MANAGEMENT IMPLICATIONS OF REDUCTION IN FORCE

Abstract

Managers in the public sector during the 1950s and 1960s were confident of an ever-expanding public service. As a result, most management policies and planning were growth-oriented. Even with occasional fiscal shortfalls, cutback tended to be perceived as a temporary phenomenon. Expectations of continued growth in government and government employment were the rule. The 1970s witnessed a dramatic change which has continued into the 1980s. That change finds government being faced with the prospect and reality of no growth and actual cutback in services and personnel. For public managers, the change in resources available to them has required a change in perspective. Instead of being able to plan on building larger organizations and expanding services, they have been forced to find ways of managing decline. The psychology of management has undergone radical change as a result of the new needs of cutback management. Empire building, rising through the hierarchy, and the like have long been symbols of success, importance, and status. With the era of fiscal constraint, empire building and promotion opportunities are less readily available to managers. As a result, managers have been forced to alter their outlooks on career opportunities within the organization and to cope with their employees who also find career opportunities changed. While cutbacks reduce the resources available for carrying

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 9 citations exist upstream.

Papers that cite the same references — the relational fallback while embeddings are still backfilling.