Death Imagery and the Experience of Organizational Downsizing: Or, Is Your Name on Schindler's List?
- Topics:
- Layoffs
- Source:
- Oakland University
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Overview: The experiential realities of downsizing, reductions in force (RIFing), restructuring, reengineering, rightsizing, and outplacement, are often at wide variance with their touted, and widely expected promises of increased productivity, efficiency, team-work, role interchangeability, and profit. They often fall short of the promise of more for less. Vignettes from the presenter's consulting experience, from twenty-five years of participation as a clinical teacher in biomedical training institutions, and from recent participation in a longitudinal study of a hospital downsizing, all suggest that as a social form of problem-definition and problem-solving, downsizing has taken on mythic, magical, reality-distorting proportions. Wherever else American workplace organizations, psychoanalytically-informed consultation, and theory-building will be in the Year 2000, they will be in the shadow of massive downsizings (euphemism for large-scale layoffs).
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Format: HTML | Date: Feb 1996 | Pages: 1
