Organizational expulsion: How boundary work produces inequality in German airports - Archive ouverte HAL
Article Dans Une Revue Scandinavian Journal of Management Année : 2021

Organizational expulsion: How boundary work produces inequality in German airports

Résumé

In this paper, we coin the term “organizational expulsion” to theorize a process of purposeful inequality creation by management through excluding groups of employees from the organization. Empirical observations at four case studies of restructuring in German airports show how management expelled an entire workforce segment through social practices of boundary work. This boundary work includes three sets of practices: (1) restricting options for internal representation, (2) justifying a re-evaluation of organizational members’ contributions, and (3) negotiating the consequences for remaining members. We discuss how organizational explanations of inequality production could benefit from embracing organizational expulsion as a more actor-oriented, political as well as context-sensitive concept. Further studies into organizational expulsion could look into other varieties of organizations and industry settings to deepen our understanding of when, how and with what consequences dominant groups in organizations shift the burden of organizational adaptation to vulnerable groups within organizations and beyond.
Fichier non déposé

Dates et versions

hal-03344452 , version 1 (15-09-2021)

Identifiants

Citer

Olivier Berthod, Markus Helfen, Carsten Wirth. Organizational expulsion: How boundary work produces inequality in German airports. Scandinavian Journal of Management, 2021, 37 (3), pp.101169. ⟨10.1016/j.scaman.2021.101169⟩. ⟨hal-03344452⟩
63 Consultations
0 Téléchargements

Altmetric

Partager

More