Downsizing
In a speech to the Academy of Management in 1996, Donald Hastings, CEO of Lincoln Electric, called downsizing and rightsizing “dumbsizing.” Note that Lincoln Electric is one of the leaders in its field and has not laid off since its inception in 1948. Yet it has been through all the hard times like everyone else, but during lean times, it chooses to redeploy people rather than lay them off, e.g. factory workers start selling its products in the field. Another company, the Saturn Division of General Motors, did similar redeployment in the 1990s. Why? Because innovations, productivity improvements, etc. are not likely to be sustained over time when workers fear that they will work themselves out of a job (Locke, 1995).