Let’s Talk about ‘Shareholder Value’
When the wave of Japanese competition finally crashed on corporate America, those best equipped to understand it—the engineers—were no longer in charge. R&D was just a useless expense, no matter the murmurings of foreign industries catching up to us.
American boardrooms had been handed over to the finance people, and they were hypnotized by the new doctrine of shareholder value. That’s where the money was, the golden ring. Who needed long-term improvements or sustainable approaches to cost control? Pay packages for number-crunchers rewarded short-term spikes in stock price. There were lots of ways to produce those by cycles of firing and rehiring, raiding the retirement benefits cookie-jar, cutting customer service and offshoring manufacturing.
Have you had a reason to contact your bank recently? There’s no one there. Deposits and disbursements are done by ATMs and tellers are a thing of the past. Call them and wait for an operator for a half-hour, listening to intermittent messages haw…