REFRAMING JOB ROTATION THROUGH ORGANIZATIONAL ANTHROPOLOGY: A CRITICAL CONCEPTUAL REVIEW OF LIVED WORK EXPERIENCE AND THE MEANING OF SOCIAL WELL-BEING AMONG PUBLIC SERVANTS

Abstract

Job rotation is widely recognised as a strategic Human Resource Management (HRM) practice that strengthens employee competencies, organisational flexibility, knowledge sharing, and administrative effectiveness. Consequently, most existing studies have examined job rotation from a functionalist perspective, focusing on measurable outcomes such as performance, productivity, job satisfaction, and organisational commitment. While this body of work has made important contributions, it offers comparatively limited insight into how employees experience and interpret organisational transitions in their everyday working lives. This paper presents a critical conceptual review that repositions job rotation through the lens of organisational anthropology. Drawing primarily on Geertz's interpretive anthropology, while incorporating perspectives from social well-being, social capital, and sensemaking, it argues that job rotation should be understood not simply as an administrative practice but as a culturally embedded organisational transition. During this process, public servants negotiate professional identities, reshape workplace relationships, and develop new forms of organisational belonging. The paper further argues that social well-being extends beyond an individual psychological outcome. Instead, it is constructed through employees' experiences of trust, recognition, reciprocity, participation, and social integration within organisational communities. Building on these perspectives, the paper proposes an interpretive anthropological process model that explains how organisational culture, identity reconstruction, social capital, and social well-being interact throughout job rotation. By shifting attention from organisational performance to lived organisational experience, this review broadens prevailing understandings of job rotation and provides a stronger theoretical foundation for future qualitative and interpretive research within public sector organisations.