Healing the Wounds: Overcoming the Trauma of Layoffs and Revitalizing Downsized Organizations

6.1. Layoff Survivor Feeling Clusters and Coping Strategies

Whether layoff survivor sickness is perceived as the result of ineffective downsizing strategies (Cameron, Freeman, and Mishra, 1991), a moral issue caused by collusion and a lack of courage (Harvey, 1988), or a result of survivor guilt (Kiviat, 2009), the outcome is the same: layoffs drain the work spirit, creativity, and productivity from many organizations. The archetypal stories of survivors of more traumatic events, my own experience with downsized organizations, and layoff survivor research all show that layoff survivors experience the following feelings.

6.1.1. Clusters of Feelings

Although general clusters of feelings are apparent among layoff survivors, the research has not ...