The emergence of a new precariat? middle class and the elite professionals in Zimbabwe.

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to establish how a precarious socio-economic environment has reconfigured the status of elite professionals from a human resource management perspective in Zimbabwe. There is dearth of empirical studies in human resource management on the effects of the reconfigured middle class and elite professionals in the Global South particularly in Southern Africa. Focus was on three elite professions, namely the medical, legal and the academic. Qualitative research was employed in this study. Fifteen purposively sampled participants were interviewed using a semi-structured interview. Observations and documents were also used to strengthen the data from interviews. Data from interviews was analyzed through phenomenological analysis, while content analysis was used for documents. Data analysis was also aided by QSR also known as NVIVO, a qualitative data analysis software. Findings revealed that elite professionals feel a sense of disequilibrium in their salaries and income. This is due to the fact that they are now comparing themselves with other occupations in lower categories within their country as well as professionals in the same category but beyond their boarders. This therefore causes high outmigration of elite professionals with remaining professionals resorting to other strategies of augmenting/supplementing their meagre salaries. These include less engagement in training and development programs, career planning and progression as well as job satisfaction and job engagement level. It was also revealed that financial rewards are not hygiene factors but motivational factors when it comes to unstable economic environment like the current situation in Zimbabwe. This was evidenced by findings, which indicated that elite professionals are engaging in unorthodox means to supplement their salaries. Therefore, responsible entities dealing with professionals should restructure their reward polices to suite elite professionals so as to improve their job satisfaction, job engagement as well as development programs since these professionals offer their expertise that improves the performance of the country. It was concluded that, there is no universal definition of middle class as elite professionals no longer hold the middle class characteristics like other elite fields globally.