A Concise Guide to Corporate Downsizing Past, Present and Future

This incisive guide showcases contemporary downsizing scholarship and practice, examining downsizing effects on firm performance and employee attitudes and behaviors. It presents historical analyses and comprehensive literature reviews, as well as empirical and theoretical assessments of contextual influences on downsizing.

Renowned experts apply an array of theories to address leadership and managerial motives, downsizing implementation and its effects. They offer insight to workforce reductions in family firms, evolving psychological contracts, justice enactment, mental health, and post-layoff re-employment behaviors. The book offers updated perspectives on why downsizing occurs, how digitalization is affecting work and downsizing, and how people are navigating an evolving landscape.

A Concise Guide to Corporate Downsizing is designed for students and academics in economics, strategy, and management. Its historical and forward-looking approach to downsizing makes it an essential read for business leaders, investors, analysts and human resource professionals.

Edited by Rocki-Lee DeWitt, Professor of Management, Grossman School of Business, University of Vermont, USA and Alyson P. House, Independent Researcher, Calgary, Canada