Building personal resources through interventions: An integrative review

• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/job.2198
• Published date: 01 February 2018
• Date: 01 February 2018

THE JOB ANNUAL REVIEW

Building personal resources through interventions: An

integrative review

Elisabeth Gilbert |Trevor Foulk |Joyce Bono

Department of Management, Warrington

College of Business Administration, University

of Florida, Gainesville, Florida, U.S.A.

Correspondence

Elisabeth Gilbert, Department of Management,

Warrington College of Business

Administration, University of Florida, P.O. Box

117165, Gainesville, Florida 32611‐7165,

USA.

Email: elisabeth.gilbert@warrington.ufl.edu

Abstract

In recent years, a variety of disparate literatures have emerged to test interventions intended to

increase individuals' psychological, cognitive, and physiological resources. Although many of

these interventions were originally designed for individual or clinical use, a growing number of

commentators have called for their adoption in organizations. But controversy remains about

their efficacy in the workplace. We review the research literature on 6 interventions that have

been used to build volatile personal resources: malleable, individual‐level constructs that are vital

for withstanding work stress and proximal to work outcomes. In so doing, we evaluate the gen-

eralizability of these interventions to organizational settings, along with their potential benefits

and costs. Our findings highlight new opportunities for both research and practice.

KEYWORDS

interventions,resources, well‐being

1|INTRODUCTION

The workday, as the resource literature often characterizes it, is a con-

tinual siege. As workers exert effort—whether in speaking up about

concerns (Lin & Johnson, 2015), enduring uncivil social interactions

(Sliter, Sliter, & Jez, 2012), or simply thinking hard (Smit, Eling, &

Coenen, 2004)—their personal resources are being taxed and depleted

(Trougakos & Hideg, 2009), in what Westman, Hobfoll, Chen,

Davidson, and Laski (2005) described as “a kind of chronic day to day

seepage”(p. 192). But these personal resources, such as positive affect,

vitality, and mental acuity, are vitally important: They fuel employees'

efforts to weather stress (Hobfoll, 2001), remain engaged

(Xanthopoulou, Bakker, Demerouti, & Schaufeli, 2009), perform

successfully (e.g., Miner & Glomb, 2010), and flourish (e.g., Fredrickson,

2001) in the often challenging contexts of work organizations. As a

result, researchers and practitioners share a growing interest in finding

ways to offset resource loss by building or replenishing workers'

resources.

One way organizations can attempt to boost personal resources

is through deliberate interventions. There is abundant evidence from

a variety of nonorganizational domains that relatively simple inter-

ventions can build these resources (e.g., Fritz, Ellis, Demsky, Lin, &

Guros, 2013; Good et al., 2016; Sin & Lyubomirsky, 2009), and

although many of these interventions were originally developed for

personal or clinical use, there is a growing consensus that they can

—and should—be adapted for use in work organizations. Calls for

organizations to implement resource‐building interventions, such as

mindfulness training and positive psychology exercises, have come

from researchers (Good et al., 2016; Llorens, Salanova, Torrente, &

Acosta, 2013; Mills, Fleck, & Kozikowski, 2013), executives (Jones,

2015), popular press commentators (Jaret, 2015), and consultants

(Chaskalson, 2011) alike. And those calls are being answered. Many

organizations, including the U.S. Army (Reivich, Seligman, & McBride,

2011) and Fortune 500 corporations such as Google and General

Mills (Schafenbuel, 2015), have established large‐scale programs

based on the belief that these interventions will benefit their

employees.

Yet these organizational initiatives are not without controversy.

For proponents, resource‐building interventions offer the promise of

a resilient and psychologically fit workforce, equipped to cope with

adversity and boasting heightened well‐being and performance

(Reivich et al., 2011). But for critics, calls for implementation are run-

ning ahead of the research evidence, making overblown claims about

intervention efficacy that can lead organizations to incur major finan-

cial and even psychological costs with little gain (Azar, 2011). Among

the biggest questions is to what extent findings from intervention

studies—which are by definition conducted with volunteers, some of

whom are deliberately seeking resource gains (Parks, Della Porta,

Pierce, Zilca, & Lyubomirsky, 2012)—can be generalized to real organi-

zational contexts.

Received: 16 October 2015 Revised: 11 January 2017 Accepted: 28 March 2017

DOI: 10.1002/job.2198

214 Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. J Organ Behav. 2018;39:214–228.wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/job