Taking a positive psychology approach, this research looked at a little-studied subset
of working women and men - those who experienced changes affecting their
work and self-reported as handling them well. The primary purpose was to explore
what strategies they employed that helped them handle change well, what hindered
doing well, and whether there were things that would have been helpful but were
unavailable. There were two secondary purposes: (1) to gain insight into the nature
of the changes they had faced, the impacts of those changes, whether they had
always handled change well, and if not, when that changed and why; and (2) to
explore whether the research interview itself had an impact on participants. This
was primarily a qualitative, exploratory study that used the Critical Incident
Technique (CIT) (Flanagan, 1954) to elicit helping and hindering critical incidents
and wish list items; and open-ended interview questions (Cozby, 1997; Palys, 1997)
to gather information about participants' experiences of change. A quantitative
component was embedded in the form of a pre- and post-interview scaling question
(Palys, 1997) to determine if the interview had an impact. Data from the CIT portion
of the study elicited ten helping, hindering and wish list categories: (1) Personal
Attitudes/Traits/Emotional Set; (2) Support from Friends and Family; (3) Internal
Framework and Boundaries; (4) Taking Action; (5) Self-care; (6) Support from
Professionals; (7) Management Style and Work Environment; (8) Skill/Role
Competence; (9) Support from Work Colleagues; and (10) Personal Life
Changes/Issues, suggesting strategies can be employed that facilitate handling
change well. Data from the quantitative portion resulted in a borderline large effect
size, suggesting the interview had an impact on participants. Surprisingly, results
from participants' stories of change and its impacts strongly paralleled results of
studies in the unemployment, transition, burnout, and posttraumatic growth
literature, suggesting this sample of workers was dealing with chaotic environments
in many domains of their lives and even though they self-reported as doing well with
the changes they were facing, there was a cost involved. Implications for workers,
counsellors, vocational psychologists, career counsellors, human resource
professionals, organizations, and future research and theory are discussed. / Education, Faculty of / Educational and Counselling Psychology, and Special Education (ECPS), Department of / Graduate
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UBC/oai:circle.library.ubc.ca:2429/18201 |
| Date | 05 1900 |
| Creators | Butterfield, Lee Denise |
| Source Sets | University of British Columbia |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Text, Thesis/Dissertation |
| Rights | For non-commercial purposes only, such as research, private study and education. Additional conditions apply, see Terms of Use https://open.library.ubc.ca/terms_of_use. |
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