 Maintenance of subjective health during a merger: the role of experienced change and pre-merger social support at work in white- and blue-collar workersAri Väänänen, Krista Pahkin, Raija Kalimo and Bram P. Buunk Social Science & Medicine, 2004, vol. 58, issue 10, 1903-1915 Abstract: Prospective research on psychosocial effects on employees' health associated with organizational mergers has been scarce. The first aim of this study was to explore the subjective health effects (exhaustion and functional incapacity) of an organizational merger among employees who had experienced a change in their own job position differently (improved, unaltered, and declined). Secondly, the effects of pre-merger social support (organizational, supervisor, and coworkers) at work on the experienced change in job position and on subjective health were examined. The merger took place in 1999 between two multinational firms of equal size. The study is based on two surveys (n=2,225) carried out in 1996 and in 2000 in the Finnish part of the company. The data on age, sex, pre-merger sickness absence (1996-98) and subjective health status (1996) were used as covariates. The results indicate that all sources of social support had a significant effect on the experience of change in one's job position. A decline in job position strongly increased the risk of poor subjective health after the merger. Weak organizational support was associated with impaired subjective health, especially in blue-collar workers, while weak supervisor support impaired functional capacity in white-collar workers. In turn, strong co-workers' support increased the risk of poor subjective health among blue-collar workers when their job position declined. We conclude that negative changes experienced in one's job position and lack of upper-level social support at work create a potential risk for health impairment in different employee groups in merging enterprises. Keywords: Finland; Organizational; change; Exhaustion; Functional; incapacity; Social; support; Employee; status (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:socmed:v:58:y:2004:i:10:p:1903-1915 Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from 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 |
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