We are seeing the culling of a sick herd. Companies are folding and falling and, as each tries to avoid becoming the next casualty, it embarks on an internal culling, cutting budgets and initiatives to conserve cash.

Everyone is nervous about current and future economic prospects. Like their ranching and farming brethren, executives who make these decisions often rely more on intuition than on robust data. As companies strip out costs and define core and non-core activities, a crucial question is whether corporate learning and development are expendable.