The Human Coping Process in the Context of Organizational Change

Abstract

This article systematizes an innovative empirical framework that shows how the transformative process of human coping strategies offers an alternative way to understand the contemporary relations established between individuals and contexts of organizational change. Based on the positive psychology movement, this empirical-qualitative study uses in-depth interviews to professionals, who worked for companies acquired by an international financial institution, for which they worked in the Brazilian market. Through a content analysis, researchers interpreted all data. As a result of this research, the article shows how individual employees transform their protection factors (coping and buffer) through defense mechanisms in managing organizational change imposed in the workplace. This study contributes to the fields of organizational psychology and health psychology, as it delves into the processes through which individual and contextual elements can protect workers under organizationally adverse conditions that can affect them negatively.Keywords: Coping strategies, defense mechanisms, organizational change, qualitative research, positive psychology.