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

7.8. Process Research

Most layoff survivor research has focused on process issues (factors that have an impact on survivors and can be managed before, during, and shortly after layoffs) as opposed to longer-term individual and systemic solutions that might provide a more permanent immunization to layoff survivor sickness. This research has also tended to be laboratory-based studies of controlled student populations and extrapolations from other theories as opposed to field-based, face-to-face interactions with survivors in their workplaces. Nonetheless, it is an important and growing body of knowledge that supports field-based studies and practitioners' experience. The major themes in this process research are survivors' needs for fairness, ...