The Changing Workplace: Employee Responses Over Time at One Large American Company

Work, for many Americans, has changed significantly over the last twenty-five years. Two scholars, in a recent comprehensive overview of research on work, go so far as to conclude that we now have a “radically transformed American workplace ” (O’Toole and Lawler III, 2006: 78) even as they acknowledge the evolutionary nature as well as the complexity and diversity of the changes and their effects. The locus for many of the most wrenching changes has been large corporations subject to global competition, what O’Toole and Lawler (2006) call “Global Competitor ” organizations. Many of these corporations have had to grapple with several major developments simultaneously. Increased and intensified international competition, new information and communication technologies, and the enhanced power of outside investors are just three of the more powerful external forces that have compelled managers to restructure their organizations and change their business practices. Researchers, managers, and employees have become familiar with a new lexicon to describe these changes: downsizing, reengineering, core competencies, outsourcing, and off-shoring, for example. Despite the frequency with which these terms are used, they often fail to connote what it is like for those working in these large corporations to live through these turbulent times