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Tony Tinker: Baruch College, New York, NY, USA
ACKNOWLEDGMENT: The author is grateful to Christine Cooper, David Cooper, Mark Dirsmith, Tim Fogarty, Karen Hooks, Athina Koutsoumadi, George Mickhail, Jan Mouritsen, Marilyn Neimark, Dean Neu, Steve Sutton, Paul Williams, and one anonymous reviewer, for their comments on earlier drafts of this and related papers. Comments welcome. Please do not quote without permission. All errors are the author's responsibility.
Introduction
By early 1997, the US economic boom had earned the distinction of becoming the longest phase of economic expansion in the last 27 years (Business Week, Editorial, February 20, 1995; National Public Radio, Morning Edition, January 10, 1997). Notwithstanding this rosy picture of growth and prosperity, the boom featured some disquieting precedents. First, unlike previous economic recoveries, white collar employment had failed to rebound ahead of other employment categories (Prokesh, 1993). Second, high-pay, high-skill jobs were displaced by low-skill, low-pay jobs (Aronowitz and DiFazio, 1994; Bradsher, 1995; Ehrear, 1993; Hammond and Champy, 1993; Uchitelle and Kleinfield, 1996). Thus, between 1990 and 1992, 175,000 engineering jobs were lost - including 96,000 electrical and electronic engineering positions in the supposedly prosperous Silicon Valley industries. During the same period, the number of computer programmers fell by 27,000 and systems analysts by 37,000 (Greenbaum, 1994). In spring 1993 - the first wave of major downsizing - Business Week reported over two million "corporate refugees," mostly from well-paying managerial positions (Greenbaum, 1994).
Big 6 accounting firms have spearheaded these macrostructural changes through their management consulting divisions. They have also administered their downsizing medicine to their own ranks and to student recruitment[1]. Overall, hiring of accounting undergraduates in the US fell by 30 per cent each successive year between 1990 through 1993 (American Accounting Association, 1994; Update, 1994). KPMG for instance laid off 4 per cent of its 12,000 professionals, including 7 per cent of its 1,494 partners (Emerson, July/August 1994; Wall Street Journal, June 2, 1994). KPMG's impact on student employment was more chilling: interviews were cut from 12,000 to 5,000, full day office visits were reduced from 3,500 to 1,600, and hiring slashed by 50 per cent - from 1,600 to 800 (Milano, August 2, 1994). KPMG's Partner in Charge of Recruitment explained:"
The reduction in our hiring is not a...