Document Type
Article
Publication Date
5-1-2002
Abstract
The Problem: State and Federal welfare reform programs have had the effect of increasing the size of the work force by reducing the availability of benefits available to the long-term unemployed. Coming at a time when unemployment fell to record low levels, all new entrants to the work force were greeted with a large array of opportunities. For the previously unemployed welfare recipient, the experience of moving into the work force has not been easy. Unlike better-educated new entrants into the work force, former welfare recipients have lived in a society essentially outside of the mainstream. By developing outside of the mainstream, the average welfare recipient enters the workforce in relative ignorance of the norms and ground-rules of the corporate world. Coupled with a lack of information or appropriate reinforcement of needed information on the norms to be followed therefore, the outcomes of the employment experiences depend on the ability of the employer and employee to assimilate each other's norms and to establish a comfortable working relationship. From the employer's perspective, many transitions to work are a costly and often fruitless effort. Numerous individuals have been trained for prospective positions, only for them to quit and create the need to start again. This job churning is expensive for the employer, and creates a hard to overcome stereotype of former welfare recipients as being unworthy of the efforts that ordinarily create successful employment outcomes. From the putative employee's view, the reaction elicited by negative work experiences serves to reinforce previously held beliefs of unwillingness of the employers to create employment opportunities for the recent entrants into the work force. In most contemporary literature on issues arising from the introduction of previous welfare recipients into the work force, it is generally assumed that the employer has an inflexible set of work norms and ground-rules, and the employees have a responsibility to discern and conform to them. The friction most often observed is created in the process of replacing non-mainstream norms with mainstream corporate values. That process is often completed at the expense of a potentially comfortable relationship because of the adversarial nature of the process. It can be argued that a lack of mechanisms for assimilating individual entrants into corporate employment experiences contributes to their failure. This paper is reviews the success of one intervention mechanism and suggests its relevance in creating the desired impact on the assimilation of corporate values by ex-welfare recipients.
Keywords
ethnology -- research
Rights
© The Author(s). Kelvin Smith Library provides access for non-commercial, personal, or research use only. All other use, including but not limited to commercial or scholarly reproductions, redistribution, publication or transmission, whether by electronic means or otherwise, without prior written permission is strictly prohibited.
Department/Center
Design & Innovation
Recommended Citation
Solaru, A. Damos, "Large Fries, Two Apples Pies: Rotational Leadership - An Ethnographic Investigation into the Assimilation of Corporate Values" (2002). Student Scholarship. 278.
https://commons.case.edu/studentworks/278