THE IMPACT OF DOWNSIZING ON ORGANIZATIONAL CAREER-DEVELOPMENT ACTIVITIES AND EMPLOYEE CAREER-DEVELOPMENT OPPORTUNITIES

While most of the human resource management research on downsizing has focused on the short term impact on laid-off workers and survivors, t he long term, systematic impact of downsizing on organizational career development activities and employees' career development opportunitie s has received much less attention. This article argues that the ratio nale for downsizing the workforce, the goal of the downsizing, and the rate, size, and scope of the downsizing differ dramatically across or ganizations shrinking their workforces. Consequently, this article pre sents a theoretical framework for understanding when organizations are likely to pursue different strategies for reducing their core workfor ces, why downsizing organizations are likely to pursue different strat egies for changing the emphasis of their career development activities , and which employees are most likely to experience deteriorating care er development opportunities as a result. Hypotheses to guide future t heory development and empirical research in this area are discussed as well.