Treating Organizational Wounds

• Published in: Organizational dynamics Vol. 40; no. 2; pp. 75 - 84
• Main Author: Kahn, William A.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: New York Elsevier Inc 01-04-2011; Elsevier Science Ltd
• Subjects: Alliances; Betrayal; Emotions; Fallout; Hospitals; Leaders; Lesions; Medical malpractice; Organizational behavior; Strategic management; Studies; Surgery; United States > US
• ISSN: 0090-2616; 1873-3530
• DOI: 10.1016/j.orgdyn.2011.01.001

Organizational crises call for damage control. Leaders and members try to quickly resolve the immediate crisis. They work with key stakeholders to restore financial health and public trust. Too often what is overlooked is the internal damage disturbing events cause for organizational members. Many organizational crises are those that occurred through some error, flaw, corruption or ineptitude stemming from some part of the organization itself. This imparts an organizational wound: members who take some part of their identity from the organization are now part of an institution that is no longer recognizable in the ways that it had been. Members are left unsettled. They feel various degrees of betrayal, anger, sadness, despair and shame. This is the emotional fallout of organizational crises. Working from an examination of two organizational units that suffered organizational wounds -- two hospital surgical units in which wrong-site surgery occurred -- this article offers an analytical framework by which to understand more and less useful ways in which emotional fallout from the adverse events was treated. The article concludes with an analysis of leader roles and behaviors in treating organizational wounds and ensuing emotional fallout. [PUBLICATION ABSTRACT]