User:Kls216/sandbox

Annotated bibliography:

1.U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. MLS News Releases. U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Web. 20 Oct. 2016

• This article is from the Bureau of Labor Statistics and is about mass layoff statistics which is a program that collects data about mass layoffs occurring. A mass layoff is categorized by at least 50 employment terminations in a 5 week period. This article also provides surveys, where to find more information, current layoff statistics, and major layoffs such as those that happened in 2013.

2. Noer, David M. Healing the Wounds: Overcoming the Trauma of Layoffs and Revitalizing Downsized Organizations. Vol. XVIII. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2009. Print.

• This educational book is divided into four parts mainly from the employee's perspective. I liked this book because it is different than just straight information from the company’s perspective. Losing your job when you did nothing wrong is scary and traumatizing. The first part is titled “The Shattered Covenant” and is about the so called victims of layoffs and their lack of job security- especially since they lost their jobs. The second part is called “The Survivor Experience” and is about the people left in a company and post layoff environment in a company. Part three or “Interventions for Healthy Survival” is about a laid off employee’s recovery from a layoff and steps to build a new employer-employee relationship. The last major section of this book is “The Leadership Wake-up call” and is directed towards companies and specifically the leadership teams. It gives good advice for running organizations and how to promote a loyal staff and how to move on from the post layoff environment.

3. De Meuse, Kenneth P. and Marks, Mitchell Lee. Resizing the Organization: Managing Layoffs, Divestitures, and Closings: Maximizing Gain While Minimizing Pain. 1st ed. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2003. Print.

• Written by the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology, this book gives theoretical information, business practice ideas, and techniques for companies who go through different layoff inducing processes such as mergers, acquisitions, downsizings, and other transitions. According to the description, this book, Resizing the Organization, is a field guide for applying industrial and organizational psychology theories and practices to the management of change strategies.

4.Cascio, Wayne F. Responsible Restructuring: Creative and Profitable Alternatives to Layoffs. San Francisco, CA: Berrett-Koehler, 2002. Print.

• This book is about different alternatives to layoffs. Sometimes layoffs aren’t always the answer to help increase profits (and sometimes the layoffs don’t increase productivity and profits). This book uses an 18 year study as its main example. Some of the examples are reorganization, different training techniques, and gives facts about layoff myths.

5. Downs, Alan. Corporate Executions: The Ugly Truth about Layoffs--how Corporate Greed Is Shattering Lives, Companies, and Communities. New York: AMACOM, 1995. Print

• This book is divided into three main sections. The first sections is titled “The Jury is in: Evidence and verdict on layoffs” and goes into the corporate perspective of layoffs and suggests that some of the reason is company greed. The second part, The Anatomy of a layoff, really digs deep into the process of a layoff and gives good insight of different typed of layoffs and how the human resources department organizes them. The last part is called “ The Personal Cost of a layoff” and goes into the employee’s perspective of a layoff. The interesting component of this section is about laying off older employees and how age discrimination goes into effect.

Article evaluation: Layoff

·        Is each fact referenced with an appropriate, reliable, reference?

In the Wikipedia article, Layoff, I believe that the article does have reliable references attached to it including a dictionary. There are multiple references and footnotes and additional readings at the end of the article.

·        Is everything in the article  relevant to the article topic?  Is there anything that distracted you?

This article had a lot of irrelevant information and definitions of  layoffs in different countries and a section at the bottom of the article about compensation in Australia. Although this article is on the English Wikipedia page, noting the other countries throughout the article took away from the main point of the article- to inform the readers about layoffs.

·        Is this article neutral? Are there any claims, or frames that appear heavily biased towards a particular position?

This article is for the mostly neutral until the article goes into unemployment compensation. There is a whole section on lumping unemployment compensation and then there is a separate section on unemployment compensation in Australia whereas it could just be a paragraph at the end of the section for unemployment compensation.   

·        Where does this information come from? Are these neutral sources?  If biased, is the biases noted?

The article's references seem to be heavily concentrated in international sources. I think to be more well rounded there needs to be sources from the United States as well. America is a country that you cannot ignore.

·        Are there viewpoints that are over-represented, or under-represented?

Yes, I feel like there are a few different international sources from the United Kingdom and Australia that are heavily represented. On the other hand there are very few sources from the United States.

·        Check a few citations. Do the links work? Is there any close paraphrasing or plagiarism in the article?

The links work properly in the article. There is close paraphrasing throughout the article and quotation marks often in the article. The information is good information but it needs to be written in an author's own words- not the US Department of Labor's.

·        Is there any information that  is out of date?  Is there any information that could be added?

Yes, a good portion of the information in the article is outdated, including some information dating back to the early 1990's, and needed to be updated. More information from the United States needs to be added to make the article more well rounded rather than heavily focusing on European information and sources.