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Coping with Job Loss: How Individuals, Organizations, and Communities Respond to Layoffs.
Carrie R. Leana and Daniel C. Feldman. New York: Lexington Books, 1992. 228 pp. $24.95.
Leana and Feldman propose an expansion of the psychological understanding of unemployment through a theory-guided empirical examination of how individuals, organizations, and communities cope with job loss. Their topic is certainly timely, and the direct quotes from their participants are compelling, drawing the reader into the unemployed individual's experiences.
Perhaps their greatest contribution is the image of the unemployed as active participant rather than passive victim. Their basic model proposes that contextual factors (e.g., whether the layoff is permanent or temporary, the unemployment rate, and attachment to the job) and individual perceptions of these factors influence whether a person reacts positively or negatively to job loss. Taking into consideration individual personality types and company intervention programs, positive reactions should lead people to select problem-focused coping strategies, while negative reactions should lead to symptom-focused strategies. Within the constraints of demographic factors (especially age), individual strategies and company interventions influence reemployment and the psychological adjustment of the individual. Thus, the interaction between individual behavior and external elements of the situation produce the ultimate effects of job loss.
They examine this model empirically with two samples, one from the Space Coast in Florida and the other from U.S. Steel's Homestead mill in Pennsylvania. Their primary data for this book come from mail questionnaires completed and returned by 163 participants from the Florida site and 198 from the Homestead site. As all participants were laid off from their previous job sometime prior to the survey (an average of 17 weeks prior in Florida and 9 months prior in Homestead), this study focuses on differences among the unemployed rather than between the employed and unemployed. Participant selection was not random, as questionnaires...