Les Worrall
Faculty of Business, Environment and Society, University of Coventry, UK
Cary L. Cooper
Organizational Psychology and Health, Lancaster University, UK
This paper explores the effect of the post 2007 recession on UK managers using a unique data set derived from the Quality of Working Life Project. This project has been running since 1997 in partnership with the UK’s Chartered Management Institute. The paper compares a wide range of measures from surveys run in 2007 – immediately before the “credit crunch” – and in 2012 – as the UK was slowly emerging from the recession. Data from the surveys are used to examine the extent, pace and nature of organizational change, and to assess the effect of change on managers’ views of their organization as a place to work, on their physical and psychological wellbeing and on their working hours. The paper reveals that the effect of change has overwhelmingly been seen as negative with declining levels of job satisfaction, work intensification and growing levels of ill-health.
Keywords: managers, recession, the quality of working life, UK