Workplace adversity and resilience in public relations: Accounting for the lived experiences of public relations practitioners

• Published in: Public relations review Vol. 44; no. 2; pp. 236 - 246
• Main Authors: Guo, Sylvia Jiankun, Anderson, Lindsey B.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Silver Spring Elsevier Inc 01.06.2018; Elsevier Science Ltd
• Subjects: Adversity; Collectives; Public relations; Qualitative research; Resilience; Scholarship; Workplaces; Adversity; Public relations; Resilience
• ISSN: 0363-8111; 1873-4537
• DOI: 10.1016/j.pubrev.2018.02.002

•This qualitative study explored workplace adversities in public relations and examined how practitioners enacted resilience.•Results showed practitioners faced multi-level workplace adversities; most resulted from unappreciative/unethical management/clients.•Enactment of resilience included bouncing forward (disengaging), up (persevering), back (taking risks), and around (struggling).•This study featured practitioners for each pattern of resilience and tentatively connected individual/organizational resilience.•It extended resilience scholarship, while connecting several public relations concepts: renewal, activism, and empowerment. Public relations practitioners face workplace challenges as they cultivate public relationships, resolve conflicts, and manage crises. Odds of adversities may be high in this role, requiring practitioners to be resilient. This qualitative study explores workplace adversities in public relations from a practitioners’ perspective, and examines how they enact resilience. By asking current practitioners about their lived experiences, we found workplace adversities occurred on multiple levels and ranged from mundane to life-altering events. Patterns of resilience were, metaphorically, bouncing forward, bouncing up, bouncing back, and bouncing around. This study contributes to public relations and resilience scholarship by (1) uncovering workplace adversities and resilience enactment in public relations, therefore connecting practice with scholarship, (2) extending the “bounce back” metaphor in the resilience literature, therefore making resilience more inclusive, and (3) exploring the connections of multi-level resilience, and suggesting the complex and negotiated nature of resilience among individuals embedded in collectives.