Reconciling Perceptions of Career Advancement with Organizational Change: A Case from General Motors

Abstract

Little attention has been given in the literature to the effects of corporate restructuring on the career mobility and career perceptions of organizational "survivors." Employees remaining with the firm typically exhibit career mohility concerns since they anticipate that fewer job opportunities will exist, particularly within the managerial tier. Past research has neither compared actual career moves with employee perceptions of those moves, nor adequately emphasized perceptions of career mohility. This report examines the effects of a mid 1980s downsizing on sales and service employees in one General Motors division. Our results suggest that employee perceptions were rooted in past career path patterns. Because of this reliance on past behavior and the accuracy of their perceptions of past career movement, the majority continued to believe that they would advance in their careers. We discovered the longer an employee was associated with any given position, the less likely helshe was to anticipate future career movement (p< 0.01). Perceptions of career mobility change only when employees are personally affected by the restructuring; ideological change for the majority of organizational members not only follows change in organizational structure, but actually lags behind it