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Do Institutionalized Traditions Matter During Crisis? Employee Downsizing in Korean Manufacturing Organizations
Author(s) -
Alakent Ekin,
Lee SeungHyun
Publication year - 2010
Publication title -
journal of management studies
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 4.398
H-Index - 184
eISSN - 1467-6486
pISSN - 0022-2380
DOI - 10.1111/j.1467-6486.2009.00863.x
Subject(s) - productivity , business , government (linguistics) , organizational change , public relations , economics , economic growth , political science , linguistics , philosophy
This study examines the downfall of the permanent employment tradition in South Korean manufacturing organizations in the aftermath of the 1997 East Asian economic crisis. We explore whether organizations abandon their traditional institutionalized practices under discontinuous environmental change or despite the change continue these time‐honoured practices. We examine both the organizational factors that inhibit lay‐offs and performance indicators that trigger organizations to re‐evaluate their lifetime employment practices under drastic environmental upheaval. We test our hypotheses on 574 Korean manufacturing organizations and find that under discontinuous change: (1) economic and institutional factors simultaneously apply opposite forces on organizational actions; (2) organizational factors such as poor performance on productivity and export create a need for headcount reductions while factors such as size, domestic ownership, government support, and unionization create social and institutional pressures that inhibit downsizing; and (3) prior experience with downsizing moderates the relationship between institutional factors and further downsizing.