The focus on corporate downsizing has typically been on those who have been laid ff. But for every layoff victim, there are probably 5 to 10 remaining survivors. The Organizational Behavior (OB) literature has given scant attention to layoff-survivor sickness. This is ironic, because today it is the unusual organization that has not undergone downsizing. Managing people at work in the late 1990s essentially means managing people who suffer from layoff-survivor sickness. This article describes how layoffs affect survivors. It provides basic material that can be added to OB courses so they more fully reflect the realities of today's organizational life.
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