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Contribution Details

Type Journal Article
Scope Discipline-based scholarship
Title The impact of social class on top managers’ attitudes towards employee downsizing
Organization Unit
Authors
  • Dominik van Aaken
  • Katja Rost
  • David Seidl
Item Subtype Original Work
Refereed Yes
Status Published in final form
Language
  • English
Journal Title Long Range Planning
Publisher Elsevier
Geographical Reach international
ISSN 0024-6301
Volume 55
Number 2
Page Range 102129
Date 2022
Abstract Text In this paper, we examine the impact of top managers' social class on their attitude towards employee downsizing. Mobilizing Bourdieu's concepts of social class as a unique social position defined by the combination of economic, cultural, and social capital, we develop hypotheses about the effects of different capital endowments, which we test with unique data on more than 2500 top managers in Germany. We find that both higher economic and higher social capital increase openness towards employee dismissals, while higher cultural capital reduces it. We also find that the overall effect of a top manager's social position is an aggregate of the effects of the individual types of capital: Managers with high cultural, low social and low economic capital are least open to employee dismissals, while those with low cultural, high social and high economic capital are most open – with the other combinations lying somewhere between the two extremes.
Digital Object Identifier 10.1016/j.lrp.2021.102129
Other Identification Number merlin-id:21871
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Keywords Strategy and Management, Finance, Geography, Planning and Development