The Bosadi-Salutogenic framework: culturally embedded identity as a personal resource for work engagement among Black South African women in middle management.

Authors

Nodipha Ongeziwe Gift

Published in

Frontiers in psychology. Volume 17. Pages 1832927. Epub Oct 13, 2026.

Abstract

The dominance of Euro-American frameworks in industrial and organizational psychology has rendered culturally embedded work experiences largely invisible. While foundational models such as the Job Demands-Resources (JD-R) framework elegantly illuminate universal engagement mechanisms across diverse contexts, occupational health literature has traditionally paid less attention to how intersecting racialized and gendered identities shape occupational well-being in postcolonial settings. This conceptual paper addresses this contextual gap by examining the organizational position of Black women in South African middle management, a group navigating unique structural tensions rooted in historical exclusion and contemporary marginalization. Responding to calls for disciplinary decolonization, I propose an integrated Afrocentric framework that brings Bosadi theorization into conversation with salutogenic principles. Specifically, I argue that Bosadi identity functions are not merely as a demographic marker but as a culturally embedded personal resource that shapes how job demands are interpreted, managed, and made meaningful. By positioning identity as an analytic resource rather than a contextual variable, the framework extends the JD-R model's explanatory power to account for culturally specific modes of resilience and meaning-making. The paper concludes by outlining theoretical contributions to organizational psychology and offering directions for empirical research, including methodological considerations for studying culturally situated work experiences. This work aims to support the development of organizational practices that are genuinely responsive to the lived realities of historically marginalized women.

PMID:
42947725
Bibliographic data and abstract were imported from PubMed on 28 Oct 2026.

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