Psychoanalytic Approach in the Analysis of Organizations during the Period of Changes on the Example of a Case

The topicality: The involvement of organizations in the process of change is growing more and more intensively as well as the need of building effective systems that will allow them quickly respond to market changes in order to maintain a competitive advantage. The reality changes and organizational and digital transformation, innovation, monopolization and merger of major players - all this has now become a part of it. The objectives: to determine whether the process of organizational changes followed by the departure of the company director corresponds to the process of grief, which psychoanalysts use in relation to the people who have faced the death of their beloved ones. Research subject: in this paper, we highlighted the process of change on the example of real cases of three organizations that are at the stage of global changes, such as mergers, changes in top management, and organizational transformation. We focused on the organization divisions that are responsible for implementing changes when the leaders of these divisions suddenly leave alone the team and employees, already being in the difficult conditions of change and transformation, with the difficulties that have arisen and the feelings of loss of the leader they have been following all this time. Research purposes: 1. To study the psychoanalytic view of the process of grief 2. To examine the role of the mourning process during organizational changes 3. To identify the main stages of employees that are faced with the departure of the head during the period of changes at different intervals after it had occurred 4. To examine whether individual factors (mediators) affect the passage of stages of the grief for employees who are faced with the departure of their leader during a period of change The paper is divided into the introduction, two chapters (theoretical and empirical), and the conclusion. According to the results of this study, it was found that employees who faced the sudden departure of the head in the period of change, went through the stages described by Elizabeth Kubler-Ross in the study of terminally ill patients, such as denial, anger, depression, bargaining and acceptance. It was also found that there is a correlation between the stage at which the employee is, and the factors (mediators) that, as William Worden suggested in his works, affect the process of grief. However, an important factor that affects the experience of loss is the relationship between the employee and the leader. At the same time, the relationship between the structure of the Manager's personality and the residence of the loss was not established.