Redundancy, delayering and other forms of organisational change have become
increasingly prevalent over the last ten years. Some of the worst-hit indu
stries during the recent years have been the former public utilities, the f
inancial services sector and manufacturing. This paper is based on the resu
lts from the first three years' data from a five year UMIST-Institute of Ma
nagement research programme which has been designed to explore the changing
nature of managerial work in the UK and the impact of organisational chang
e on managers' sense of loyalty, morale and motivation. It has been shown i
n the past (Sahdev and Vinnicombe 1998; Worrall, Cooper and Campbell 1999)
that redundancy is seen a particularly damaging form of change on survivors
and that redundancy often fails to achieve the objectives on which it was
justified, leaving many unintended consequences. This article discusses the
effects of organisational change on surviving managers where redundancy ha
s been used, compared with organisations where redundancy has not been used
. The results suggest that if redundancy is to be continually pursued as a
method of change, managers should be aware of the damaging implications not
only to individuals but to the culture of the downsized organisation.