Marc Street's Taking Sides: An Analysis

Throughout corporate America, downsizing is a common practice. The concept of downsizing as a strategic tool wasn 't introduced until the 1980 's, and today it is a well known system. This has been caused by the accelerated growth of international and global competition throughout the past two decades. Increasing competition is forcing companies to drive their costs as low as possible, and the quickest, easiest way to cut costs is to cut jobs. Top management within corporations is most worried about the impact downsizing will have on their costs, and they are usually less apprehensive about the influence on the employees affected. Two views on this topic are presented in Marc Street 's Taking Sides. The first will argue against downsizing for
The second will take a more in depth look at questioning the morality of downsizing. Both arguments have valid points and the authors present their arguments in an effective manner.

In "Downsizing: Are Employers Reneging on Their Social Promise?" by Larry Gross, the author refers to a theory discussed earlier this year. The stakeholder theory is Gross ' defense against downsizing. According to Gross, "Downsizing is in direct conflict with the Stakeholder Approach to corporate social responsibility" (Gross 26). When companies lay off workers in order to maximize profits, they are ignoring their initial responsibility to their employees, as well as the communities around them. Downsizing does not always result in the desired outcome either. A company could lay off some of its workforce to avoid going bankrupt. However, because they have a smaller amount of people to do the job, the job isn 't done as well causing the profits to drop even more. When a company decides to downsize, the employees that are left over after the cuts are more distrustful of their employer. Using downsizing as a managerial strategy causes the
This along with a consistent communication plan is important to any efforts designed to help an organization gain more trust during times of change. Gross sums it up best when he says, "The reality is that although we cannon escape the dynamics of change, we cannot allow it to serve as an excuse to act unethically" (Gross 30).

In Joseph Gilbert 's article titled "Sorrow and Guilt: An Ethical Analysis of Layoffs" a more philosophical approach to the ethicality of downsizing is brought forward. Gilbert first addresses the several view points from which downsizing can be looked upon. First, for the stock market, downsizing is usually a good thing because the cut costs will often result in rising stock prices. Second, from top management 's point of view, downsizing can be good because it is an easy way of dealing with a serious problem of declining profits. Thirdly, for middle and lower management downsizing is bad news. These are the managers often assigned with the task of doing the actual firing which causes them some feelings of sorrow or guilt. Finally, the terminated employees are obviously going to be disgruntled, shocked, and quite