Identity and Stressful Organizational Change: A Qualitative Study

Individual identity is constructed through many experiences, including the processes and outcomes of organizational change. Change is often stressful and can force individuals to rethink how they view themselves in organizational contexts. Our interviews in a healthcare organization highlight how individuals’ work-related identities and their coping strategies are impacted during and after stressful organizational change. We contribute to theory by presenting a more fine-grained understanding of the importance of identity and coping strategies in experiencing stressful organizational change and by developing a model that emerged from our analysis of the interview data