Discourses on Downsizing: Structure and Sentiment in an Organizational Dispute

Authors

  • Constance DeRoche University College of Cape Breton

Abstract

Downsizing, sometimes accompanied by staff amalgamation, has become a grim but pervasive cost-cutting device in Western societies of the 1990s. This article focusses on two hospital-based nursing schools, in an economically marginal Maritime community, that faced merger and the loss of a number of much-prized teaching jobs in the early 1990s. Although both staffs approved, in principle, of raising educational standards for nursing employment, they held distinctly different positions on how educational qualifications should figure in the layoff formula. Downsizing provoked a discourse that unveiled the significance of interpersonal loyalties and work group identities.

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Author Biography

Constance DeRoche, University College of Cape Breton

Constance deRoche, an Associate Professor at the University College of Cape Breton, received her PhD in Anthropology from Washington University (St. Louis). Her interest in how people cope with supralocal forces and superordinate structures has patterned her work on regional economic disparities, voluntary associational activity and organizational culture. Besides work on organizational culture, her publications include: A Rock in the Stream: Living with the Political Economy of Underdevelopment in Cape Breton, Research and Policy Papers, 7, edited with John E. deRoche (St. John's: Institute of Social and Economic Research, 1987); and "Social Ecology as Political Economy: A Case Study in the Anthropology of Complexity," City and Society, 1:122-147.

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Published

2022-06-07

How to Cite

DeRoche, C. (2022). Discourses on Downsizing: Structure and Sentiment in an Organizational Dispute. Anthropologica, 39(1-2), 119–131. Retrieved from https://cas-sca.journals.uvic.ca/index.php/anthropologica/article/view/2058

Issue

Vol. 39 No. 1-2 (1997)

Section

Articles

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