Ethical Aspects of Downsizing, Restructuring and Re-engineering

In February 1998, AT&T announced plans to lay off 15,000-18,000 employees in the next two years. In the same month, Hoechst Chemicals announced the dismissal of 20,000 workers, whereas the Deutsche Bank projected that 9,000 would have to go in the coming years. Messages like these, about drastic changes in organizations, are hardly news any more. One reads them almost in passing. Organizational downsizing and restructuring has become business as usual. A 1991 survey of the 4,500 largest firms in the USA, by Fortune Magazine, revealed that 86% of these organizations had downsized in the previous five years and most of them expected to have to do it again. 1 In the USA, even the Roman Catholic Church, which is perhaps the oldest organization in the world, is reported to have lain off some of its core workers, namely priests. Jobs? They simply do not make them as they used to.