COPING STRATEGY CLASSIFICATION IN MANAGERS USING LATENT CLASS ANALYSIS

Abstract

Managers dealing with workplace stress exhibit different coping strategies, which tend to influence their decision-making, emotional state, and organizational productivity. In a given organization, understanding how people cope with stress is essential for increasing resilience and productivity. Oftentimes, coping studies make the major mistake of relying solely on generalized coping scores, which misses the more intricate, lesser-acknowledged subpopulation patterns. This study aims to fill this gap by using Latent Class Analysis (LCA) to cluster managers based on their coping strategy profiles, thus creating an evidence-based and psychologically informed coping strategy typology. The study was performed on a more diverse sample of 312 mid- and senior- managers from different corporate, healthcare, and academic sectors. The respondents completed the Brief-COPE Inventory which captures a range of coping behaviors at the task level, an emotional level, and avoidant level. LCA was utilized to reveal underlying latent classes and the fit of the model was evaluated using AIC, BIC, and entropy metrics. A three-class model emerged as optimal. The classes were identified as: (1) Resilient Problem Solvers, characterized by active and planning-coping; (2) Avoidant Emotionals, which were characterized by denial, both behavioral and cognitive disengagement, and self-blame; and (3) Adaptive Balancers were some mix of emotional support and problem-solving style.Across class stratifications, differences in gender and industry sectors were observed alongside a greater female managerial propensity to cluster within the Adaptive group. The results of the study suggest the need for targeted mental health and management interventions, as they can be constructed to fit adaptive strategies of stress management, within a well-defined leadership role, and to the psychological breadth of coping mechanisms. Furthermore, the research illustrates the potential value of Latent Class Analysis in organizational psychology for revealing the concealed behavioral configurations.