The basic idea

Conservation of Resources (CoR) theory, developed by Stevan Hobfoll, explains stress in terms of the acquisition, protection and loss of resources people value.

Its central insight is deceptively simple: people need resources not only to function, but also to acquire and protect other resources. Stress therefore arises when valued resources are threatened, lost, or invested without sufficient return.

Resources may include material resources, as well as time, energy, attention, knowledge, skills, autonomy, confidence, relationships, social support and other conditions that enable people to act effectively.

Resource loss can become recursive

An important feature of CoR is that resource loss is not necessarily a single event.

People with depleted resources have less capacity to prevent further losses or to rebuild what has been lost. Resource loss can therefore create loss spirals:

Figure 1: How continual pressure diminishes resources

The opposite is also possible. Adequate resources make it easier to acquire and protect additional resources, creating gain spirals.

This makes CoR particularly relevant to organisations operating under sustained pressure or repeated change.

From individual stress to organisational capability

CoR is primarily a theory of human stress and resource behaviour. It should not be transferred to an organisation as though the organisation itself were a person.

Its organisational importance arises because organisational capability ultimately depends on people having sufficient resources to exercise their capability.

People need time to think, attention to notice, psychological and social resources to question, relationships through which knowledge can move, and sufficient cognitive and emotional capacity to exercise judgement.

When these resources are repeatedly consumed without adequate replenishment, formal capability may remain apparently intact while the human capacity required to enact it deteriorates.

The organisation may still have the same structures, systems, procedures and employees.

It no longer has the same usable capability.

Psychic energy

This is where CoR connects strongly with psychic energy.

Attention, cognitive effort and emotional capacity are finite. People continually allocate these resources among immediate work, problem-solving, learning, relationships, uncertainty, emotional regulation and recovery.

Under sustained pressure, increasingly scarce resources are directed towards immediate survival and task completion.

Reflection, exploration, learning, helping others, challenging assumptions and contributing discretionary knowledge become harder to sustain.

These activities may disappear precisely when the organisation needs them most.

Tacit knowledge and discretionary contribution

Much valuable organisational knowledge is not automatically captured by a process or information system.

People choose whether to contribute observations, experience, judgement, concerns and ideas. Doing so consumes resources.

When people are overloaded, exhausted, unsupported, or convinced that contributing will achieve little, conserving those resources can be entirely rational.

CoR therefore provides one mechanism through which sustained resource depletion may contribute to Tacit Withdrawal.

• The individual conserves scarce resources.
• The organisation loses access to knowledge.

Its capacity to understand and respond to changing conditions declines.

Capability erosion

Capability erosion may consequently occur without any deliberate decision to remove capability.

People remain employed. Systems remain operational. Processes remain documented.

Yet the resources required to make those things effective are progressively diminished.

See: Subject Area – Resource Depletion, Capability Erosion and Regeneration

Conservation is not regeneration

Conservation of Resources also helps distinguish sustainability from regeneration.

Preventing further depletion matters, but merely conserving what remains does not necessarily restore what has already been lost.

A sustainable organisation seeks to avoid progressively consuming the resources upon which continued capability depends.

A regenerative organisation goes further. It deliberately creates conditions through which human, social, ecological and other resources can be renewed and strengthened.

The important question therefore becomes not simply:

What resources do we have?

but:

Are the conditions under which we operate consuming or replenishing the resources required to adapt, learn and flourish?

Implications for practice

Leaders should pay attention not only to workload and formally available resources, but to patterns of resource depletion and replenishment.

Persistent overtime, excessive cognitive load, emotional labour, repeated organisational change, poor information quality, unresolved uncertainty and deteriorating relationships can consume resources that conventional performance measures barely recognise.

Conversely, recovery, trusted relationships, autonomy, useful knowledge, effective tools, learning, supportive social environments and meaningful work can replenish or amplify resources.

The objective is not to eliminate demand. Adaptive organisations inevitably encounter pressure, uncertainty and disruption.

The objective is to avoid systematically consuming the very resources required to respond to them.

Key references

Hobfoll, S. E. (1989). Conservation of resources: A new attempt at conceptualizing stress. American Psychologist, 44(3), 513–524.

Hobfoll, S. E. (2001). The influence of culture, community, and the nested-self in the stress process: Advancing Conservation of Resources theory. Applied Psychology, 50(3), 337–421.

Hobfoll, S. E., Halbesleben, J., Neveu, J.-P., & Westman, M. (2018). Conservation of resources in the organizational context: The reality of resources and their consequences. Annual Review of Organizational Psychology and Organizational Behavior, 5, 103–128.