Human Factors and Crisis Resilience: A Qualitative Investigation of Psychological Resource Configurations Among Crisis Management Professionals

ABSTRACT

Organisational crises are intensifying, yet the psychological mechanisms determining how individuals and teams perform under acute disruption remain insufficiently understood. Conservation of resources (COR) theory offers a widely cited framework, but its resource caravan concept leaves functional relationships among resources unspecified. This study investigated what human factors contribute to crisis resilience, how they interact and what organisational conditions shape their deployment. Semi‐structured interviews with 20 crisis management professionals (mean 21.8 years' experience, range 8–44) from risk management, security management, emergency response and academic domains were analysed using reflexive thematic analysis. Twelve human factors were identified across individual, interpersonal and organisational levels. Building on these accounts, three configurational relationship types (synergistic, compensatory and conditional) are proposed to shape crisis performance in ways not reducible to additive or interaction effects. This configurational logic is characterised by equifinality (multiple resource combinations producing equivalent outcomes) and asymmetric causation, distinguishing it from standard moderation models. Collective sensemaking is theorised as a resource‐generative mechanism conditional upon psychological safety, and organisational culture is identified as a moderator of the individual‐to‐collective resilience transfer. The findings elaborate COR theory by proposing specified functional relationships within resource caravans and generating testable propositions for future research. Implications for crisis team composition, crisis exercise design and organisational preparedness are discussed.