Caring for Suicide Loss Survivors: How Fiction May Help to Research, Teach, and Cope with Suicide-Related Bereavement

Abstract

This paper addresses the hard-to-manage, work-related phenomenon of suicide. A qualitative, postventive, and protective approach explores how business researchers and teachers may care, inquire, and talk about suicide. The use of fiction and personal experience illustrates a potential affective approach to cope with suicide-related bereavement. Suicide raises ontological, epistemological, and existential questions that defy management as control (typical of prevention strategies), so this paper focuses on postvention, broadening the scope of organizational suicidology to include suicide loss survivors, while suggesting future paths for management-related teaching and research.