The Alcohol and Health Outcomes of Work Restructing

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This research represents the continuation and extension of a project that asks whether, to what degree, and under what circumstances the process of workplace restructuring has adverse drinking and health consequences for employees. It asks, in particular, whether "downsizing" and "reengineering," increasingly common among American manufacturing firms, contribute to problematic drinking behavior and ill health by heightening levels of stress and dissatisfaction among employees. It asks, moreover, whether certain groups among employee populations find themselves especially "at risk" for alcohol and health problems in a restructuring environment-mainly w=anagers and those with "escapist" drinking orientations--and why this might be the case. The research uses a longitudinal panel design so that causal statements can be made more confidently about the impact of restructuring on the well-being of employees, understood in terms of alcohol involvement, mental health, and physical health. It builds on years of research by the investigators on the link between jobs, workplace organization, and problem drinking and health outcomes, and attempts to fill important empirical and theoretical lacunae. The research will be conducted in one of America's largest and most important manufacturing firms where downsizing and job reengineering have been going on for years, whose employees show wide variation in the degree to which they have personally experienced these changes (thus, providing considerable variation on our key study variables), and whose employees have a wide range of demographic characteristics and job skills (ranging from semi-skilled assembly work to aeronautical engineering). This proposal asks for funding to support two additional surveys of a panel sample surveyed in early 1997 and early 2000.