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Social and Personal Costs of Plant Shutdowns
... This dissonance should be intrinsically aversive (Jones and Gerard, 1967). Consistent with this interpretation, Morse and Gergen (1970) have shown that social comparisons have significantly greater effects upon the self-esteem of individuals with inconsistent self-concepts than those with consistent self-concepts. ...
... This finding corresponds to a number of previous research findings. First, research has shown that although men are more likely than women to experience job loss (Sinfield, 1981), they are also more likely to become re-employed and receive better wages when they find another job than women who become re-employed (Bluestone and Harrison, 1982;Mick, 1983). Second, there is evidence to suggest that women find themselves confined to domestic roles following job loss. ...
A symbolic interactionist analysis of the relationship between unemployment and self-conception was tested using a cross-sectional questionnaire design (n = 88). Job loss had significant negative associations with reflected appraisals (perceived evaluations) from friends, family, employers, unemployed people and people in general. Significant relationships between reflected appraisals and the evaluative, consistency and involvement dimensions of self-concept were also observed. Consistent with symbolic interactionist theory, path analysis showed that reflected appraisals mediated the relationship between employment status and self-conception. Unemployment duration and gender both moderated the effects of reflected appraisal upon self-conception such that reflected appraisals were associated with different self-concept dimensions for unemployed men versus unemployed women and ‘shorter’ versus ‘longer-term’ unemployed people. Results are discussed in the context of recent developments in the social psychology of the self-concept. Suggestions for future research are outlined.
... Research on organizational restructuring reflects both the changing nature of this phenomenon and shifts in societal values and ideologies (Hardy 1985;Hirsch and DeSoucey 2006). In the 1970s and early 1980s, there was keen academic interest in shutdowns, layoffs, redundancy, retrenchments, and downsizing from Organization Studies 31(07) a critical angle (Mick 1975;Edwards 1982;Hardy 1985). The emphasis in this research was on the social and personal costs of the restructuring (Mick 1975;Taber et al. 1979). ...
... In the 1970s and early 1980s, there was keen academic interest in shutdowns, layoffs, redundancy, retrenchments, and downsizing from Organization Studies 31(07) a critical angle (Mick 1975;Edwards 1982;Hardy 1985). The emphasis in this research was on the social and personal costs of the restructuring (Mick 1975;Taber et al. 1979). Historically, this was the most active period of industrial militancy, which is shown in the critical perspective taken in these studies (Edwards 1982;Bright et al. 1983). ...
Critical organization scholars have focused increasing attention on industrial and organizational restructurings such as shutdown decisions. However, we know little about the rhetorical strategies used to legitimate or resist plant closures in organizational negotiations. In this paper, we draw from New Rhetoric to analyze rhetorical struggles, strategies and dynamics in unfolding organizational negotiations. We focus on the shutdown of the bus body unit of the Swedish company Volvo in Finland. We distinguish five types of rhetorical legitimation strategies and dynamics. These include the three classical dynamics of logos (rational arguments), pathos (emotional moral arguments), and ethos (authority-based arguments), but also autopoiesis (autopoietic narratives), and cosmos (cosmological constructions). Our analysis adds to the previous studies explaining how organizational restructuring as a phenomenon is legitimated, how this legitimation has changed over time, and how contemporary industrial closures are legitimated in the media. This study also increases our theoretical understanding of the role of rhetoric in legitimation more generally.
... Until the mid 1970s most radical restructurings, such as shutdowns, were widely considered to be illegitimate in the public discourses of western countries (Hardy, 1985). The social and personal costs of shutdowns were weighed against economic gains (Mick, 1975). In recent times however, despite the controversial outcomes of restructuring, it is often generally taken for granted that resisting organizational restructuring is somewhat futile. ...
Summary Restructuring organizations are sites of discursive struggles where different organizational groups drawing on various discourses compete to shape the social reality of the organization for their own benefit. This study focuses on the temporal development of resistance and discursive struggles following a unit shutdown decision and the broader restructuring plan of a global industrial organization. The paper reports how the discourse of globalization and discourse of local capitalism were employed to justify and challenge the restructuring plans. I argue, that although resisting organizational groups are rarely able to reverse restructuring decisions, resistance contributes to the evolution of shared organizational discourse themes, employed discursive resources, identity construction, and the formation of organizational ideology. Through these means, resistance has an important role in developing organizational discourses towards mutual understanding and, at the organizational level, finding ways to confront the discourse of globalization.
We know a great deal about global capital mobility in traditional industries, such as manufacturing, but very little about emerging capital mobility in the gig economy. Using the case of Canadian Foodora, a multinational platform that left Canada in 2020, I situate global capital mobility in the local labour market. Drawing upon interview data with former Foodora couriers and ethnographic data collected from a gig workers’ union, I investigate the social, economic and political subjectivities of gig workers activated by a global platform’s capital mobility. My findings reveal unexpected parallel effects caused by capital mobility in the gig economy and traditional industries. My research highlights how heterogeneity is salient for understanding divergent worker subjectivities. The economic and social impacts upon financially dependent gig workers and the emotional connections of devoted and organized gig workers challenge the dominant discourse that gig workers are simply part-timers and hence free from work commitments.
A national policy of reindustrialization has been undertaken to rejuvenate the nation's industrial base. These policies, if effective, will accelerate the economic decline of communities vulnerable by fact of geographic location or dependence upon a marginal plant in a receding industry. The community economic crisis that results from a loss of a major employer will produce increase in a range of mental and behavioral disorders. At the same time, mental health agencies will experience a declining resource base with which to respond to the increased demand for services. Mental health administrators must choose between adopting intervention approaches that have been long resisted or admit their inability to meet the challenge. Direct service approaches will be too costly and ineffective.
This study is concerned with the relationship between a worker's employment status and his degree of social integration, as indicated by his attitude toward the established economic order. Of seven independent variables, employment status was the weakest predictor of economic radicalism. Economic deprivation and educational level were the strongest.
Although recent labor market studies have markedly increased our knowledge of the patterns of worker mobility, the determinants of movement of various types remain a relatively unexplored area of investigation. The study reported on in this article explores the relationship of various personal and social variables to the decisions made by a group of workers when they were faced with a choice between following their jobs to another locality or risking the uncertainties of finding a new job in the local labor market area. The findings contribute substantially to needed understanding of the influence of race and age on mobility. (Author's abstract courtesy EBSCO.)