Downsizing & Corporate Dysmorphia

Downsizing & Corporate Dysmorphia

My area of interest for this article was in downsizing. I wanted to take an organizational behavior course, to learn more about how organizational cultures develop, particularly in an era of globalization. I work for a "brick & mortar" company (UPS), with a very robust, historical and ingrained culture that greatly influences how all functional departments operate daily. However, I work within an IT subculture, with a somewhat more contemporary and fluid view of operations. Recent changes in IT development, as well as outsourcing, "right-sizing", budget cuts/constraints have changed the way our IT department does business, and I wanted to take an objective view of why these cultural changes were taking place, as well as align my perspective with that of the overall organizations view. The question I was looking to answer was: Is downsizing/outsourcing working for my department, given the department's goals, as well as the overall company strategy?

The immediate conclusion that I've come to is: yes and no, it truly depends upon which goals we're referring to, and whose strategy. My suspicions were confirmed with both articles I read. The Midlife Mutual Insurance case study illustrates well the paradox that I think my department is experiencing: that to attain budgetary metrics, we've fundamentally and inadvertently changed the structure of our department, without planning for or acknowledging the impact of these changes on the department, employees or the organization. As noted in the case, "employees after the downsizing episode might be less committed to the organization, and thus more likely to leave" (Evans and Gunz, 1996). Even though our internal employee satisfaction survey results are high, particularly for the industry, our turnover rate has increased in the last 2-3 years - similar to that shown in this case. Job design for employees has also been impacted within my company (as in other streamlined companies) as positions aren't backfilled, and employee's jobs are enlarged, to offset the higher turnover. With compensation packages relatively flat, and performance increases also affected by budget constraints, my colleagues complain about organizational injustice, and look for simpler jobs with commensurate pay.

I can directly attribute the corporate dysmorphia referred to by Webber (2005) to my company's vision statement. In both this vision, and in leadership discussions, my management