011). Rather than framing contradictory discourses as opposing binaries requiring a choice between one or the other, dialectics affirm contradictory discourses enacted and experienced simultaneously. In other words, rather than adopting an either/or stance, dialectics embrace a both/and stance, what Baxter calls a “unity of opposites” (Baxter, 2004, p. 103). Tracy (2004) demonstrated that contradictions can be productive for organizational members when they enact them as complementary dialectics by attending simultaneously to multiple, conflicting discourses. Seeing dialectics as productive is consistent with organizational communication scholarship that demonstrates the value of acknowledging and embracing rather than denying complexity and contradiction (Trethewey & Ashcraft, 2004).
Dignity is typically defined as one’s sense of worth and in workplace contexts is typically understood as stemming from recognition of humanity, respectful treatment, affordance of autonomy, opportunity to contribute meaningfully, and being treated with equal status (Lucas, 2017). Types of workplace dignity include 1) inherent dignity, which is one’s God-given value due to their humanity; 2) earned dignity, which emerges from one’s contributions to an organization, and 3) remediated dignity, which is defined as “social interactions and organizational practices that conceal the instrumental and unequal nature of work” (Lucas, 2015, p. 621). Two central lines of inquiry related to dignity at work focus on problematic workplaces and on how employees respond to threats to their dignity (Lucas, 2017). One threat to dignity especially relevant to this study is reification, which Lucas defined as “when people are treated as bundles of human resources that are replaceable, expendable, and disposable, instead of as human beings who have value that transcends the workplace” (Lucas, 2015, p. 626, emphasis in original). Research on dignity focuses primarily on employees’ experiences of indignity and provides “very little understanding of dignity as a positive experience” (Lucas, 2015, p. 625; for a notable exception, see Jenson, 2018).
In my findings, I will demonstrate that participant sensemaking that maintained dialectics and cultivated dignity were especially important for constituting resilience at SRI. Before explaining these findings in more detail, however, I turn to the study’s methodology.
Methods
This study is based on 67 in-depth interviews with 23 employees at various points during and after the site’s closure. In-depth interviewing is helpful for understanding participants’ “experience[s] and perspective[s] through stories, accounts and explanations” (Lindlof & Taylor, 2011, p. 173). Interviews also allow the researcher to understand meanings that cross multiple social settings and thus are difficult to observe (Kleinman et al., 1997).
Participants and Procedures
After learning that SRI—a multinational research and development company where I had previously conducted participant observation (Wieland, 2010, 2011)—was closing this site of 900 employees, I reconnected with participants from my earlier study to invite them to participate in interviews. Participants primarily worked in what I call the research implementation department as managers, project leaders, coordinators, administrators, and administrative assistants. Four were in managerial roles; one participant served as a union representative. The majority of participants (21) were female, as female employees dominated the department that was the focus of my original ethnographic study.
Three months after the closure announcement, I conducted the first round of interviews in person. I conducted follow-up interviews via phone with nineteen participants at later points during and after the closure process. Individual participants completed anywhere from one to six interviews. Most completed multiple interviews throughout the closure and many participated in a final interview after they had transitioned into a new job or retirement (see Table 1 for participant descriptions and the number of interviews each completed). The variation in the number of interviews individual participants completed was due to two factors. The first is the length of time that a participant remained at SRI: Participants who left earlier participated in fewer interviews because I only interviewed each person once after starting a new job. The second is participant response: I approached active participants to request a follow-up interview every six months but did not continue to contact those who did not respond.
Participant Descriptions.
Interviews were semi-structured and interview guides were personalized based on previous conversations. Common topics included their experience, how they were managing, their efforts to find and their priorities for a new job, the process of leaving SRI, and their transition to their next jobs. I did not explicitly ask participants about resilience as I set out to study their experience of the closure rather than resilience per se. Interviews lasted between 23 and 116 min, averaging 55 min in length. Interviews were recorded (except for two that failed to record), resulting in 1,126 single-spaced pages of transcripts.
Data Analysis
My earlier ethnographic study of SRI provided me with contextual knowledge—a deep understanding of the organization’s history and culture as well as participants’ work processes—that aided interpretation. Data analysis proceeded inductively and iteratively and involved four steps (Tracy, 2013). First, through data immersion, I sought to answer the question “What is happening here?” (Tracy, p. 188) and organized my early interpretations by taking notes and writing analytic memos. Second, I used NVivo to conduct primary-level, inductive coding during which I focused on describing and organizing the data. Primary-level themes identified reoccurring ways that participants talked about the closure experience; for example, talking about the closure as a shared experience, placing blame externally, and discussing the closure’s impact on the community. The third step involved second-level coding to understand how the primary-level themes related to one another in meaningful ways. Through this process, for example, I came to understand the common connection between the three primary-level themes mentioned above as serving to decenter themselves. This third step helped me arrive at the five themes at the heart of my analysis, one of which is (de)centering themselves. Along the way, I worked iteratively through reading and analytic memoing to determine how these inductive themes related to existing literature. This process enabled me to identify the two central communication processes constituting resilience—maintaining dialectics and cultivating dignity—that cut across the five themes and provide the foundation for this study’s contributions to existing literature. Finally, I conducted member checks by asking two informants to review a draft for factual accuracy, resonance of my accounts with their experiences, and anything that was missed or mischaracterized. Their responses affirmed my interpretations and provided additional insights that I incorporated into my analysis.
Findings and Interpretations
While the demands of ongoing work provided some sense of normalcy, participants experienced the closure and accompanying job insecurity as ongoing stressors that spurred sensemaking on many levels. They worked to make sense of why the closure occurred. They questioned whether their work at SRI was still valued. They wondered what was next and whether they would succeed professionally long-term. They pondered whether their city and nation would remain vital. Five themes emerged as I considered how participants created and maintained resilience in the face of these uncertainties: (de)centering themselves, framing the future optimistically, affirming the value of their past and present work, keeping work in perspective, and caring for one another. It is important to note that participants’ experiences of ups and downs indicate that resilience was not a consistent accomplishment; rather, it manifested inconsistently and developed over time. While not all participants engaged in these resilience practices—and those that did, did so partially and intermittently—these ways of making sense of the closure ultimately helped them enact resilience. 1
(De)Centering Themselves
In conversations, participants often (de)centered themselves, meaning that they enacted a broader context for making sense of the closure than their own individual experience. By talking about the closure in ways that framed it as not only about them, they looked outward rather than simply inward. Ultimately, these moves involved both decentering and centering themselves in ways that held self and other in dialectic tension. Participants (de)centered themselves by talking about the experience as shared, placing blame externally, and emphasizing the closure’s impact on their community.
Talking about the closure as a shared experience
One way participants (de)centered themselves is by emphasizing the closure as a shared experience. Jakob explained, “The fact that everyone was in the same boat was sort of relief. It made more easy, but it wasn’t easy.” Elsa stated: “This happens to people everywhere I suppose.” Talking about it as an experience they shared both with colleagues at SRI and others in similar situations enacted a broader context within which to understand their individual hardship.
Placing blame externally
A second way participants (de)centered themselves was by not blaming themselves for the closure. Alice said, “it doesn’t have anything to do with me personally.” Alice’s choice to mention herself in a sentence deflecting responsibility forcibly centers herself in the discussion of blame without identifying a clear external site of blame. Similarly, participants who did not have new jobs right away also blamed the situation rather than themselves. Annette, who was unemployed for seven months, said that sometimes she would start to doubt herself because she had not yet been hired. When I asked her how she handled that, she replied, “[I say] to myself that it has nothing to do with my qualifications. It’s just that I’ve had bad luck, and it’s so many people applying for one job.” For the most part, participants did not blame the company either: Most explained the company’s decision to close the site in light of industry changes and stockholder pressure. They pointed to the systemic forces at work instead of the company itself. (De)centering by placing blame externally is a good example of what Buzzanell (2017) calls employing alternative logics.
Attending to the impact of the closure on the community
A third way participants (de)centered themselves was by focusing on the implications of the closure for their local community. In the first round of interviews, many expressed concern not only for their individual futures but also for the future of their city. At her first interview, Inga critiqued the company’s decision, noting that “the company has been in [city] for such a long time and . . . means a lot to the town, to the university, to all the students, and of course to all of us employees.” Participants expressed concern that SRI’s buildings would remain empty and negatively affect surrounding businesses. Shortly before the second round of interviews, a local entrepreneur purchased the site to host start-up companies. Almost every participant eagerly shared this news with me during the second interview, expressing hope for the future of their community. For example, Michelle explained, “they’re going to make a life-science park. So that way, they don’t have to destroy the facilities . . . . it’s good for the university as well, and for the whole region.” By attending to the closure’s impact on the broader community, they made sense of the situation within a frame that included more than just their individual hardship.
While participants certainly experienced the closure as affecting them personally, by enacting a broader context beyond their own individual experiences for interpreting closure they (de)centered themselves. While this turn outward was certainly enabled by their sense of relative economic stability due to the Swedish safety net, it nonetheless seemed to keep them from wallowing in self-pity and fear due to the hardships the closure presented. 2 Placing their focus externally—on their shared plight, on changes in the industry, and on the impact on the community—enabled participants to make sense of the closure as affecting both themselves individually and their larger community. Through this process, they maintained dialectic tension between the discourses of self and other. That is, they recognized the closure’s impact on individual and community rather than enabling one to eclipse the other.
Framing the Future Optimistically
Participants also consciously sought to interpret their situation optimistically. Interviewees told me that they practiced optimism and encouraged each other to do so. This optimism most obviously manifested in their emphasis on the importance of positive thinking in early interviews despite significant uncertainty and stress. In later interviews, participants framed the closure as ultimately a good thing for them and talked about increased confidence in their ability to succeed professionally in a flexible labor market. The analysis below will make clear that participants’ efforts to maintain optimism did not stem from denial about the complexity of their situation or the insecurities they faced. Instead, their interactions emphasized agency and possibility while also recognizing hardship. In this way, their optimistic framing of the future is grounded in their maintenance of dialectical tensions between positivity and negativity and short- and long-term orientations.
Practicing positive thinking grounded in reality testing
Positive thinking was a strong theme in the first round of interviews. At that time, participants did not yet have information about severance packages and end dates, which caused a great deal of uncertainty and anxiety. Despite this, participants stressed the importance of positivity, both in terms of believing that the company would treat them well and that they would be able to eventually find a new job. Many told me that they had actively chosen to discuss the situation in ways that were more positive than negative: “I’ve made my decision to try not to be negative because I can’t do anything about it, and I actually felt myself that you are being too negative, you are being too sour . . . . So I try not to be negative” (Elsa). Emma justified positive thinking similarly: “You cannot go around and be negative all the time because that would only make you feel bad.” While participants stressed their efforts to practice positivity, they also pointed out the importance of acknowledging the negative emotions.
One way participants practiced positivity was by talking about their career prospects hopefully. For example, Lilly told me, “I just know it will sort itself, something will pop up. It always does.” In order to ground their optimism, participants conducted reality testing—actions taken to evaluate whether their positivity about their job prospects were warranted. 3 Many said that they tested the job market early on. For example, they stopped applying after securing an interview because that success gave them confidence that when they were ready to leave, they would find a job. They also grounded their optimism about job prospects by interpreting colleagues’ new jobs as a good sign for all. Molly commented that she was happy for colleagues with new jobs and also that “it feels very good for me because then I know that they managed to get a new job and that wasn’t so difficult, so it will, probably, be the same for me.” Reality testing enabled them to anticipate future employment prospects in light of what they could determine in the present.
Practicing positivity was not simply an individual pursuit but a social accomplishment. Participants told me that they encouraged one another to think positively. Stella, one of the managers, explained: In the beginning, there were some people that were very, a little bit bitter and very critical and other people came and said “It takes me down when I hear them. Can we do something?” And then we started to discuss, “How can we change our attitude so we all feel well?” Of course you need to be critical for the company because they have done something that is very negative for you . . . . It’s quite okay to sit with your manager and be very critical. But not in the big room because some people are feel[ing] bad about that.
Many mentioned the importance of talking about and lamenting the closure, but not all of the time. Participants reported that managers and colleagues together regulated conversations to ensure that the atmosphere remained positive. In this way, their sensemaking maintained both positive and negative emotions rather than absolving the tension between them.
Talking about the closure as an opportunity
Participants also framed the future optimistically by talking about the closure in ways that interpreted it as providing the opportunity to develop professionally by doing something new. For example, Lilly told me, “I don’t see it as a failure . . . . I see it as an opportunity to do something else.” Alice agreed, “I’m quite convinced that for most of us, this will end up as something good.” Fifteen of 23 participants explicitly discussed the closure in those terms already at their first interview. 4 Those who framed the closure as an opportunity typically explained that they were comfortable at SRI and would not have chosen to leave. Emma, for example, said in her first interview that if SRI hadn’t closed “I would have stayed and I probably would have done . . . maybe not exactly the same work, but almost . . . . For me personally, it was time to do something new anyway.” While many similarly said that they would not have chosen to leave, they framed the closure as providing opportunities for development and challenge in a new job.
I should clarify that those who talked about the closure as an opportunity did not see it exclusively in that light. Many who claimed the closure was ultimately a good thing for them also expressed sadness and fear. This demonstrates that their emotion work maintained rather than absolved the dialectic tension between negative and positive emotions. Further, it demonstrates that they maintained tension between the immediate challenges they faced related to the closure and their long-term employment prospects.
Emphasizing increased self-efficacy
Post-departure, participants framed the future optimistically by emphasizing the increased self-efficacy they gained through this experience. Participants talked about their new jobs as engaging and energizing. They reported increasing self-confidence and certainty that they would be able to change jobs again in the future if needed or chosen. Erika’s comments reflect this: I am a little bit surprised that it wasn’t as hard as I thought it would be. It’s very fulfilling to learn new things and new way of working and it’s good for your self-esteem and you feel good when you can see that you can learn new things and that you are good at it.
Erika described her new job as “very good” and “better” than were she still at SRI, despite the fact that her new job was a temporary position and paid less than her position at SRI. She explained her priorities: “I don’t feel that the money is that important. We have a good life, and I think it’s more important that you enjoy what you are doing.” Rather than denying the negative results of the closure, Erika framed money as less important than meaningful work in a way that acknowledged both the positive and negative implications of the closure.
Hanna, the interviewee who seemed most devastated by the closure in our conversations before leaving SRI, had changed her view after a year at a new company: “It was a hard year. And it took about half a year at the new job to gain my energy back, but I wouldn’t be as happy as I am right now if I stayed at SRI, I think.” She also shared additional insight on her new situation, saying, “I’m learning a lot and I think I’ve got a lot of new energy from changing jobs.”
Through their talk, participants framed the experience of transitioning to a new job as empowering. They interpreted being chosen by a new employer and developing in their new positions as a sign that they were capable. They framed this as providing a new type of security: Rather than finding security in loyalty from an employer, they said that they could feel secure in their ability to adapt. Matilda articulated this: I’m more confident and I would rather [not] go out and find a new job, but now this scary feeling that I might be fired—it doesn’t really frighten me . . . . If they fire me, okay fine. I [will] go find something else. I’m pretty sure I will find something else if I need it. That just relaxes me.
Alicia similarly stated, “It’s very easy to say that nothing is safe [if] even [a] company like SRI could close down. And I think it’s given me a different perspective . . . . Because I got more confidence [that] I will fix it; I can handle it.” They framed their successful transition to new jobs as enabling them to approach the future with confidence and optimism despite their recognition of increasing employment insecurity.
By practicing positive thinking grounded in reality testing, talking about the closure as an opportunity, and emphasizing increased self-efficacy, participants framed their futures optimistically. While these moves demonstrate the interrelationship between two of Buzzanell’s processes—employing alternative logics and downplaying negative feelings while foregrounding positive emotions—participants’ sensemaking processes also accomplished something else. Specifically, this framing maintained the dialectic tension between fear and hope in that their optimism about the future held positivity and negativity in tension rather than allowing positivity to bypass negativity. Their optimistic framing of the future also reflects the tension they maintained between attending to their short-term experience of the closure and their long-term prospects.
Affirming the Value of their Past and Present Work
Although participants framed the future optimistically, the closure threatened their dignity as they realized that they were replaceable—what Lucas (2015) refers to as reification. Lilly explained: You realize how small you actually are in the big whole thing because you’re at a company where you feel very like everybody knows everybody . . . and you feel like you mean something, but then you realize that you actually don’t mean anything in the big scheme. Of course I still matter as a person. But that’s all about coming down to who you are and how you feel about yourself.
Lilly and many others interpreted the closure as signaling that SRI did not value them. While participants certainly grieved their replaceability, one way they adapted throughout the closure was by making sense of their past and present work for SRI as valuable. Olivia, for example, noted the importance of her current tasks because “it’s not like the company is closing down.” In our conversations, participants affirmed the value of their past and present work by emphasizing its impact on their colleagues and their sense of pride as well as by stressing the importance of transferring their knowledge.
Framing their current work as important
Participants affirmed their dignity by stressing the value of their current work. Throughout the closure, they minimized the company as their motivation for continuing to do a good job. Instead, they talked about the importance of continuing to work hard for their colleagues and for their own sense of pride.
Sara, a manager, told me that “it was impressive to see the way people kept doing high quality work until the very bitter end.” She emphasized that they were doing it primarily for their colleagues: It was extremely clear that . . . the focus was the colleagues at the end, to leave it in a good way for the colleagues that were going to take over. They didn’t do it for the company; they did it for their colleagues.
She said that they also valued their present work because they interpreted doing it well until the end as important for their sense of pride. She explained the dominant attitude she observed: Even if the company has done this to me, I will do my job until the end and I will leave it in a good way to my colleagues and proud of what I have done myself. I can leave this company and I can be proud of what I did at the company even though the company doesn’t want me anymore.
She later added, “It’s just a very good feeling to say that I did all that I had to do until the bitter end . . . . You can leave with pride.” Several participants talked about their commitment to do their best work until the end as a shared agreement to “leave with the flag on top.” This commitment, they insisted, was not about loyalty to SRI; instead it stemmed from their belief in the importance of their projects, loyalty to their colleagues, and their own sense of pride. By focusing on their jobs, they were able to momentarily escape the stress of the closure and—more important—affirm their dignity by finding purpose in the midst of it.
Stressing the importance of transferring their knowledge
Participants also affirmed the value of their past and present contributions by stressing the importance of transferring their projects and knowledge successfully to colleagues at other sites. For example, Olivia explained that the knowledge transfer process was important to her “because the work I’ve done for the last three years is important. It’s important for the company but it’s also important for other companies. And I think for the future within the industry.” Those who seemed to have the biggest challenge wrapping up their work were those who didn’t have someone to hand their projects off to. Sara explained that it was “very, very apparent” that people’s stress levels went down once they knew who would be taking over their projects: “There were some people where . . . there was no name and that was difficult.” Knowing who would continue their work provided participants with a sense of closure and was also interpreted as indicating the value of their contributions, because the work would continue after they left.
When administrative assistants were asked to recycle their files rather than archiving them, they interpreted it as a clear indication that their work was not valued. Astrid explained: “I’m throwing away 10 years [of] work. And that’s hard . . . . They don’t want my archive of papers. [laughs] No, that’s not funny.” I asked her how it makes her feel: “It hurts a bit, I think. Because things that I felt were very important, aren’t important when you are throwing away most of it.” I asked her how she deals with that disappointment: “I have to value it myself. I have to turn it around in that way.” She told me that she took comfort in the belief that her expertise would be useful to her in her next job. This is another example how employing alternative logics is crucial for maintaining resilience in the face of job insecurity.
While the organization’s decision to close the site made participants feel replaceable, they cultivated a sense of self-worth through affirming the value of the past and present work—for colleagues, to maintain their pride, for the success of their projects, and for their future jobs. While this commitment certainly served the company well, it also provided an important source of meaning for participants by offering them a sense of purpose, which helped them maintain a sense of earned dignity through their contributions.
Keeping Work in Perspective
Participants also affirmed and strengthened interpretations of work that limited its centrality in their lives. By keeping work in perspective—both through disengagement practices and reaffirming their view of work as only one part of life—participants protected themselves and asserted agency, which helped them maintain a sense of dignity. The practices discussed in this section also point to the dialectical tension participants constructed through their tempered commitment to SRI.
Disengaging from SRI
In early interviews, many participants told me that they were disengaging from their work at SRI. Participants reported disengagement practices such as taking long lunches, coming late, and leaving early. Some discussed quickly deleting emails with details about the reorganization because they knew they wouldn’t be involved. As Sara said: “My loyalty is going down a little bit. I can feel that my engagement in work is less now.” Most saw disengagement practices as reflecting their decreasing commitment to SRI, something that they interpreted as healthy given the situation. Alice explained: I can come a little late and I can leave a little early, so I don’t have to work so long days and . . . it’s not so hectic of course. So it’s quite comfortable, and as I have quite a few vacation days, some weeks I only work four days and have one day off.
She quickly clarified that she still maintained her work ethic: “Of course you still want to do a good job here before you leave.” While participants reported remaining committed to completing their projects satisfactorily, many expressed unwillingness to do anything beyond what was required.
For many, disengagement occurred early. For others, letting go took longer. It was a process of accepting that they would not be a part of SRI’s future and coming to peace with that. Stella talked about letting go in terms of needing to “cut the ropes,” which she described as “put[ting] the company behind me. If I want to do something else, I can be more open. I don’t want to be bitter.” She added that the advance notice enabled her to “cut the ropes” over time.
Disengaging was one way that participants kept work in perspective as they became cautious about giving too much to SRI. Disengagement served as a form of resistance in response to dignity threats and, ultimately, helped restore a sense of dignity because it provided a sense of agency and helped them pursue meaning outside of the workplace (Lucas, 2015). At the same time, participants were quick to demonstrate that they remained committed to doing the work that needed to be done. Their tempered commitment to their work demonstrates their efforts to both engage and disengage simultaneously—demonstrating yet another opposing set of discourses that their sensemaking held in tension.
Framing work as only one part of life
Participants’ view of work as only one important part of their lives and identities (Wieland, 2011) also helped them keep work in perspective. This view of work manifested much more in terms of explicit talk about work’s limitations as a source of meaning rather than extensive discussion affirming other identity anchors. Given the dignity threats that the closure represented, framing work as only one part of life helped participants cultivate a sense of autonomy, self-respect, and inherent worth.
Many said the closure empowered them to care for themselves and maintain appropriate distance from work. As Alice said, “I also realized that a job is important but also it isn’t everything . . . . I was aware of that before but now it’s even more obvious for me.” I should clarify that participants insisted that they still cared about work and worked hard. Their work ethic was clearly an important facet of their identities. Alice explained, “You need to be a little loyal, but not too much. Not too much. Because it’s not worth it really.” Participants said they were cautious about being overly committed and believed that they had to protect themselves. After Alicia said she was unwilling to overcommit to work, I countered that she still needed to remain employable: “You need to do that, so you need to follow the game in a strategic way . . . that doesn’t always mean doing everything perfectly.” Framing work as only a part of life helped participants to emotionally disengage from SRI and discern which parts of their jobs were most important. This interpretation also made them cautious about hinging their sense of self-worth on work.
In post-departure interviews, many participants told me that they had also started to interpret their relationship with future employers differently. They explained that their SRI experience led them to be guarded with new employers. As Alicia told me: “I don’t put my soul into [work]”: Before I always gave my all to everything, I don’t any longer because I realized that costs me personally too much and I don’t get that much back. And I need to make sure I take care of myself first, not the company because they will not take care of me . . . perhaps give me some money if they let me go and so on but they will not take care of my health and my reeducation or whatever. So I’m starting to be a little bit more selfish I would say, thinking about me first.
Lena also said she had more balance when asked if she felt loyal to her new employer: “I’m still engaged, I’m still involved and think things are important and try things, but maybe I’m not that engaged . . . . It’s not that important for me anymore.” She said she was more likely to take vacation and less likely to work on Sunday nights. She later reflected that many of her colleagues seem to have “realized that this is a job, and there’s so many things that are more important . . . . The closing changed many people’s view[s] of their jobs.”
Constructing work as important but just one part of life helped participants to both manage the long closure period and adapt to increasing job insecurity. Ultimately, their meanings of work (Cheney et al., 2008)—orientations toward work’s value and its role in their lives—helped them negotiate job insecurity and constitute resilience by asserting autonomy and constructing boundaries that limited work’s centrality to their sense of self-worth. These things enabled them to restore dignity that had been threatened by the closure’s indication of their replaceability.
Caring for One Another
A final theme that emerged was the care that participants showed to and received from one another. By caring for colleagues, participants not only oriented their attention toward others (further decentering) but also found a sense of purpose. Being cared for by others made them feel visible and valued. As Alice said, “We were really like a family . . . especially during the last year.” She told me that members of her department gathered after the closure announcement: “We just needed to be together to take care of each other.” Alicia expressed this when she said, “I’ve [also] been thinking more about how are other people doing around me? How can I help them? How can we do this together?” Their care for one another—through individualized consideration and attending to exit rituals—restored dignity to both parties by humanizing them.
Showing individualized consideration
Managers played an important role in caring for others by showing individualized consideration. These actions included attending to individual needs of their staff and helping address them (Northouse, 2010). In our first interview, I asked Sara what her staff needed from her at that point. She thoughtfully responded: They need to be seen. To have someone recognizing that they are there, that they are doing their job. Someone taking an interest in their future . . . The most important [thing] is to just be there and to ask them how things are going and . . . how they are feeling and also how what I call “their new project,” which is project Eva or project Hanna [is going].
Jakob held a similar view: “[I] help people look for their reactions and help them through.” Sara also talked about managers’ central role after the announcement as “helping all our staff to re-orient in life and to help them [find a] new job.”
This interpretation of their role led managers to care for employees in various practical ways. They regularly checked in to see how employees were doing. They encouraged staff to use work time to revise their résumés and look for jobs. They provided résumé feedback. Another significant way managers cared for employees was—in most cases—following the employee’s lead when determining individual end dates. Sara and others told me that they felt their ability to treat staff well was enabled by the fact that SRI “empowered” local leadership to handle exits how they felt was best.
Participants indicated that they felt cared for by their managers. Olivia said “I felt I was actually seen because of this chain from the line managers.” Alice said similarly: They have been here. They have been visible . . . just coming into my office and saying “Hello. How are you today? How is life? How are things going?” It’s not necessary to have a long talk, just to show that I’m here and I care like that. Just to be here, to be visible, to be generous.
Through individualized consideration, managers attended to employees’ needs and helped meet them, and participants noticed that managers balanced productivity needs with concern for their wellbeing. They experienced this care as significantly influencing their sense of self-worth in the midst of the closure. Many noted it was especially impressive given that managers were also “in the same situation.”
Attending to exit rituals
Another significant way managers cared for staff was attending specifically to their final days at SRI. Sara talked extensively about her role in providing “good exits” for the staff. She explained: “The most important thing is that you feel when you leave, you feel that someone had—up until the last day—you have been someone and someone has seen you and seen what you have been doing.” She later explained: When the company has just said “we don’t want you anymore,” it’s not good if your manager forgets you . . . . [I tried] to show people you still have a value to the company. Your work is still valued. You are valued as a person.
Sara sought to provide staff with good exits by recognizing their contributions and acknowledging their humanity—two central elements to workplace dignity.
While their care for one another connects to what Buzzanell (2017) calls building and utilizing communication networks, their care for one another demonstrates another way that relationships communicatively constitute resilience. Caring for one another in the face of uncertainty—by showing individualized consideration and attending to exit rituals—helped participants turn outward, find a sense of purpose, and reclaim dignity. As Astrid pointed out, the closure provided those leaving with a context to connect deeply with others, even those with whom they might not normally interact. Through these interactions, they humanized one another—attending to each other as people who were also struggling in the face of the closure. In addition to the obvious connections between this finding and cultivating dignity, it is important to note that their reciprocal care for one another also points to their maintenance of the self/other dialectic.
Discussion
As mentioned earlier, Buzzanell’s (2010, 2017) theory of resilience includes five processes: 1) crafting normalcy, 2) affirming identity anchors, 3) maintaining and using communication networks, 4) employing alternative logics, and 5) foregrounding productive action while backgrounding negative emotions. This study suggests that the central communication processes constituting resilience in the face of job insecurity differ from situations of job loss. In Buzzanell and Turner’s (2003) research on job loss, crafting normalcy, affirming identity anchors, and foregrounding/backgrounding emotions were most important. While navigating emotions was also evident at SRI, crafting normalcy and affirming identity anchors were not particularly prevalent. I suspect this is because between the announcement and closure, participants maintained typical work routines. Instead, ongoing sensemaking processes that framed the situation—the closure, their futures, their views of work—in ways that enacted a broader context were especially helpful for navigating the continued stress of their situation because such sensemaking turned them outward. This helped them to maintain dialectical tensions between self/other, positivity/negativity, short-/long-term, and engagement/disengagement. In addition, sensemaking that affirmed the value of their past and present work, kept work in perspective, and cared for one another was helpful because it provided them with a sense of purpose and agency, which in turn cultivated their sense of self-worth. This finding suggests that the most crucial of Buzzanell’s (2017) five communication processes that constitute resilience in situations of job insecurity are employing alternative logics and foregrounding/backgrounding emotions.
This study contributes to our understanding of resilience in two ways. First, it offers a sixth process—maintaining dialectics—to the communication theory of resilience. Interviews indicate that holding conflicting emotions and interpretations in tension was a crucial aspect of the resilience labor of SRI employees. Maintaining interplay between several opposing discourses helped participants constitute resilience: positivity/negativity, self/other, short-/long-term orientation, and disengagement/engagement. Dialectical tension was perhaps most apparent in their ongoing work to legitimize yet minimize negative emotions in a way that enabled them to acknowledge sadness and fear while cultivating hope. They maintained this negative/positive dialectic, however, not only through emotion work but also through sensemaking that resulted in complex, contradictory interpretations that accounted for both the negative and positive. For example, participants made sense of their situation in ways that acknowledged their status as replaceable while simultaneously constructing self-efficacy and hope for their futures. They also simultaneously sought to disengage from work while completing their tasks with integrity. When facing conflicting interpretations and emotions related to the closure, participants in this study demonstrated a facility for maintaining the interplay between them. While maintaining dialectics in some ways echoes Buzzanell’s fifth process—foregrounding productive action while backgrounding negative emotions—it also represents a significant departure by emphasizing the ongoing interplay of competing discourses (rather than simply privileging one and downplaying the other) and suggesting multiple dialectical tensions that animate resilience.
This study thus suggests that constituting resilience is a process marked by discursive struggle that maintains—rather than denies—contradictory experiences, emotions, and interpretations. Communicatively constituting resilience can thus be described as a “contrapuntal” process in which contrasting melodies are played together (Baxter, 2011). Whereas relational dialectics theory idealizes transforming dialectics to balance power between opposing discourses, this study suggests that imbalanced discourses that nonetheless maintain ongoing interplay might better enable resilience. Whereas denial of negative emotions and interpretations did not seem helpful, nor did balancing negative and positive. Instead, this study suggests that an imbalance that maintains the tension by acknowledging the negative while tilting toward positive constituted resilience. Future research should consider other dialectical tensions that constitute resilience as well as what the consequences of denial, tilting, or balancing those forces is for resilience.
Second, this study contributes to our understanding of how resilience is constituted in workplaces by suggesting that interactions that cultivate dignity enable resilience, at least in the face of job insecurity. While participants did not use the word dignity, interviewees indicated that their experience was shaped by being treated with dignity and, in turn, treating others with dignity. Participants’ reciprocal communication practices humanized one another through their care, which increased not only others’ but their own sense of their purpose and worth within a situation rife with dignity threats. This is consistent with Buber’s (1970) insight that when we humanize others, we ourselves become more human in the process. Participants also cultivated dignity through their efforts to maintain their sense of pride and value their work. This finding suggests that employees experiencing a shared dignity threat such as job insecurity can cultivate dignity through finding purpose, carving out spaces for agency, and treating one another humanely. This confirms Jensen’s (2018) finding that a culture of dignity can help manage stigma.
By suggesting that cultivating dignity is a central communication process of resilience in workplaces, this study also expands the network perspective of relationships that dominates the communication theory of resilience. This study’s findings suggest that a social exchange perspective of workplace relationships as networks drawn upon out of self-interest to assist the struggling individual (e.g., Buzzanell, 2010, 2017) is a helpful but limited way of conceptualizing relationships. Building on Buzzanell’s (2017) point that “developing deep relationships” (p. 9) enables resilience, this study suggests that workplace relationships enable resilience not only through social exchange but also through dialogic encounters. This study demonstrates the value of a dialogic approach to relationships that emphasizes the role of mutuality in enabling resilience (Richardson & Maninger, 2016). An emphasis on mutuality complements the economic view of relationships embedded in the network approach by providing a phenomenological view that sees dialogic communication as providing opportunities for empathic encounters with others (Craig, 1999). Future studies should consider how dialogic communication that acknowledges and humanizes others—or a lack thereof—affects the constitution of resilience in the face of other workplace stressors.
Practical Implications
This study’s findings offer several practical implications for organizational leaders and employees seeking to constitute resilience in situations of job insecurity. To organizational leaders and managers, this study suggests the importance of humanizing employees by making sure they feel seen and valued. Equipping line managers with time and tools to provide emotional and practical support to employees is one way to accomplish this. Attending to exit rituals is also critical, as helping employees feel seen as they exit communicates that they are valued and respected by the company and colleagues. This suggests that layoff practices that protect employee confidentiality through secrecy may actually hinder the cultivation of dignity and, as a result, resilience (Løvseth & Aasland, 2010). Future research should consider the consequences of strict confidentiality practices for employee resilience in layoff situations.
For individuals facing job insecurity, this study suggests the value of maintaining rather than absolving tension between contradictory interpretations and emotions. For example, (de)centering enables individuals to both acknowledge their own experience while not getting engulfed by it. Further, holding negative and positive emotions in tension can help cultivate hopefulness while acknowledging hardship. Conducting reality testing by applying for jobs is a specific strategy that emerged from this study that could be valuable to others facing job insecurity. In addition, this study suggests that those facing job insecurity should surround themselves by a supportive community—of colleagues, relatives, or a support group—in which they can care for and be cared for by others in order to cultivate dignity.
Conclusion
By interviewing employees throughout and after a worksite closure, this study provided a rich understanding of how sensemaking helped employees enact resilience. It suggests that workplace interactions that enabled participants to make sense of the closure in ways that maintained dialectic tension and cultivated dignity enabled them to adapt and remain hopeful. This study is limited due to its focus on one small group of employees in one cultural context. Future studies should consider the experiences of others facing job insecurity in other cultural contexts as well as individuals facing different types of job insecurity. While interviews enabled me to gain insight into meaning production through participant stories, accounts, and explanations (Lindlof & Taylor, 2011), future studies of workplace closures should use ethnographic observation to provide additional insight into how communication constitutes such meanings. In the context of COVID-19, there are significant opportunities to study the constitution of resilience in other situations of job insecurity including furloughs or the ongoing threat of layoffs.
This study’s findings echo Sennett’s (1998) conclusion that our best hope in the face of an increasingly flexible economy is to acknowledge our mutual dependence, create social structures that enable individual resilience, and cultivate community by translating “shared beliefs and values into concrete, daily practices” (p. 137). This study demonstrates the complexity and promise of those practices.
Footnotes
Acknowledgements
Thanks to Rebecca Meisenbach, Patricia Sias, Sarah Riforgiate, and three anonymous reviewers for their excellent feedback on this manuscript. Thanks to participants for their generosity in sharing their stories and experiences throughout the closure. Thanks to Yiye Wu, Silvana Pop, and Bryleigh Loughlin for their help transcribing interviews. Thanks to the Swedish Institute, Villanova Graduate Studies in Communication, Western Michigan University’s College of Arts and Sciences, the Calvin Center for Christian Scholarship, and the Calvin Center for Innovation in Business for generously supporting this project.
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: I did receive internal funding from Villanova University, Western Michigan University, and Calvin University that supported this research.