Resilience, which is about how people survive adversity, is a very important research topic in psychology. Yet, in the literature on the concept of resilience, there is a lack of consensus on what resilience is; and, operationally, not fullyly defined. Therefore, there was a need for greater clarity of the concept and for a workable definition of resilience as a personal trait. Based on a literature review of resilience research, this dissertation clarified the concept of personal resilience as having four facets, i.e., Determination, Endurance, Adaptability, and Recuperability, and provided clear operational definitions of the four facets. Based on the operational definitions, a new four-part multi-dimensional measure was created. By means of reliability tests, it was found that the Cronbach Alpha reliabilities of the new measure ranged from .85 to .90. Also, content validity was grounded in the existing literature, and statistical support came from three other types of validity tests, i.e., convergent, divergent, and concurrent validity. Furthermore, the four-facet model of personal resilience was verified by confirmatory factor analyses. The new measure was then applied in an empirical study of 244 full-time hospital nurses regarding their career success. The results showed very strong evidence that personal resilience engenders nurses’ career success, which could benefit nurses in their workplace. The new measure was also applied in the main empirical research of 375 employees in organizational settings. This study tested nine antecedent variables, i.e., Self-Confidence, Conscientiousness, Openness, Neuroticism, Chinese Values, Future Orientation, Emotional Intelligence, Shyness, and Fear of success; and seven outcome variables, i.e., Subjective Career Success, Conflict Handling (Integrating), Burnout (Emotional Exhaustion), and Organizational Socialization (Training, Understanding, Coworker Support, and Future Prospects). The results lent statistically significant support for nearly all the iii hypotheses. Confirming these relationships, regression analyses of the resilience facets explained 46% of the variance for Determination, 47% of the variance for Endurance, 51% of the variance for Adaptability, and 53% of the variance for Recuperability. The results showed strong evidence that personal resilience facilitated Subjective Career Success, Conflict Handling, and Organizational Socialization, and could reduce Burnout, which could benefit the people and management in many organizations