Capitalizing on the strengths of young adults with psychosocial disabilities to enhance service ecosystem resilience

• Strength-based approaches can enhance resilience in service ecosystems. • Young adults with psychosocial disabilities can be agents of organizational change. • Co-created solutions foster ‘adaptability’ to workplace vulnerabilities. • Emotional, social, and process vulnerabilities can be mitigated through adaptive capacities. • Inclusive practices can transform systemic vulnerabilities through capitalizing on strengths. This study examines how leveraging the strengths of young adults with psychosocial disabilities can enhance the resilience of a retail service ecosystem to vulnerability. Drawing from a strength-based perspective, the research highlights the importance of empowering these employees in organizational decision-making to address emotional, social, and process-related challenges. Using participatory design and social-emotional learning to develop and deliver strength-based transformative service initiatives, helps to illuminate three key adaptive capacities within the framing of self-determination theory that promote autonomy, competence, and relatedness. These capacities are pivotal in responding to vulnerability and fostering resilience within a retail service ecosystem and can be used as stabilizing and destabilizing tactics to enable organizations to prepare for, respond to, and adapt to present and future vulnerabilities for employees and customers. This study advances the transformative service research literature by reframing marginalized employees as key change agents.