Navigating turbulence: building resilient workforce with dynamic capabilities

Purpose Drawing on the dynamic capabilities perspective, the study aims to move beyond context-dominant explanations by focusing on microfoundational mechanisms through which employees interpret and respond to dynamic work environments. In doing so, it seeks to clarify whether organizational learning culture is linked to employee resilience primarily through these behavioral and psychological capabilities, thereby offering a more nuanced understanding of how resilience is associated with contextual conditions at the employee level. Design/methodology/approach The research utilizes survey data from 410 employees working in Egypt's dynamic and turbulent hospitality sector. Findings The findings show that organizational learning culture is positively associated with employee resilience, employee ambidexterity and employee self-efficacy. Employee ambidexterity and employee self-efficacy are positively associated with employee resilience and account for robust indirect associations. In contrast, the direct association between organizational learning culture and employee resilience is relatively modest, whereas its associations with ambidexterity and self-efficacy are substantially stronger. Overall, the results reveal a mechanism-dominant pattern in which organizational learning culture is linked to employee resilience primarily through employee ambidexterity and self-efficacy in managing challenges in dynamic work environments. Research limitations/implications The study advances theory by re-specifying how organizational context relates to employee resilience. Rather than treating resilience as a direct outcome of contextual conditions, it positions it as an outcome linked to microfoundational mechanisms, thereby shifting emphasis from context-dominant to mechanism-oriented explanations. This contributes to the dynamic capabilities literature by clarifying how individual-level behavioral and psychological capabilities are implicated in translating contextual conditions into adaptive outcomes. It also contributes to resilience research by integrating ambidexterity and self-efficacy within a single explanatory framework, highlighting their complementary roles and addressing the fragmentation between behavioral and psychological perspectives on employee adaptation. Originality/value This study offers a novel perspective by introducing a mechanism-dominant view of employee resilience that challenges the prevailing emphasis on direct contextual effects. It is among the first to integrate employee ambidexterity and employee self-efficacy as complementary microfoundational mechanisms within a single framework linking organizational learning culture to resilience. By doing so, it moves beyond treating these constructs as independent predictors and instead highlights their joint role in shaping adaptive functioning. The study also brings the dynamic capabilities perspective into the employee resilience domain, offering a more fine-grained explanation of how organizational conditions are linked to employee-level outcomes.