Nowadays companies are said to be pursuing the management based upon customer satisfaction. In this regard, many companies perform periodcal surveys of employee satisfaction index and coustomer satisfaction index. However, it is hard to find a company which formulates a corporate strategy to acquire and sustain competitive advantages based upon employee and customer satisfaction. One reaserch example of this area is Sears' case on employee-customer-profit chain. In this chain, employment adjustment program becomes a siginificant factor because the chain starts with employees. In Korea, employment stability, not flexibility, has been emphasized because of the lifetime employment tradition. However, the Korean economic crisis started in 1997 resulted in lots of restructuring and employemnt adjustment programs in many companies. In the United States, researches revealed that unproperly planned restructuring and employment adjustment program puts the company in more difficult situation.
From this background, this thesis is to provide potential solutions for the following reaserch questions. First, what are the implications of empirical cases regarding employee-customer-profit chain which has been theoretically discussed? Second, what are the common factors of effective employment adjustment models? Third, how can a Korean company make a effective employment adjustment program for the virtuous cycle of employee-customer-profit chain?
For the research purpose, this thesis reviewed 2 cases of the employee-customer-profit chain and 15 cases of employment adjustment.
With the case studies, following conclusions and implications were identified.
First, for the implimentation of virtuous employee-customer-profit chain, the followings are required; 1) base the chain on the company strategy, 2) involve employees into the chain, 3) investigate and manage data continuously, 4) establish a econometric model for the chain management, 5) improve the econometric model continuously.
Second, effective implimentation of the employment adjustment program requires the followings; 1) the company should maintain a reasonable education system, objective evaluation system, and flexible wage and employment system, 2) before initiating a layoff program, the company should make efforts to minimize the layoff, induce employees' participation to the program, and educate middle-level managers, 3) during the layoff process, the company should establish reasonable layoff criteria, notify the layoff plan to the relevant employees in advance, and inform the layoff plan to the whole organization immediately, 4) after the layoff, the company need to provide various services such as psychological counselling. for the laid-off employees and develop programs for motivating survived employees.
