Resource Dependence and the Student Employee

I sat down one day to approve time sheets and it dawned on me how applicable all of this organizational theory “stuff” is to my daily organizational environment. Working at the University of Central Missouri (UCM) as an office manager for a large (rather eclectic or maybe eccentric would be a better description) academic department. We have over 800 undergraduate and graduate students in our department. There are over 20 full-time faculty and more part-time faculty then I care to count.

As I have gone over the readings the main theory that hits close to home is resource dependence… As an academic organization the main resource we are dependent on is our personnel. In my case, the single most valuable resource is my student employees (not that I do not value my other employees, in case they ever read this). I have four office assistants and five fitness center attendants, all of which are worth their weight in gold. As these students graduate replacements must be found; which is never an easy task. Complicating the search process is limited budgets and dependence on federal work-study employees.

The Problem

Of my student employees, all had federal work-study when they were first hired, now only four are eligible. Hiring and retaining students eligible for federal work-study is becoming more difficult by the year.

For starters let me explain why federal work-study is so significant: As an employer I am responsible for only 25% of a work-study eligible student’s hourly wage as compared to 100% for non-work-study students. This program is considered part of a student’s financial aid award so it is based on their overall need. The personal economic status of these students did not change; the amount of funds for work-study has significantly decreased, changing the line of eligibility. Since the 2004/2005 academic year the funds distributed to the University for work-study from the Feds has dropped over $85,000.

Compounding the issue is the increases to Missouri’s minimum wage that began in January of 2007. At that time, the minimum wage increased from $5.15/hour to $6.50/hour. In 2008 it went up to $6.65/hour and at the beginning of 2009 it will go up again to $7.05/hour. My budget has not seen a single increase during this time to compensate the wage increase.
Our operation hours must be maintained, we cannot decrease the number of hours the employees are needed. At this point the only reason we are not going into the red is that we have a revenue line (I like to call my mad money) from profit sharing for our online classes. If this line were to dry up we would have to cut hours and/or lay employees off.

How can Resource Dependence Theory Apply?

Hatch (2006) defines resource dependence theory as “The basic argument of resource dependency theory is that an analysis of the interorganizational network can help an organization managers understand the power/dependence relationships that exist between their organization and other network actors” (p. 80, ¶ 5).

Hatch goes on to provide basically steps one can take to analyze an organization and then apply ways to manage the resource dependence:

Resource dependence analysis:
I. Needs
A. Identify organization’s needed resource
1. Student Employees
B. Environmental actors who can affect these organizational/environment relationships and thereby support or interfere with the organization’s resource exchanges.
1. Competition between departments for skilled student employees.
2. Competition between departments for students eligible for federal work-study.
C. Criticality – an estimate of the importance of a particular resource.
1. Student employees provide skilled workers at an affordable rate.
2. Having a full complement of student workers frees up the full-time employee to deal with more pressing University matters.
3. Spending a summer without a student worker in a department makes it readily apparent how valuable they are.
D. Scarcity – an estimate of resource availability.
1. Students wanting employment is not rare but those that still have federal work-study and meet the skill-set needed is becoming increasingly more rare.

II. Ways to manage resource dependencies
A. Labor and knowledge dependencies
1. One of the first things Hatch recommends is looking at recruitment strategies.
a. Every year at the beginning of fall term there is a job fair. Advertisements could be posted across campus prior to the event inviting students to visit the department’s table.
b. We could contact financial aid and ask them to send a list of students that are eligible for work-study. From the list we could contact the students via email asking them to apply.
2. Hatch describes teaming up with the competition as a possible way to deal with resource scarcity.
a. The second largest employer of student workers is the University Library. After discussions with the dean it was discovered that they are not fully dependent on hiring work-study. We could ask them to pass along applicants that are eligible for work-study but did not make the cut with them.
B. Release from unwanted dependencies by changing environment
1. It is interesting to find that this is how the Library dealt with the increase of minimum wage. They have only had one increase to their +$200K student wage budget over the last ten years. Instead of trying to recruit harder from the work-study pool they have decreased the number of students they employ. At their peak they had over 130 student employees. Their environment also changed as electronic databases became more prevalent. One major time consumption was shelving and managing newspapers and periodicals. The number kept in hard copy has continued to drop, freeing those students up for other areas of the library.

Bringing Balance to our Organization

From this analysis I have determined that we will first try direct recruitment, contacting work-study employees inviting them to apply. My second choice would be to ask the library to forward their rejected applicants (the library is so competitive that it does not mean they are bad applicants, they just didn’t meet their higher standards that they can demand).
With three employees graduating, hopefully my attempts to meet my resource needs will be successful. We have a functional, happy organization and I would like to continue to support that balance.

Reference:
Hatch, M. J. (2006). Organization theory: Modern, symbolic, and postmodern perspectives. 2nd Edition. New York: Oxford University Press.