Survivors' Needs and Stories After Organizational Disasters: How Organizations Can Facilitate The Coping Process

Abstract

Research into possible mechanisms preventing disaster (e.g., Hytten, Jensen, & Skauli, 1990; Vaughan, 1996; Weick, 1987, 1993) deserves great attention and praise. Unfortunately, however, organizational disasters cannot be prevented completely, so we must also understand, and prepare for, the social-psychological aftermath of organizational disasters. Despite the common occurrence of manmade and natural disasters, an increasing number of technological disasters (Weisaeth, 1994), and increasing mortality rates in many types of disaster (Ursano, Fullerton, & McCaughey, 1994), individuals, organizations, and institutions are typically ill prepared for the onslaught of massive loss of life because they tend to avoid and deny unpleasant occurrences. Organizational actors must take the aforementioned quotation from the Book of Job seriously or even go a step further and