The Process and Mechanisms of Organizational Healing

Abstract

Organizational healing refers to the work of repairing practices, routines, and structures in the face of disruption and strengthening organizational functioning through social relationships. Healing, more than resilience, coping, or recovery, enables greater organizational strength than what previously existed. Its unique characteristics make it an important construct for further explaining what accounts for developing exceptional organizational systems. Based on the financial and economic challenges facing Prudential Real Estate after the housing market crash in 2008, and parallels from physiological healing processes, I provide an in-depth description of the process of organizational healing that is supported by four mechanisms: empathy, interventions, collective effort, and leadership. Together the process and mechanisms explain how organizational healing enables both resilience and strengthening. These mechanisms point to activities practitioners and leaders may consider when promoting virtuous human systems.