기업 다운사이징에 대한 전략적 접근: 복수의 성과목표 추구와 다운사이징 의사결정

In this paper, we investigate the determinants of corporate downsizing. Downsizing is one of the typical types of organizational change, which firms faced with a crisis put on priority. Although there has been a substantial body of research analyzing firms’ downsizing decision in terms of economic perspective, the existing researches have excluded the possibility of that firms’ economic incentive can deter downsizing in certain situations. Furthermore, these studies have not taken it into consideration that firms’ economic incentive can change by interactions with environments. In this regard, we suggest a theoretical model applying the view of the organizational learning theory that consider organizational change as a result of search activity depending on performance feedback. In this view, we predict that firms’ downsizing decision depends on their own performance feedback. Specifically, we argue that firms downsize to achieve two goals - growth and profitability - respectively and exhibit different patterns of downsizing up to the relationship between the two goals. To empirically test our hypotheses, we use longitudinal data of Korean shipbuilding firms during 2000-2014. Our results suggest that the firm size intensifies downsizing when a firm achieves above aspiration level, while the firm profitability intensifies downsizing when under aspiration level. Moreover, we found that the extent to which the expansion of a firm’s downsizing scale according to the size of the firm is enlarged only when its financial objectives are satisfied, and that a firm not financially successful expands the scale of the downsizing regardless of the size of the firm. Theoretical contributions and practical implications as well as future research agenda are discussed.