Survivor Sense Making and Reactions to Organizational Decline

Abstract

Major organizational upheavals, such as mergers or restructuring of declining organizations, present employees with considerable ambiguity about their future employment, which presents a serious challenge for management communication. Not all employees are perplexed by this uncertainty, however. Those who are averse to ambiguity and insecurity tend to deny the ambiguity regarding their future. Such individual differences also affect reactions to whatever ambiguity they do perceive. This study uses data from a merger of two declining organizations to investigate the relationship between work environment and worker reactions.