Authority-in-Action: How Voices are Negotiated through Idiomatic Formulations during Organizational Downsizing

Over the years, there has been a movement towards increased restructuring
of organizations. One dominant strategic practice in relation to
this increased focus on restructuring is downsizing, which recurrently
presents a managerial as well as a communicative challenge in terms of
legitimizing strategic decisions among employees and other stakeholders
(Erkama & Vaara, 2010; Hirsch & DeSoucey, 2006; Johnson et al., 2007).
Traditionally, downsizing has narrowly been formulated as “an intentional
reduction in the number of people in an organization […] accomplished via
a set of managerial actions” (Freeman, 1999, p. 1507). This view is based
on an understanding that it is the management’s responsibility to ensure
rational planning and allocation of resources. Within this mechanistic and
financially grounded conceptualization, downsizing is seen as a tool available
to management with the purpose of making the organization more
efficient (Aggerholm, 2014).