Over recent months, tech companies have been laying workers off by the thousands.Here, Pfeffer, professor at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, talks about how the workforce reductions that are happening across the tech industry are a result mostly of “social contagion”: Behavior spreads through a network as companies almost mindlessly copy what others are doing.Severance packages cost money, layoffs increase unemployment insurance rates, and cuts reduce workplace morale and productivity as remaining employees are left wondering, “Could I be fired too?” For over four decades, Pfeffer, professor of organizational behavior, has studied hiring and firing practices in companies across the world.The evidence is pretty extensive, some of it is reviewed in the book I wrote on human resource management, The Human Equation: Building Profits by Putting People First.Apparently, many organizations will trade off a worse customer experience for reduced staffing costs, not taking into account the well-established finding that is typically much more expensive to attract new"