Lots of Good Material & References A little weak on MLA documentation methods
Downsizing; Anathema or Downsizing; Anathema or Panacea
Over the past decade, corporations around the world have been preoccupied with their staff numbers and with implementing strategies to reduce them. The objective has been to create lean organizations, trimmed of bureaucratic fat and bristling with competitive muscle. In the United States alone, some 3.5 million workers have lost their jobs to these programs since 1987. In the first quarter of 1994, there were 192,572 layoffs, averaging over 3,106 jobs a day. (Downs 19). By 1992, more than 85% of the Fortune 500 companies had downsized during the last five years, and 100% of them were planning to do so in the next five years (Cameron, 1994). The 'scorecard' below illustrates the magnitude of some of the layoffs in the last four years:
Company Jobs Cut % of Work Force
AT&T 128,000 30
IBM 122,000 35
General Motors 99,400 29
Boeing 61,000 37
Sears Roebuck 50,000 16
Digital Equipment 29,800 26
Lockheed Martin 29,100 17
BellSouth 21,200 23
McDonnell Douglas 21,000 20
'Downsizing', 'rightsizing' and 'restructuring' have been the popular buzzwords used to describe the process of shedding staff.
The July 24, 2006 issue of Fortune, featuring its ...
The rubber and plastics industry in Ohio is largel...
English: Map of the first European corporations an...These words give a respectable image of strategic foresight to what would otherwise be regarded simply as wholesale layoffs or firings. Some have defended the trend toward layoffs, pointing out that the mission of a corporation is to make a profit and to provide a return for the investors. In this narrow scope of definition, the layoffs seem to be working. With the Dow Jones industrial average above 5500 and corporate profits at a 25 year high, corporate America may have fulfilled Wall Streets highest expectations. But higher profits and productivity have failed to deliver higher wages and job security,