Resilience in the Business Curriculum: A Biblical Perspective and Directions for Future Research

Abstract

In today’s competitive, fast-paced market, employers are seeking more than technical skills in their new hires. They are seeking new hires with strong soft skills. Resilience is among those desired soft skills. As the competitive business environment continues to rapidly change, our graduates will need to be prepared to face those challenges resiliently. As business leaders place more emphasis on the value of resilience, integrating resilience training into the business curriculum becomes a unique way we can prepare our students, differentiating our Christian liberal arts universities from the pack with a unique value proposition. Creating opportunities for safe-failure and successful pivots can be beneficial for developing resilience in our students, and the FLEX Plan is a good way to start. The FLEX Plan is a unique step-by-step approach to help students improve their resilience and focuses around four basic steps: accept failure, lean in to the emotion, elect a positive response, and x-ray (be transparent). This paper will provide support for the FLEX Plan and will connect this approach to supportive literature on resilience and will explore the value of teaching a biblical perspective on resilience. Future areas of research that could be pursued include the overall impact of increasing resilience; the benefit of resilience training with and without a biblical foundation; and the impact of resilience training in online education, adult accelerated-degree completion programs, and MBA programs.