It has often been said that a company's greatest asset is its people. As we have seen, the second half of the eighties ushered in a new era of rationalizing, restructuring, or sizing down. At the center of organizational activity in this era has been better utilization of company assets. Assets are evaluated, and excess assets are sold, eliminated, or redeployed, as unused assets cost money to maintain. Like any other asset, people must be used efficiently: if they are too many, the excess must be "disposed" of in some way, and if they are too few, more must be acquired. All levels of the corporate structure, from the headquarters to the smallest plants in the four corners of the world, are under attack. In the United States the searchlight is on the corporate headquarters staff especially. As Robert Tomasko, author of the book Downsizing, 1 put it,
"Corporate staff is becoming an endangered species." 2
Recent staff reductions have been motivated largely by two related forces. The first and most important is, of course, the slowdown in economic growth within the developed world. The second is technology. It is becoming easier to use machines-particularly computers-to do what humans used to do. A lean, computerized organization nevertheless depends on people, and every MNC must develop policies to govern its use of its human resources.
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