Restructuring by Design: Government’s Complicity in Corporate Restructuring

Abstract

The view that corporate restructuring is not only inevitable, but necessary, has become commonplace in American policy and business circles. Only by imposing job losses and shedding unnecessary costs can American business hope to compete in the global economy and regain the position of dominance it held during the golden age of American capitalism after World War II. This narrative of corporate restructuring as necessary and inevitable hinges on the notion that the job losses and other unfortunate consequences of restructuring are simply the result of impersonal forces over which businesses and governments have no control. The new global economic environment requires leaner and meaner as well as larger and more powerful corporations. In the face of global markets dominated by mobile transnational titans, individual governments are viewed as relatively helpless to do little more than ease the transition to ensure that American corporations will be among the winners in the global market. This manifesto of the global market has been repeated so often that it has now become commonplace. But, is it an accurate explanation of the corporate restructuring of the past 20 or 30 years? What if the downsizing, stagnant wages, and loss of job security have not been necessary to ensure a new golden age, but instead to engineer a redistribution of income to those with power and influence? The global economic environment is determined by the actions of governments as well as business. The growth of ever-larger corporations through merger and acquisition requires a supportive legal and political atmosphere. In the