ABSTRACT
About a decade ago I coauthored a book on workplace commitment (Meyer & Allen, 1997). When I mentioned this project in conversation with a senior executive, I was somewhat taken aback by his reply: “I guess it will be a short book.” It turned out that this was becoming a fairly widespread sentiment that I had perhaps overlooked or denied as a result of my own enthusiasm for the topic. The major threat to commitment was change. Among other things, changes in technology, global competition, and consumer demands were placing pressure on organizations for improved efciency. Organizations responded in a variety of ways, many of which involved the elimination of jobs (e.g., mergers and acquisitions, downsizing, outsourcing, reengineering). In a review of downsizing trends, Emshoff (1994) cited a Conference Board survey in 1992 indicating that 90% of large corporations in the U.S. had downsized in the preceding ve years. He further noted that several companies had downsized more than once in a given year. Reichheld (1996) observed that many such downsizings occurred among companies that were protable at the time. Indeed downsizing had become a corporate strategy that was often rewarded by overnight increases in stock price.
