Downsizing Effects on Organizational Development Capabilities at an Electric Utility

observations it was believed that this would be true for electric utility employees. However, deregulation of the electric market is bringing the long era of guaranteed prosperity of electric utilities to a close. The electric utility where this study was completed envisions transforming to a competitive learning organization. Currently its culture is primarily static in nature. And, the entitlement mentality is deeply ingrained in its employees. Downsizing is taking place. This descriptive study examined the relationship of job insecurity to organizational culture change in one business unit of the electric utility. However, it did not attempt to establish a causal relationship between job insecurity and resistance to organizational culture shift. Four areas of literature were reviewed: employee job insecurity, organizational downsizing, learning organizations, and entitlement mentality. argue that the lack of empirical attention to job insecurity is an overlooked aspect of downsizing, restructuring, and mergers. The only previous attempt at developing a multidimensional job insecurity model seems to be the 1984 Greenhalgh and Rosenblatt study referenced by Ashford et al. (1989). That study divides job insecurity into five components: importance of job feature, likelihood of losing job feature, importance of job loss, likelihood of job loss, and perceived powerlessness. Using this model, Ashford et al. developed a Job Insecurity Scale for this 1989 study. The authors reported that job insecurity is associated with declines in commitment, trust in organization, and job satisfaction. They also reported positive relationships between job insecurity and both organizational change and role ambiguity, and that a significant negative relationship exists between job insecurity and power to control outcome. McCarthy (1993) used Ashford et al.'s Job Insecurity Scale as a measurement tool for his study of job insecurity in a merger environment. He reported that the measure of job insecurity did show a significant difference between the three locations as hypothesized. In addition, his results indicated that both powerlessness and organizational trust were significantly related to job insecurity , further validating Ashford et al.'s study. The McCarthy study is relevant to the study being reported here. It suggests a relationship between the degree of organizational change and the measure of job insecurity. It also substantiates several of Ashford et al.'s results with a high return rate that supports the inferential validity of the Job Insecurity Scale. Koesterer (1994) further validated Ashford et al.'s Job Insecurity Scale. In her study, three variables emerged as significant predic-tors of job …