1 research outputs found
Identifying with fun and family in the time of changes and downsize
No full textTitle: Identifying with fun and family in the time of changes and downsize. Seminar date: June 1st, 2009 Course: Masters thesis in Business Administration Programme for Managing People, Knowledge and Change, 15 University Credit Points (15 ECTS). Author: Ellert Örn Erlingsson and Elvar Ólafsson Advisor: Sara Louise Muhr Key words: Cultural family metaphor, Resistance, Cynicism, Organizational identity, Purpose: To explore identification within a small office where employees emphasize family ideology and whether they use cynicism to cope with other organizational changes made in the financial crises. Methodology: We have studies our empirical material by using reflective pragmatic approaches such as hermeneutics and critical theory. Theoretical perspectives: This study main structure derives from the use of three main topics; the cultural family metaphor, organizational identity and the use of cynicism in resistance. Empirical foundation: Empirical data was gathered through qualitative open-ended interviews of employees from a small freight office in Sweden. The employees was interviewed one at a time by the two researchers, who followed list of topics that where to be covered in the interviews. Conclusions: Employees at Shipper use the family metaphor to tighten them together in several ways in this hard times and they all identify them self as proud employees due to the good family environment within the office. But due to the fluid and unstable concept of the organizational identity it may be necessary to try to focus the identity construction of the employees to reflect on what they do. We have identified examples where the employees use cynicism to protect and/or justify themselves in situations where they are powerless
