Instant Access To 100,000+ Essays!

"When the winds of change blow, some people build walls and others build windmills" Ancient Chinese proverb Introduction You cannot open a paper or visit an online Website these days without seeing notice after notice of corporate layoffs. Downsizing, which constitutes the planned elimination of positions or jobs, has had and will continue to have profound effects on organizations, managers at all levels, employees, labor markets, customers, and shareholders. These are just the direct effects. They do not include the effects on families and communities. Unfortunately, when an organization is confronted with the need to reduce costs, many of the executives who saw their employees as their “greatest assets” see those assets as ripe opportunities for cutting costs. (Gowing, Kraft, Quick, 1998) With ever-growing frequency, companies today find themselves forced to re-engineer and resize their operations in order to meet competitive challenges. Yet all too often, the results in practice fall short of the promises on paper, in part because the impact of such changes on the remaining workforce is seriously underestimated. A lot of organizations invest their efforts in helping the downsized employees to move on. This