Publication Date

1996

Document Type

Dissertation/Thesis

First Advisor

Scarborough, Jule Dee, 1953-

Degree Name

M.S. (Master of Science)

Legacy Department

Department of Technology

LCSH

Downsizing of organizations; Electric utilities--Management

Abstract

This study was designed to test for the presence of a relationship between job insecurity and resistance to organizational culture shift at an organization where cultural shift activities were being performed concurrently with downsizing efforts. The organization of evaluation for the study was part of the electricity production industry which was experiencing a period of rapid transition as market forces were working to deregulate the electric markets. Because of the nature of the regulated monopoly, it was felt that members of the organization would possess a certain degree of entitlement mentality. A questionaire was distributed to all management employees at an electric generating station. The questionaire contained an abbreviated version of the Job Insecurity Scale developed by Ashford, Lee, and Bobko (1989) and eleven other questions developed by the researcher to measure the attributes of entitlement and learning organization culture. There were also four questions to obtain demographic information. Three hundred and thirty seven surveys were returned which constituted a response rate of 82%. The findings of the study support the three hypothesized relationships. Significance at the .001 level was found for the relationship between job insecurity and the learning organization attributes and also for the relationship between learning organization attributes and entitlement when correlated for the entire survey response population. The third relationship, between job insecurity and entitlement, was found significant at the .01 level for the same group. When stratified by demographic groups, years with company of 11-20 or female were the most important factors for the relationship between job insecurity and learning organization attributes. Age range of 40-49 was important for the relationship between learning organization attributes and entitlement. Years in current position of 1-3 tended to be a factor for the relationship between job insecurity and entitlement. The latter two relationships seemed to broadly encompass the whole sample population while the first did not show significance when the two important groups were excluded.

Comments

Includes bibliographical references (pages [73]-74)

Extent

v, 118 pages

Language

eng

Publisher

Northern Illinois University

Rights Statement

In Copyright

Rights Statement 2

NIU theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from Huskie Commons for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without the written permission of the authors.

Media Type

Text

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