Institutional Grief

Lately, I began thinking about the whole concept of Institutional grief from the standpoint of it's effects on whole organizations. It has now been 5 years since our 10 year old daughter left us prematurely.  Her death was not anticipated.  She didn't have cancer, nor did she undergo a high risk surgery that could have resulted in sudden death. She was in all practical sense to recover from her corrective surgery and return to the school she loved to be.  I started reflecting on this concept after getting an e mail from a friend who knew our daughter when he taught with my wife at the school our daughter attended. He said that after 5 years her death still touches him deeply.

In a Danish study financial experts reviewed the profit margins for two years before the death of a child belonging to the CEO of a company and two years after and they found that there was a drop in the 2 years following the loss.  They also found that in families who had suffered a loss of a child there was a loss of productivity in the employees. It seems that the death of a child profoundly effects us all and is a tough form of grief to recover from.

In one hospital that recognizes the profound impact of grief they introduced a program called grief rounds where doctors who are profoundly effected by the loss of their patients can come together to share their grief with one another.  It seems that giving these doctors permission to talk about their grief is one way for them to heal from it.

Grieving people need permission to share their stories of lost. Not just the ones who actually lost a loved one are grieving, but those who are in the immediate circle who knew the family are also grieving and need permission to share their grief.

Which is why organizations need to have a  crisis plan put in place that describes the protocol for helping organizations heal from grief when a sudden death occurs to a family.  Giving grieving people permission to share their stories over and over in a safe, non threatening manner is one way to help organizations heal. In time, organizations will be able to bounce back to their former levels of productivity they had prior to the loss..

It would be interesting to see further research on this whole concept of institutional grief and I encourage any graduate student majoring in organization psychology to consider such research because knowing more about it could lead to methods that will help organizations to heal from painful losses that occur.