Organizational Change and Employee Stress
Michael S. Dahl
This paper analyzes the relationship between core organizational change and the health of employees to illuminate the potential negative outcomes of change at the employees level. It relates to the ongoing debate over how employees react and respond to organizational change. I hypothesize that change increases the risk of negative stress, and I test this hypothesis using unusually comprehensive panel data on all stress-related medicine prescriptions for 92,980 employees in 1,526 of the largest Danish organizations. I find that the risk of receiving stress-related medication increases significantly for employees at organizations that change, especially those that undergo broad simultaneous changes to multiple core organizational structures. This illustrates that organizational changes are associated with significant risks of employee health problems, which could lead to organizational destabilization. These effects are further examined for employees at different levels of the organization and at firms of different sizes and from different sectors. I find that certain types of change appear less harmful and that some even significantly reduce stress.
Denne artikel præsenterer den nyeste teoretiske forskning i sammenhængen mellem entreprenørers erfaringsmæssige baggrund og deres fremtidige succes og innovationsevne. En række studier tyder nemlig på, at disse faktorer er tæt forbundet i kraft af nedarvede organisatoriske rutiner, som entreprenøren har med fra sin tidligere arbejdsplads. Denne teoretiske påstand undersøges gennem et detaljeret studie af udviklingen af den trådløse kommunikationsindustri omkring Aalborg samt gennem referencer til et kvantitativt studie af 3.500 opstartsvirksomheder i den danske fremstillingssektor. Begge studier peger i retningen af, at knopskydende virksomheder med erfaringer fra gode virksomheder har større sandsynlighed for succes, samt at disse virksomheder også er mere innovative i deres første tid end andre ældre virksomheder.