Downsizing in a Learning Organization: Are There Hidden Costs?
Susan Reynolds Fisher, Margaret A. White
Academy of Management Review · 2000 · Volume 25 · Issue 1
Abstract
Business practice has been at odds with organizational theory: whereas one managerial “fashion”—downsizing—involves divestiture of human assets, another—learning—advocates investment in human assets. We use a social network frame to consider the impact of downsizing on organizational learning and propose that the effects can be viewed as a nonlinear function of learning network size. From this perspective the potential damage to a firm's learning capacity is greater than head-count ratios imply.
Keywords
ORGANIZATIONAL learning, ORGANIZATION, BUSINESS, THEORY & practice, DOWNSIZING of organizations, SOCIAL networks, LEARNING, ORGANIZATIONAL change, CHANGE management, KNOWLEDGE management
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