Managerial Incompetence, Job Insecurity and Workers’ Mental and Physical Health

• In Event: 2451 - Section on Organizations, Occupations, and Work Refereed Roundtables (1 hour)
  In Refereed Roundtable 60min: Table 27. Worker Well-being

Abstract

Decades of stratification research have shown that the organization of work, particularly opportunities for autonomy and creativity, play important roles in shaping well-being of workers both on and off the job. In recent years, sociologists have turned their attention to workplace relationships in shaping workplace well-being. Research on managerial citizenship behaviors, for example, has shown that chaotic and abusive management, unfair treatment, and managers’ failure to recognize familial obligations, erode mental health of employees, in part owing to violation of workers’ sense of justice and fair play. A largely separate body of research suggests that job insecurity, which has increased in recent years, likewise generates stress and frustration that hampers psychological well-being. In this paper, we ask whether mismanagement and insecurity generate not only negative emotional states, such as depression and anxiety, but also manifest physically in ways that affect workers physically and threaten their health. We also investigate whether effects vary with membership in dominant versus subordinate gender and racial groups. Analysis of the 2008 National Study of the Changing Workforce demonstrate that varied dimensions of managerial incompetence, as well as job insecurity, each hamper one or more aspects of workers’ health and well-being. Unethical treatment of workers has the most far-reaching impacts, increasing not only depression and sleep problems, but also contributing to high blood pressure and high cholesterol that threaten workers’ overall health. This study contributes to the sociology of work by providing evidence that effects of managerial incompetence – shown previously to influence workers’ mental health – also influence workers’ physical health. This study also advances research on health and well-being by highlighting causal factors rooted in managerial practices that not only erode psychological well-being but also damage workers’ bodies over time.

Authors

• Martha Crowley, North Carolina State University

• Vincent J. Roscigno, Ohio State University

• Oneya Fennell Okuwobi, The Ohio State University

• Amanda Wyant, St. Lawrence University