The
Management Department
Department
Seminar Series
NISHANI BOURMAULT
NEOMA
Tuesday,
November 14th
2017
Room N231
at 10:00 am
(5.00
p.m
in Singapore)
Theme: “When
Stepping Up Also Means Stepping Down: Managerial Role Transitions for Members
of High Reliability Occupations”
Abstract: "In past literature on work
transitions into managerial roles, a key challenge for newcomers is assumed to
be the increase in responsibility that the new job entails. However, little
attention has been paid to individuals’ occupational backgrounds before
transitioning. To better understand managerial transitions, this study compares
the shifting responsibilities of supervisors coming from a high-reliability
occupation, where small errors can lead to serious consequences, versus a
low-reliability occupation, where such concerns do not exist. Drawing mainly on
interviews with former Paris subway drivers (high-reliability) and station
agents (low-reliability) now promoted to supervisors, we analyze the change in
“responsibility” experienced during such a transition. We find that this
responsibility has multiple facets, some of which actually lessen as one moves
up. For subway drivers, stepping up into a managerial role entails lower task
significance, lower temporal immediacy, and lower task independence; creating a
certain loss of what we label “personal” responsibility. By contrast, former
station agents reported no such loss. Building on the imprinting literature, we
suggest that workers coming from high-reliability occupations might experience a
similar “managerial blues.” Overall, our findings shed light on how specific
occupational backgrounds shape the experience of responsibility when moving up
the hierarchy."
