How Organizational Changes Alter Supervisor Competence and Why it Matters for Subordinates

• In Event: 411 - Section on Inequality, Poverty, and Mobility Refereed Roundtable Session and Business Meeting
  In Refereed Roundtable 60min: Table 08. Labor, Mobility, and Inequality.

Abstract

In this study, I examine how supervisors’ feelings about their jobs were shaped by their perceptions of a workforce development program for their frontline staff. Data collected from interviews and focus groups with 77 supervisors in seven hospital sites in the United States, show how supervisors responded to a workforce development program aimed at helping low-wage, frontline workers gain job skills and opportunities for career advancements. I show how perception of being good at their jobs was closely tied to feelings of respect, dignity, control, and inclusion and organizational changes either enabled or constrained their feelings of effectiveness. I identify workplace conditions and practices that supervisors saw as meaningful in their jobs and to their identities. I then examine how these meanings, being either reinforced or jeopardized, influenced supervisors’ feelings of status and value, and how they responded in ways that mattered for frontline worker mobility. These findings suggest that supervisor response to the program were motivated by a desire for work-related feelings of competence.

Author

• Kendra Jason, University of North Carolina at Charlotte