The Legitimacy of Organizational Downsizing in Canada: An Analysis of Explanatory Media Accounts

We track the cognitive legitimation of organizational downsizing over time through an evolution of explanatory accounts in newspaper reports of middle-management layoffs in Canadian companies from January 1988 to December 1994. We advance an integrative typology of accounts and argue that the form and content of accounts capture sense-making activity by the press. We find support for our prediction that the form and content of these accounts changes over time as managerial downsizing is taken for granted as a legitimate business practice.