The uneven consequences of rapid organizational change: COVID-19 and healthcare workers

Stef M. Shuster and Noah Lubben

Social Science & Medicine, 2022, vol. 315, issue C

Abstract: We examine the consequences of rapid organizational change on high and low-status healthcare workers (HCWs) during the COVID-19 pandemic. Drawing on 25 interviews, we found that rapid change can create a sense of social disorder by exacerbating the uncertainty brought on by the pandemic, crystallizing the lack of training to deal with crisis, and upending taken-for-granted roles and responsibilities in health infrastructures. Our work contributes to scholarship at the intersection of organizations, professions, and social studies of medicine. First, we show how organizations that must respond with rapidity, such as during a crisis, sets up workers for failure. Second, hastily made decisions can have monumental consequences in the work lives of HCWs, but with differences based on status. All HCWs had trouble with the rearrangement of tasks and roles. Low status HCWs were more likely to feel the strain of the lack of resources and direct contact with COVID-19 patients. High status HCWs were more likely to experience their autonomy undermined – in the organization and content of their work. In these contexts of rapid change, all HCWs experienced social disorder and a sense of inevitable failure, which obscured how organizations have perpetuated inequalities between high and low status workers.

Keywords: Organizational change; Professions; Social disorder; Healthcare; COVID-19 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0277953622008188
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:socmed:v:315:y:2022:i:c:s0277953622008188

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/supportfaq.cws_home/regional
http://www.elsevier. ... _01_ooc_1&version=01

DOI: 10.1016/j.socscimed.2022.115512

Access Statistics for this article

Social Science & Medicine is currently edited by Ichiro (I.) Kawachi and S.V. (S.V.) Subramanian

More articles in Social Science & Medicine from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().