Search results

The purpose of this paper is to introduce the concept of discriminatory job loss (DJL), which occurs when discrimination and job loss intersect. The paper aims to discuss the antecedents and consequences of DJL and calls for research on the topic.

Diversity and careers research from management, psychology, economics, and sociology literatures on discrimination, job loss, and unemployment are examined.

Discriminatory job loss involves discriminatory termination, discriminatory layoff, retaliatory termination, and constructive discharge and exacerbates negative outcomes of discrimination or job loss alone. Antecedents to DJL are the external and internal environments. DJL affects unemployment duration and reemployment quality and targets self‐esteem, self‐efficacy, and perceived control.

When large numbers of people experience DJL and long unemployment durations and lower re‐employment quality, this affects the individuals as well as society. In times of high employment, when jobs are scarce, individuals have fewer employment options and employers have more freedom to engage in discrimination. Having large groups of people know that their ability to maintain employment is negatively affected by their demographic group membership while others know that their demographic membership provides employment privileges can result in long‐term negative individual, organizational, and societal consequences.

This paper brings attention to, and calls for research on, DJL and its negative consequences.

Economic stressors such as job insecurity, job loss, unemployment, and underemployment cause severe difficulties for the workers affected, their families, organizations, and societies overall. Consequently, most past research has taken a thoroughly negative perspective on economic stress, addressing its diverse negative consequences and the ways that people try to cope with them. And even when following the advice provided by the scientific literature, people affected by economic stress will usually end up being off worse than they were before the onset of the stressor.

The current chapter pays credit to this perspective yet also tries to counterbalance it with an alternative one. While acknowledging the vast amount of literature outlining the negative consequences of economic stress on peoples’ well-being and careers, some literature also points at opportunities for a more positive perspective. More specifically, we argue that affected people can use a wide repertoire of behaviors for handling their current situation. Of particular promise in this regard is the concept of career adaptability, generally defined as the ability to change to fit into new career-related circumstances. Indeed, studies show that under certain conditions, career adaptability can facilitate people's search for not just any job but for a qualitatively better job, thus breaking through the spiral of losses usually associated with economic stress.

For the purpose of this argument, we link career adaptability to the concept of proactive coping, analyzing how and under which conditions career adaptability may present a contextualized form of proactive coping. We then address known personal and situational antecedents of career adaptability and show how career adaptability may be fostered and trained among different types of job seekers. We end this chapter with a discussion of open questions as well as directions for future research.

The author argues that we must stop and take a look at what our insistence on human labour as the basis of our society is doing to us, and begin to search for possible alternatives. We need the vision and the courage to aim for the highest level of technology attainable for the widest possible use in both industry and services. We need financial arrangements that will encourage people to invent themselves out of work. Our goal, the article argues, must be the reduction of human labour to the greatest extent possible, to free people for more enjoyable, creative, human activities.

The primary purpose of this article is to raise awareness about the need for additional research on job loss. It also aims to provide an introduction to the special issue, and a description of the articles in it.

The article highlights some of the important research on job loss since the early 1990s.

Additional theory and research is needed to assist the well‐being and the job search process of the unemployed.

This article offers suggestions on advancing new research ideas that can be used to assist individuals who have lost their jobs and to organizations that have been involved in a layoff.

The article argues that knowledge related to the effects of job loss can be used to assist organizations in promoting programs to enhance the well‐being of laid‐off individuals.

Research on job loss is needed to address the problems of laid‐off individuals.

The article provides a contribution to the social issues literature as it raises awareness of the need for additional research on job loss.

Continued identification with a former employer may provide valuable self‐enhancement during transition, or it may highlight unsettling self‐discontinuity. This study seeks to develop and test competing hypotheses regarding the extent to which continued organizational identification relates to psychological well‐being following involuntary job loss.

The author conducted a two‐wave survey study spanning six months during the recent financial crisis in 2008 to test these hypotheses. Results are presented for 86 employees in two samples, 45 who were unemployed at the beginning of the study and 41 who lost their jobs during the study.

Continued organizational identification positively related to psychological well‐being in both samples. In a post‐hoc analysis, this relationship held only for employees who attributed their job loss to themselves, rather than to external factors such as their organizations.

The results are based on a limited sample both in terms of size and scope; accordingly, they are best used to explain the relationships for the sample from which they were drawn, professional employees in the USA with a business education, about half of whom worked in the financial services industry.

Being identified with an employing organization is not only beneficial for current employees and their organizations, but also helps employees whose jobs have been terminated. Managers and counselors should advise people to reflect upon, rather than distance themselves from, aspects of their identities based in former employers.

This is the first study to examine the role of organizational identification in individual response to involuntary job loss.

The study seeks to compare the experiences of job loss and reemployment experiences among female and male higher level managers and professionals.

The paper compares data collected at two periods in time from (n=120) females and (n=184) males who completed two self‐report questionnaires.

Relatively few gender differences were observed in the present study. The fact that females and males experienced the job loss and re‐employment process similarly was interpreted as a sign of progress. Main differences were found in networking and personality types, with men being more successful in networking and less agreeable types.

This is a self‐report study and somewhat smaller sample at time two. Secondly, some of the findings may not generalize to those outside of outplacement.

Outplacement services may use these findings in guiding their counseling practice and focusing more on helping female executives in their networking efforts for example.

This paper contributes to the gender literature by looking at experience of job loss and reemployment for a particular and rarely examined group of individuals. It offers new knowledge on gender differences among executives and higher level managers.

I examine changes in the incidence and consequences of job loss between 1981 and 2001 using data from the Displaced Workers Surveys (DWS) from 1984 to 2002. The overall rate of job loss has a strong counter-cyclical component, but the job-loss rate was higher than might have been expected during the mid-1990’s given the strong labor market during that period. While the job-loss rate of more-educated workers increased, less-educated workers continue to have the highest rates of job loss overall. Displaced workers have a substantially reduced probability of employment and an increased probability of part-time employment subsequent to job loss. The more educated have higher post-displacement employment rates and are more likely to be employed full-time. The probabilities of employment and full-time employment among those reemployed subsequent to job loss increased substantially in the late 1990s, suggesting that the strong labor market eased the transition of displaced workers. Reemployment rates dropped sharply in the recession of 2001. Those re-employed, even full-time and regardless of education level, suffer significant earnings declines relative to what they earned before they were displaced. Additionally, foregone earnings growth (the growth in earnings that would have occurred had the workers not been displaced), is an important part of the cost of job loss for re-employed full-time job losers. There is no evidence of a decline during the tight labor market of the 1990s in the earnings loss of displaced workers who were reemployed full-time. In fact, earnings losses of displaced workers have been increasing since the mid 1990s.

The study examines the widely held assertion that unemployed managers will possess the characteristics traditionally associated with managerial ability to a lesser degree than managers in employment. In contrast to conventional wisdom the unemployed appear to possess many of the attributes traditionally associated with managerial ability. These results are discussed in terms of the stability of personality over time, the influence of organisational factors in the causes of job loss and the possibility that the unemployed managers studied had a greater than average preference for risk‐taking. The implications of these results for personnel management are explored.

This paper tests whether employers responded particularly negatively to African American job applicants during the deep U.S. recession that began in 2007. Theories of labor queuing and social closure posit that members of privileged groups will act to minimize labor market competition in times of economic turbulence, which could advantage Whites relative to African Americans. Although social closure should be weakest in the less desirable, low-wage job market, it may extend downward during recessions, pushing minority groups further down the labor queue and exacerbating racial inequalities in hiring. We consider two complementary data sources: (1) a field experiment with a randomized block design and (2) the nationally representative NLSY97 sample. Contrary to expectations, both analyses reveal a comparable recession-based decline in job prospects for White and African American male applicants, implying that hiring managers did not adapt new forms of social closure and demonstrating the durability of inequality even in times of structural change. Despite this proportionate drop, however, the recession left African Americans in an extremely disadvantaged position. Whites during the recession obtained favorable responses from employers at rates similar to African Americans prior to the recession. The combination of experimental methods and nationally representative longitudinal data yields strong evidence on how race and recession affect job prospects in the low-wage labor market.