Midlife crisis, which is primarily centered on the person, involves intense psychological changes. Over and above the multitude of environmental factors that contribute to the crisis, researchers are to pay greater attention to the self of the person. The self-system as the core of the personality has a number of subsystems, including self-concept, self-esteem, self-functioning, self-efficacy and perceived sense of control. This article presents a self-related cognitive approach to midlife crisis in organizations and finally the coping strategies that may be effectively utilized, are explained.

Midlife crisis, the period of substantive changes in an adult's personality, is approached from different perspectives, including psychological, sociological and biological. But the most important perspective that has ventured to explain the dynamics and the mechanism of midlife crisis is from the personality angle. The self which is unique to the person by the person's own privileged access to its workings and phenomenological process, gets disorganized in midlife crisis. It is the disorganization of the self accompanied by intensive and subjectively difficult changes in response to a puzzling social and work life that produces the crisis(Hermans and Oles,1999).The organized self in its attempt to confront the outside world goes through disorganization in the self-related functioning and the person experiences the crisis in midlife.

Self is understood to be an independent process of the personality that is distinct in each individual. The self-process of individuals is studied to yield a comprehensive interpretation.

Self may be defined as a complex and multifaceted process that has elements of the individual's past, present and future. Self contains what a person aspires to, what is an individual and what others think about the individual (Osborne, 1996). Self process thus has an individual and social basis at the same time. The self contents are individual's own thoughts and feelings generated in interaction with the social world. The simple dimension of self denotes the momentary thoughts, feelings, sensations and awareness of one's body that do not have much consequence whereas the complex dimension of self involves making decisions, initiating actions, thinking constructively, making abstract conceptualizations and engaging in symbolic expressions (Baumeister-1997). Besides the simple and complex dimensions, self may also be understood as having a broad and narrow dimension (self that includes everything about the person and the self that includes only a small fragment of the person's life), surface and deep dimensions (the self that is of today and the self that is of many days put together) and, content and process dimensions (the isolated activity and the habitual activity of the self).

E-Business Magazine, Environmental Factors, Midlife Crisis, Epistemogenesis Theory, Self-Efficacy, Physiological Development, Behavioral Theories, Self-Assessment, Self-Focusing, Social Skills, Environmental Contingencies, Psycho-Physical Organization, Organizational Goals.