To create an “outstanding corporation,” managers had to keep their stock price high, and cutting costs through layoffs was usually easier and quicker than boosting revenue. Chief executives benefited from higher stock prices in part because their income was increasingly tied to the value of that stock. Layoffs were often couched as necessary to improve efficiency, and no company could match McKinsey’s long record of running up a company’s body count. Call it downsizing or restructuring, the result was the same: sending workers home without a job. Duff McDonald, who wrote a history of McKinsey,
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