Organizational trauma: Perceived risk for trauma among white-collar professionals and its relationship with organizational resilience

Abstract

This research, with mixed design, examines which events in our country are perceived as a traumatic experience by white-collar employees, acting from the concept of organizational trauma. In the focus group study, 36 types of events that could disrupt the daily flow in companies and put employees in a negative mood were identified, and "Organizational Traumatic Events Scale" was developed. This scale was applied to 145 white-collar professionals, along with the Organizational Resilience Scale. As a result of Multidimensional Scaling Analysis, the events that may have a potential traumatic effect were grouped on two axes as events with an individual and organizational level effect. The results showed that the perceived risk of organizational level axis events is higher than the individual level axis events and that the risks perceived by managers compared to non-managers was lower for both axes. Besides, a statistically significant negative relationship was found between the perception of organizational resilience and the perceived risk of traumatic events.