RADICAL CHANGE WITHIN HIGHLY TECHNICAL ENGINEERING ORGANISATIONS: THE ROLE OF SOCIAL IDENTIFICATION
This paper reports on the initial findings of a longitudinal study exploring the influence of technological and structural change on technical and engineering personnel. Research has found that change of this nature can threaten the belief system, assumptions, and identity of the employee 1. Despite that, a lack of understanding remains as to how this may impact on the individual 2. Adopting the psychological construct of social identification 3, this study explores employees 1) the development of social identity based on the model proposed by Amiot, de la Sablonniere, Terry, & Smith 4 and 2) the ability to identify with the social and organisational group during and post transformation. Using a qualitative approach, a series of focus group and semi-structured interviews were conducted with technical and engineering personnel employed within a nuclear research and production facility. This facility had recently constructed a new plant and the challenges faced by the workforce in adapting to a new facility, technology and structural arrangements provided an excellent opportunity to measure both perceptions of the change and identification. Results from Time 1 measurement shows that technological and structural change disrupted employees sense of social identity. In addition, employees also showed that such change also had the capacity to decrease their level of identification with the organisation and workgroups. Further, this study demonstrates that although the adoption of new technology and organisational restructuring is the norm within highly technical and engineering workplaces, organisations must consider the humanistic aspects, pre, during and post change, to ensure that employees continue to feel engaged with their work group and organisation.
Technological and structural change Technical personnel Social identity Behaviour
Lynda T Nguyen
Cooperative Research Centre for Engineering Asset Management (CIEAM), School of Management, Queensland University of Technology, PO Box 2434, Brisbane 4001, Australia
国际会议
北京
英文
1186-1198
2008-10-27（万方平台首次上网日期，不代表论文的发表时间）