Understanding Employee Marginalization: A Narrative Inquiry into the Experiences of Employees in a Public Organization

This study aims to understand employee marginalization by analyzing the narratives and stories of employees who have experienced this phenomenon in an Iranian public organization.
The research participants were selected at the first stage based on the purposive sampling method. Prototypes were selected from elite employees and graduates of universities in Iran, who, according to their years of service, did not pass their occupation levels and were in a job position far lower than the position appropriate to their abilities. Next, the employees, who possessed the mentioned characteristics and were introduced to and confirmed by the initial participants, were selected by the snowball method as the next samples. The interviews conducted with the participants of the research continued until reaching saturation, according to which the number of participants reached 60 people. Before the beginning of the interview, to create a sense of trust between the parties and to secure the participants’ freedom to express their opinions and issues, they were assured that their names would remain confidential and their interviewees would be introduced only based on a code. The common semantic elements in the participants’ stories and narratives were analyzed using the thematic analysis technique after extraction and were presented in the form of antecedents, examples, and consequences. The elements, which were mentioned in more than half of the interviews, were the employees’ common semantic elements of marginalization in the organization.  The employees’ common elements of marginalization in the organization were expressed in the form of antecedents, which were examined as the crucial reasons for the occurrence of the phenomenon in the organization, and adequate explanations for each of them were provided. This single-section research was conducted in a certain period, and its results can be applied and generalized in the investigated organization and organizations with a similar structure. The present research was conducted under the framework of a critical paradigm since the researchers encountered the disclosure of hidden injustice in the heart of an organization. Additionally, the critical paradigm investigated questions concerning values and assumptions, participation in social actions, exposing injustice, and challenging traditional structures.
According to the findings, the employees’ pattern of marginalization in the organization was compiled and discussed. This study could identify antecedents (non-nativism, document orientation, anti-elitism, etc.), examples (leaving virtual service, reducing attitudinal commitment, reducing task performance, etc.), and consequences (disregarding work and workplace, leaving the organization, etc.), as well as the marginalization of employees with the dimensions and constituent elements of each of the categories.
According to the obtained results, the employees’ perceptions of two types of marginalization in the organization were discussed and analyzed as “Imposed Marginalization” and “Preferred Marginalization”.