Response to McKinley

Abstract

The authors respond to comments on their article “Downsizing in a Learning Organization: Are There Hidden Costs?” They state that the primary purpose of their original article was that the use of head-count ratios to describe magnitudes of downsizing can in some cases result in a gross underestimation of the damaging effects downsizing has on learning organizations. They suggest that managers who do not know of the existence of learning networks or how important an individual's network linkages are can result in the elimination of key individuals during downsizing. They comment on social network mapping technologies as a potential tool to help identify learning networks and how employees are positioned in these networks.