The Downside of Efficiency - Paper Example

Introduction

It was a typical Sunday evening in the August of 2017. To many, the day presented them an opportunity to windup the leisure of the weekend as they wait for Monday for a fresh week to hit again. I noticed that the entire 45th floor of the Morgan Stanley building, the Victoria Harbor-view was empty and I got a clue on the relaxing mood among many people. My role as an analyst in the investment banking division ensured that I had to be in the office alone even if others were going out for leisure. The room was silent and the only source of sound was my keyboard. I was not planning to go home not because I had a hard deadline dictated by my manager or because of the deal that I had push through by Monday. Even though I worked in the bank, my ob description did not include finance related duties. As an investment analyst, my duty included identifying investment opportunities and risks. My areas of expertise was in mergers and acquisitions, and on most days, I focused on number crunching and model building. Nevertheless, on that day, I was tasked with helping the factory workers with their financial issues.

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I have had many personal experiences at work and ion my social life, but my fondest experience was a couple of months ago at my cousin's wedding. In the ceremony, my cousin officially recognized the role that I had played in his life and how together with his mother contributed to his life's achievements. The past ten years has been a great struggle for the aunt to support my cousin. She had to take two part-time jobs in her 50s and live off her $226 of her monthly severance package. Besides, providing for my cousin's education was not that easy since she had to work very hard to put my cousin through medical school. My aunt's situation was a typical example of the extent to which the local community. I don't see my aunt that often, but when I do, I could always remember the tiring back of hers, with a shadow, dragged from the dimly lit street light and slowly faded into the dark.

My aunt was working for a clothing factory just the South of China 10 years ago. She later lost her work during a corporate merger, along with other 560 employees, most of whom have worked for the company for over 20 years. It happened that many employees were laid off as a strategy to slash cost after the merger. As a result, a considerable percentage of the employees were left with no severance package. The struggle with the company for their lost positions began and has not been settled in court till this date. The effect of the merger was significantly devastating since the factory had long served as the main source of income not only for the workers but for their families and the entire local community. The loss of the jobs forced many people to move from the given environment as a way of responding to the problem. A few, however, remained in the place around the factory where life became too difficult for them since there were no means for survival. The sudden negative change of things has made the basis of what I consider the downside of efficiency.

Mergers and acquisitions are considered to be associated with promoting the productivity and competitive ability. The only problem results from their less important effort of creating redundancies. This requires a proper intervention since business does not need two divisions of accountants, or two identical factories producing the same product in the same region. Subsequently, business often cut jobs after merges and those job losses often affected small communities like that of my aunt, where people experienced inequality in employment in addition to her being a woman in a patriarchal society. I could witness the events that I associated with the hardship that my aunt was going through that saddened me. I realized that she was among the local people in the given downturn, upon whom suffering heaped.

On that Saturday evening, I sat there and when I saw the column marked as "cost synergies" in the excel model, I knew that it represented the entire livelihood of several local communities. I stayed in the office for the entire weekend, working on something that I thought could be marginally helpful for the local communities: I compiled a list of alternative local factories and workplaces where their background and skills could be utilized. I felt empowered for a brief moment as I believed what I did that weekend could help those workers at least in some way. Nevertheless, I also recognized how futile my efforts were because there are millions of other hard-working souls just like my aunt, who has no choice but to accept their fates. There are over 12,000 mergers and acquisitions every year across the globe, with the combined value of over $3 trillion. How many local communities would be impacted by this tsunami of financial restructuring? How many people would lose their jobs and become neglected? I was also worried as I knew that not many of those people have the financial capability to fight for their rights and benefit considering the decreasing union membership rate since 1983. I lacked adequate and immediate answers to the questions. However, I realized that approaching the need for the solution by considering the Wall Street was quite an efficient path in this context. I chose to study law to give me the opportunity to go to advocate for the different form of suffering that people would undergo. It was a great opportunity for the same since it was time for my training and education aimed at achieving my goal.