Kedd made sense of shareholder value-led downsizings by using rationales of efficiency, long-term economic value, and the prospect of a "better" overall economy. By justifying restructuring and the breakup of companies with discourses of future excellence, Kedd not only excised worker trauma from his account of downsizing but also deflected into a vague future concerns and critiques that corporate restructurings might subvert the professed result of the (supposedly) "best," "most efficient," and "most imperative" companies. He not only assumed shareholder value was ample justification for corporate dismemberment, but also that share-price-led downsizing would necessarily produce profits, jobs, productivity, and efficiency. Asset stripping, then, gets read as a social good, as a sign of "fixing" previously inefficient corporations.