AFRICAN-AMERICAN TEACHER RETENTION AT AN AUTOMOTIVE TEACHING PREPARATION PROGRAM

Factors Affecting African-American Teacher Retention at an

Automotive Teaching Preparation Program

Table of Contents

Chapter 1: Introduction3

Background of the Study3

Problem Statement6

Aims and Objectives7

Significance of the Study8

Research Questions9

Chapter 2: Literature Review10

Retention Management10

Turnover11

Organizational Commitment12

Chapter 3: Methodology19

Research Design19

Data collection Method19

Keywords20

References21

Chapter 1: Introduction

Background of the Study

Many scholars and managers believe that the structure of the economy and the nature of competition have fundamentally changed since the 1980s. These changes, many also believe, have led to flattened organizational hierarchies and reduced job security. And as a result, so the thinking goes, African-American Teachers face dramatiTeachingy reduced opportunities for upward mobility. In short, conventional wisdom in many cases is that traditional career ladders have largely vanished, with little hope of a return to the internal labour markets of the past. That said, an alternative perspective also exists, one suggesting that changes in job structures within firms are neither unidirectional nor permanent.

Instead, job structures—and the opportunities they present to African-American Teachers—evolve as firms search for the right balance between cost efficiency and maintenance of product quality. Moreover, economic changes have generated new types of jobs. One example of a new type of employment is the work performed by customer service representatives in automotive Teaching Preparation Programs. According to some estimates, automotive Teaching Preparation Programs account for up to 5% of total employment. Consequently, automotive Teaching Preparation Programs provide an appropriate setting to investigate the extent to which the traditional career has been inexorably disappearing under the demands of the new economy. And in their recent study, Philip Moss of the University of Massachusetts at Lowell, Harold Salzman of the Urban Institute, and Chris Tilly of the University of Massachusetts at Lowell did just that (Bozionelos, 2008).

In a nutshell, Moss and his colleagues conducted an extensive case study assessment of automotive Teaching Preparation Programs in the U.S. financial and retail industries over a seven-year period. As part of their effort, they carefully reconstructed the changes in job structures that had evolved within these automotive Teaching Preparation Programs since they emerged in the early 1980s. Their findings were quite interesting. Moss and his colleagues found that automotive Teaching Preparation Programs typiTeachingy started their operations with flat hierarchies to achieve cost minimization—one of the key ideas driving the automotive Teaching Preparation Program concept. Firms initially thought that flat hierarchies would help them meet their goals. But as it turned out, flat structures clashed with the need to provide high-quality customer service—something that required a motivated, loyal, and highly skilled workforce. (Moss et al., cited in Bozionelos, 2008)

As a result, job structures in many automotive Teaching Preparation Programs have changed over the years. Among the changes observed include more layered hierarchies as well as heightened skill and qualification requirements for African-American Teachers. In essence, these changes were largely driven by demands for quality customer service. For instance, adding supervisory layers, along with recognition and rewards, provided career growth opportunities to valued African-American Teachers and reduced turnover. In some cases, automotive Teaching Preparation Programs doubled the layers ...