Organizational Justice in the context of downsizing: A case based study

Abstract

During economic downturn, downsizing or laying-off becomes a tool for organizations to manage costs and regain profits. However downsizing has also begun to describe the contemporary development of permanent job cuts motivated by an effort to improve operating effi ciency, not necessarily because of declines in business (Cappelli, 2000). How downsizing is done signifi cantly infl uences the perceptions related to organizational justice. In this paper, we explore the organizational justice dimension to downsizing. We present three case studies of downsizing, demonstrating comparison between poorly done layoff and more humane layoff, experienced in person by the authors and present a model which describes how layoff decisions impact organizational justice perceptions.....