Stuck in the Middle: How Organizational Change Affects Middle-status Employee Groups in an Academic Library

• In Event: AERA Roundtable Session Saturday 11:45 am
  In Roundtable Session: Troubled Organizational Waters: Racial Equity/Inequity, Politics, and Change

Abstract

Prior research on organizational change in hierarchical organizations largely assumes that middle-status employees are constrained to resist change or will actively support change when given resources, to their benefit. However, given the enduring nature of interpersonal stratification in hierarchical organizations, there are reasons to believe that middle-status employees will be vigilant to threats to their status. These considerations are undertheorized in current research on change from the middle. Drawing on research on intergroup relations and organizational change and data from a multi-year study of nearly 100 employees of a university library, I show how layered organizational change efforts had a disparate impact on the middle-status group, rendering them ineffective catalysts and beneficiaries of change.

Author

• Jennifer Lauren Nelson, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign