GM599 Unit 8 Capstone Findings and Analysis Example

Pay First, Then Seniority, Then Former Peers: A Unit 8 Findings and Analysis Chapter for a Transit Capstone

[Student Name]

Purdue University Global

GM599: Applied Research Project

Unit 8 Findings and Analysis

[Instructor Name]

[Date]

Wexmoor Regional Transit, its staff, the respondents and every figure are composite and illustrative; the sources cited are real.

Findings From the Records

Applications. Internal applicants per road supervisor posting fell from an average of 7.4 across sixteen postings in 2019 to 2022 to 1.9 across fourteen postings since 2023. Withdrawals also rose: of the 27 internal applications since 2023, 8 were withdrawn before interviews, compared with 9 of 118 in the earlier period.

Returns to driving. Of the seventeen operators promoted to road supervisor between 2019 and 2022, two returned to driving within six months. Under the collective bargaining agreement, both went to the bottom of the operators' seniority list.

Earnings. Payroll's banded figures put the 2024 earnings of the highest-paid quarter of operators at about $88,300, most of it from regular overtime. Supervisors, by contrast, are salaried around a $79,500 midpoint and earn no overtime. Fifteen of the 22 current supervisors earn less than the top-quartile operator figure.

Findings From the Survey

Response. Sixty-three of 141 eligible operators responded, a rate of 44.7 percent. Respondents' tenure bands were close to the eligible population's: 30 percent with three to five years against 32 percent of the population, 33 percent with six to ten years against 35 percent, and 37 percent with eleven or more against 33 percent. Long-tenure operators were slightly overrepresented.

Reasons for not applying. Given a list of possible deterrents and asked to mark all that applied, 44 respondents, 69.8 percent, named the loss of pay. Thirty-one, 49.2 percent, named losing seniority and their pick of runs. Twenty-two, 34.9 percent, named having to supervise former coworkers. Six, 9.5 percent, named the difficulty of the job itself. Most respondents chose more than one reason.

Pay by earnings band. Among the 21 respondents in the top earnings band, 19 named pay loss, about 90 percent. Among the 42 in lower bands, 25 did, about 60 percent.

Pay loss was the most common reason in every tenure band, but it was nearly universal among the operators who earn the most, which is the group the agency most wants to promote.

Seniority by tenure band. Concern about seniority rose with tenure. Among respondents with three to five years, about a third named losing seniority and run picks; among those with eleven or more years, about two thirds did. That pattern fits the literature's description of seniority as a switching cost that grows each year an operator stays.

Willingness to supervise former coworkers. On the five-point item asking whether respondents would be comfortable directing and disciplining operators they had worked alongside, the responses split almost evenly, with about 40 percent agreeing, 35 percent disagreeing and the rest neutral. Few respondents named it as their main reason, but many named it alongside pay or seniority.

Findings From the Interviews

Interviews were coded using thematic analysis, building codes from the transcripts and grouping them into themes checked against all twelve interviews (Braun & Clarke, 2006).

Working out the overtime math. Seven of the nine operators described calculating what they would lose. "I sat down with my pay stubs and the supervisor posting," said one operator with fourteen years of service, given the pseudonym Marcus. "I'd be taking an eight thousand dollar cut to get yelled at more."

Seniority as a trap. Both operators who had applied and withdrawn said they withdrew after learning that returning to driving would put them at the bottom of the list. "If it didn't work out, I'd be driving split shifts on weekends for ten years," said Denise, who withdrew in 2024.

Isolation in the first months. All three promoted supervisors described their first months as isolating. "The guys I drove with for twelve years stopped talking to me in the break room," said one. Two said they had considered returning to driving.

How the reasons combine. Interviews showed the reasons working together. Operators described pay as the reason that made them stop considering promotion, seniority as the reason they would not take a chance on it, and supervising former coworkers as a reason they would accept if the other two were solved.

Integrating the Three Sources

The records show the pattern; the survey shows which explanations are most common; the interviews show how they combine. Nataliya Ivankova and colleagues describe this kind of integration as the purpose of a sequential explanatory design, in which qualitative results explain the quantitative ones (Ivankova et al., 2006). All three sources point to pay as the first barrier, with seniority close behind and the strain of supervising former peers as a real but secondary concern.

The findings are consistent with the literature. Pay compression, which Milkovich and colleagues identify as a cause of reluctance to accept promotion, is visible in Wexmoor's own payroll figures (Milkovich et al., 2020). The seniority finding fits Abraham and Medoff's evidence that seniority carries heavy weight in union work groups (Abraham & Medoff, 1985).

An Unexpected Finding: Withdrawals

The records showed withdrawals rising, from 9 of 118 internal applications before 2023 to 8 of 27 since. The interviews suggest why. Both operators who withdrew described learning the seniority rule only after applying, from a coworker rather than from human resources. The posting itself does not mention what happens to seniority on promotion or on return. That finding was not part of the original question, but it points to a gap in what the agency tells applicants, which the recommendations may need to address.

What Did Not Appear

Some expected findings did not appear. Few operators named the job's difficulty as a reason, and none did so in interviews. No one described a lack of training as a barrier. And the interviews found no clear differences between the three garages; operators at each described the same reasons in similar terms. These absences matter because they narrow what the agency needs to change. A training program or a garage-specific fix, both of which had been suggested informally by managers before the study, would address problems the evidence does not show.

Limits of the Findings

The survey's response rate of 44.7 percent means more than half of eligible operators did not answer, and nonrespondents may differ. Reasons are self-reported. The interviews are few and were not meant to represent all operators. The findings describe one agency at one time, and the writer's position as an agency employee may have shaped which reasons operators were willing to state.

References

Abraham, K. G., & Medoff, J. L. (1985). Length of service and promotions in union and nonunion work groups. ILR Review, 38(3), 408-420. https://doi.org/10.1177/001979398503800307

Braun, V., & Clarke, V. (2006). Using thematic analysis in psychology. Qualitative Research in Psychology, 3(2), 77-101. https://doi.org/10.1191/1478088706qp063oa

Ivankova, N. V., Creswell, J. W., & Stick, S. L. (2006). Using mixed-methods sequential explanatory design: From theory to practice. Field Methods, 18(1), 3-20. https://doi.org/10.1177/1525822X05282260

Milkovich, G. T., Newman, J. M., & Gerhart, B. (2020). Compensation (13th ed.). McGraw-Hill Education.